[Dailydevo] Daily Devotion Friday August 12, 2005

[Barry Ludwig]

Daily Devotion Friday August 12, 2005

This week's devotions are written by members of our Tanzanian Mission team
(plus a few supporters) which is traveling to Tanzania August 11th and will
return on August 22nd.  We pray for their safety as they do God's work in a
new and exciting place! Todays devotion is written by missionary, Brent
Lofgren.

 

John 8:31-33

Then Jesus turned to the Jews who had claimed to believe in him. "If you
stick with this, living out what I tell you, you are my disciples for sure.
Then you will experience for yourselves the truth, and the truth will free
you." Surprised, they said, "But we're descendants of Abraham. We've never
been slaves to anyone. How can you say, 'The truth will free you'?"

 

Verse 32 serves as the basis for the motto of my alma mater, Augsburg
College--"Through truth to freedom."  I especially appreciate The Message
translation "you will experience for yourselves the truth," rather than the
more familiar (at least to me) "you will know the truth."  How wonderful for
those disciples to live in the presence of Jesus and experience it for
themselves, even if only for a short time.  

 

Pieces of truth can be found in different ways and in different places.
Part of the truth about the human condition can be found in the United
States, while another part of it resides in the developing world.
Experiencing the truth of the developing world for ourselves extends us
beyond simply knowing by being told, and it certainly places a new
perspective on our prior experiences.

 

How then does it free us?  Arrogance such as that expressed by the Jews here
is rampant in our experience-"We already have the truth, and we already have
freedom.  Surely no one outside of North America and Europe can help us to
gain these things."  But the truth that we can discover frees us to act with
greater knowledge of why and for whom we are acting.  It frees us to walk
beside our sisters and brothers who struggle on the fringes of the world
economy-not to see them just as museum pieces with exotic behaviors and
appearances, or prople to patronize because of their neediness relative to
us.  Heavenly Father, let us all in Ann Arbor, Gilai, and Heaven, share in
one truth and one freedom!

 

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