The Freedom of a Servant!

As I write this post I am in Atlanta, Georgia. I have enjoyed stimulating conversation over good meals – I also rode in a horse-driven carriage, something that I had never done before. But none of those things held a candle to the experience of going to the King Center. As I walked through the Center, went into Ebeneezer Baptist Church, walked to the birthplace of this man who held both my attention and my admiration for nearly a decade – memories came back, feelings began to stir inside of me, old dreams resurfaced – I am a product of the sixties – with all of its’ revolutionary changes, none made more impact on me than the civil rights movement – I lived and breathed a quest to see my people free!

Hearing the words of King, spoken as only he could, seeing the pictures that brought me evidence that the world outside of the southside of Chicago was very different, a world that both petrified me and made me want to march, to picket, to do whatever it took to change it! While I was in the King Center I read this famous quote by Dr. King:

“Everyone can be great, because everybody can serve – You don’t have to have a college degree to serve; You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to seve…You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

Just as quickly as I read it, I heard another quote in my spirit – spoken by one who has been the major figure in my life for forty years now:

25But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them.
26But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister;

27And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant:
28Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.Matthew 2);25-28 (KJV)

The sixties had such a profound impact upon my life – and by the time the decade ended, I felt the passive resistance of King was probably not the answer – I saw the world through a lens of having to fight for recognition, for acceptance, for freedom. And then the seventies came and just one short year into that decade, I came face to face with the God of my salvation, and I laid down the revolutionary spirit I had come to adopt, and submitted to a new teacher, one who like King, took a different approach. one that assumed a position of being a servant; and with that servanthood – really experiencing freedom! I adopted these words:

Jesus said, “I tell you most solemnly that anyone who chooses a life of sin is trapped in a dead-end life and is, in fact, a slave. A slave is a transient, who can’t come and go at will. The Son, though, has an established position, the run of the house. So if the Son sets you free, you are free through and through.John 8:36

Kairos,
Maria