Image is all important in our world, so we try to copy other people. We wear clothing that has someone else's name on it, Yves St. Laurent or Gucci. Political leaders take polls to find out how they should stand on an issue. Some derive their personal morality from the media.
Christians are often taught to believe what their leaders tell them. The book of Galatians is all about freedom, but we will never be truly free if we don't have the courage to be original (Galatians 1:11-20). If we are driven to believe what we are told, then we will live under religious rules and others will control us, either directly or indirectly. At some point we have to listen to God and speak to Him, placing a higher value on our relationship with God than dependence on others.
In our fellowship, we have an 89-year-old who lives alone and has fought illness of one kind or another all her life. Her hands sometimes shake so bad that she can't hold her cup of coffee. Her legs don't work - she is permanently in a wheelchair.
For the past few years she has been fighting Parkinson's disease, loss of hearing, eye cataracts and bad circulation in her feet, but she is always quick to laugh, and laps up every precious second of life. When I think of Violet, I think of how unique she is. She isn't a copy. She is an original.
God wants us to be originals, not copies, counterfeits or clones. Our text in the book of Galatians tells us that God's message is original and that God's messenger, Paul, was an original because he was free and independent from the church leaders in Jerusalem. Had it not been so, the early Christians might have been submerged into legalistic Judaism.
NBF meet 6.30 pm Sundays in the chapel at Pant-y- Gorphwys on the A478 from Penblewin to Narberth. All welcome.