Filling Up Christmas | The Fullness of Freedom | Galatians 5:1 | Week 4

I've been reminded, during this Advent season leading up to Christmas, that there are two kinds of people in the world:  There are those that agree with me and are right; there are those that agree with my wife and are wrong.  I grew up watching the movie "A Christmas Story," and I happen to think it's a brilliant film. Not everybody agrees with me.  There's one scene in this movie that makes me laugh every time I see it.  {Ryan plays scene where Ralphie's overly dressed little brother falls in the snow and can't get up.}  How many of you have felt like that at some point in time?  I can't get up!  I'm too bundled up.  I've got too much going on.  I think if we're honest, we all come to that place at some point in our life where we go life feels cumbersome.  There's a lot of weight to carry.  There's a lot of things going on.  Sometimes they wrap us up in such a way that we can't get up.  

Last year, I decided to read a book that my English required I read and I never did!  Shhh!  It's called The Grapes of Wrath.  Written by John Steinbeck in 1939, it's about a family that lives in Oklahoma during the dustbowls.  They decide to move and leave because their land is depleted and their lives are depleted.  The book is about their journey on the way to California.  They have this hope that when they get to California it's going to be greener pastures, it's going to be a better life.  There are signs along the way in the gas stations, and there's this hope that when they get to THAT place, eventually they'll be able to get up.  Eventually they'll be able to live.  Eventually they'll find some sort of satisfaction, some sort of pleasure, some sort of freedom.  If you've read the book, what you know is that when they get there it's like chasing the wind.  It's an allusive mist that they try to grab.  They wind up feeling just as empty as when they left.  I got to the end of the book and thought I think this book is so popular because it's well written, number one, but it's the human story in a lot of ways, isn't it?  We leave one place that doesn't satisfy, in order to go to greener pastures and quiet waters, and it ends up just leaving us wanting...