Free
This is the devotion for Thursday, 4/21/2022
Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you
-Jean-Paul Sartre
One of the most significant spiritual movements of the last century is the Twelve Step recovery movement. As people with insight into and experience with the shape and substance of life that has risen from death and destruction, many addicts and alcoholics in recovery have an Easter quality about them. Often this comes through in blunt humor, honest humility, and genuine gratitude. It also shows up in the way they talk about freedom.
It may seem odd that people who admit their own powerlessness and credit their recovery to a series of steps and a disciplined commitment to attending meetings and abstaining from alcohol would have much to say about being free. Usually we think of freedom as being unencumbered with such cares and constrictions.
What addicts will tell you, however, is that freedom is less about having every option and more about being liberated from a power too great to escape or defeat on one’s own. Freedom is the life that comes when the captivity to compulsion is ended. It’s the day you realize you don’t need to numb or deny or damage yourself in order to avoid feeling your feelings. In Easter terms, freedom is what happens when you’ve been raised from the dead.
Here’s a well-loved quote from what’s affectionately called the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous. It has come to be known as the Promises of AA. They’re Easter promises as well.
“We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook on life will change. Fear of people and economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us–sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.” (AA, pages 83-84)
For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore,
and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
-Galatians 5.1