Strings of Freedom

 There’s a park nearby that has a kite festival every year. The colors and shapes of kites are incredible. Drivers passing by on the highway are treated to a sky filled with these wonders. I remember my attempts to fly kites as a kid. Of course, all I ever had was the cheap plastic kind with Rainbow Bright or some other silly design. I definitely didn’t have a treeless hill to fly it on and more often than not after the first time the line got tangled in the trees, the fun was over.

But I do remember one time…

I think I was around 10 years old perhaps, out in an open field. Finally, the kite caught the wind and began to soar higher and higher. My dad showed me how to let the string out enough to let the kite continue to climb with control so slack in the line wouldn’t make the kite lose altitude from or worse yet come crashing down. The string kept going out all the way to the end which was tied to the handle I was holding onto. And I held on, staring up at the small sight of the kite floating up against a blue sky.



I never once questioned why the kite was attached to a string – that’s just what makes it a kite. How else would you make a kite fly?  

Galatians 5:1 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. (NIV)

God wants to set us free and we balk against doing things His way; seeing it only as something to tie us down. We want the perks without the rules and regulations, the grace without the discipline. Is freedom really “no strings attached?” 

When I threw my kite into the air, it fell right back to the ground. If I had gotten the kite into the air and then cut the string, the kite would have fallen back to the ground. Or if my dad hadn’t tied the end of the string to the handle to secure it, the minute the string ran out the kite would have floated away and eventually crashed to the ground. Are you getting the point?  

 
A kite cannot fly without the tension in the string. We cannot continue to fly higher and soar if there is any slack in our connection with God.

True freedom lifts us up and lets us soar. This world will try and keep us flattened to the ground or tied up in the encroaching trees, whatever those obstacles might be in our lives. We must live in the freedom of the open field with the tension of life as a Christ followers in order to soar the way God intended us to. Then, we can float against His great big sky of grace, anchored to Him who has a firm grip on our string.