The Cost of Freedom

Lately I have been thinking about our freedom and how easily it is to forget the sacrificial price that has been paid for it. Recently I interviewed several tourists in front of the White House. Most were from the U.S. and reflected that freedom was what America was all about. And yet, the majority of people didn't want to talk "on camera" about the possibility that some people groups freedom were in jeopardy. It made me realize that as long as it doesn't affect "me" then "I" am OK with the idea that to take away someone else's freedom was OK. I walked away quite disillusioned about who America is in 2009. We seem to be a WIIFM nation, a nation of people who are self-centered, who only care about our own needs.

At the young age of 25 my brother Allen T. Rogers gave his life for the freedoms we enjoy. Considering that he was in the CIA, he could have avoided the draft call. But I recall him saying that "it was his duty, that our father fought for this country and so could he." Since then and before then, thousands of men and women have given their lives to protect the United States and to open the door of freedom for other countries. Freedom is bought with a price that cannot even be described.

Two thousand years ago our freedom was purchased with the price of the blood of Jesus Christ. And we forget how precious that freedom is also. As I sit here disillusioned and concerned with where our nation is headed, I have to think that our Father in Heaven has had similar thoughts since we are made in His image.

When Paul spoke to the Galatian church he said, " My friends, you were chosen to be free. So don't use your freedom as an excuse to do anything you want. Use it as an opportunity to serve each other with love. "

Are we using our freedom as we have been called to do? How much longer will we be able to say, "let freedom ring?"

Self Sufficiency

From an early age my mother taught me to be self-sufficient. "Don't count on anyone, but yourself." She lived her life much that same way, not counting on anyone, possibly because she lived through the depression. She came from a large family and then having eight children of her own, she lived much of her life struggling. So I understand why she taught me her "golden rule" of life.


So I became a do-it-yourselfer. But one of the differences in my mom and me besides the "great depression" is that early on I looked to God for help. Maybe because of what my mom lived through, I never saw her look to God for help. A good friend and minister of mine told me that people in her generation didn't express their faith as we do today. So maybe she did, but in her own way or behind closed doors.

But in her last few months, I saw that change. The most memorable time of my life with my mother was when in tears, she asked me to pray as we sat at the table, just the two of us ready to eat dinner. She was near the end of her life and she was reaching out to God. She had just barely made it through major heart surgery at 89 years old. She wasn't asking God for continued healing, but to help her understand why she had so much discontent with others who were in her life and to help her as she came in contact with them. I don't think she liked the person she had become through many years of self-sufficiency. There was a flaw that had been created through "self-sufficiency."

There are many things in our life that make us who we are or as we like to say "builds character." For many people who don't believe in God or even those who believe there is a God, but He doesn't get involved in our lives; they are in the self-sufficiency mode of life. When faced with "this is it" they won't like what they see in themselves. Self-sufficiency isn't all that it is cut out to be.

Many Christians and myself included sometimes fall into the self-sufficiency mode thinking we don't need anyone else; we can go it alone. God has taught me a great lesson working at Christian Medical & Dental Associations in a job that is challenging and often overwhelming, lean on Him always.

"Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding." Proverbs 3:5