I met Bubba the Dragonfly on Tuesday morning. Bubba was trapped by glass. He had flown in through the architectural features that lined the hallways of the building. The architectural features around the elevators were real windows. Bubba had flown into the building and was having a hard time exiting the premises. I watched him for several minutes. I decided to act when I watched Bubba back up and fly at full speed toward the glass. Bubba was a big dragonfly, and he made an audible thud when he hit the glass.
That was enough for me. I picked Bubba up off the ledge of the window and walked him over to one of the architectural features in the building and turned him loose. Bubba flew away triumphantly.
I had several thoughts, watching Bubba fly.
I wondered if Bubba knew that church aphorism, “When God closes a door, he opens a window.” No, he doesn’t! There are times that God says, “No.” We are the guilty parties by continually testing the doorknob. Very often, we are the mistaken parties thinking this opened window is God’s doing. There are times the door is closed, and the window has impenetrable glass to cause you to stop and change directions. We call that repentance which simply means, “to turn around.” Bubba reminded me that in my own life, I need some repentance going on. I’m responsible for that. There are places I need to change direction!
The other thing I thought about as I watched Bubba fly away was that what we all need is a savior. We are banging our heads against walls that we can never penetrate. We shouldn’t be banging our heads according to the paragraph above. But we are habitual in our habits. They might not benefit us, but we are so used to doing the same thing and we keep at it. A savior intervenes.
A savior not only shows us a new and better way but will put us on the path to that new and better way. For our part, we are called to have faith in this savior.
While I was watching Bubba fly free, I offered a prayer of thanksgiving to Christ my Lord. He set me free from the power of sin. He opened a new way of being and living. He called me into this crazy thing called “the ministry.”
Before Jesus I was trapped. Since Jesus, I have been set free to experience abundant life in Christ.
The Apostle Paul put it this way, “For freedom Christ has set us free.”
