SOUL LIBERTY that WE CAN NEVER LOSE

"If I will that he tarry until I come, what is it to thee? 


This passage in the New Testament is one of those in which  the tone of Jesus' question is  not easy to interpret. I think Jesus is cautioning about the primacy of  soul liberty  and the uniqueness and inscrutability of God's Plan for each of us. SOUL LIBERTY  is the human aspect of God's Freedom.  When I first heard  such phrases as SOUL LIBERTY, Priesthood of all Believers, and God's freedom, they sent a thrill through me and I knew that in some profound way they were statements of TRUTH.

I heard them spoken in a positive way when my Aunt Grace took me to the  Baptist Church, and later in a not positive way I heard them listed as some of the  attributes of Protestant  denominations in a Catholic Church History class.

When I discovered more about my own heritage as a Jenckes and direct descendant of Joseph Jenks, one of the founders and supporters of the  FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH in AMERICA and the life and  beliefs of Rhode Island's  inspired founder Roger Williams, I was each time thrilled that I had  heard the sacred words liberty and freedom in a religious context. 

I understood better the  attraction of Islam when I  learned that their faith contained a list of the 99 Attributes of GOD. When I read them aloud,  I find them to be comforting and to bring  me a  greater sense of  the largeness of the Divine outpouring and the smallness of the human  capacity. They make a wonderful daily aid to contemplation. You will see if you try to read through them, that some new revelation will stop you and hold you at a different spot each day.

That is something that we mortals forget--the distance in every attribute between us and God. And the difference lies in both quantity and quality. We cannot know  what He knows. We cannot fathom the heights of his knowledge or the depths of His  compassion and mercy.  To  say we can is like saying that an ant can  know and feel as much as we do.  There can be no comparisons and often times we cannot even comprehend why something happens in our world. We do not have the large plan and we certainly are not directing or guiding the working out of that plan.

We do have great dignity and immense importance  but that is bestowed on us and not the result of anything that we do or learn or say or make or destroy.
Our dignity and our importance comes from one sublime fact --GOD MADE US  and each of us  contains the IMAGE OF GOD
IMAGO DEI . This was not earned --it was given to us with our souls and has been ours and will be ours for all eternity.

WHAT'S IT TO YOU?