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All right … from Hebrews 5:.

“So also Christ did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest, but was appointed by the one who said to him, ‘Yyou are my son. Today. I have begotten you.’ As he says also in another place, ‘You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.’ In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered, and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, having been designated by God, a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.”

The Word of the Lord.

Yeah, I would like to say that I absolutely love the Bible. I think it’s the collection of books – that it’s got so much to give people, Christians or whatever you are, it can give you so much, reading those books. Having said that, I would like to also say that there are places in it, when I read those passages, I tend to just, my thoughts wander and I get bored and I start to want to do other things.

This is not exactly one of those where I get really bored because I can see what Paul, or whoever it was that wrote this, trying to do. He’s trying to speak about the nature of Christ, which is, of course, interesting, but again, there’s something about this text that doesn’t do it to me. So what I do when I encounter those places is that I tend to zoom out and look for a deeper message – a deeper wisdom that we can bring to us today. I often do that, as you probably have noticed by now, and today. I think there’s something here that speaks about serving and submission – to submit yourself and to not glorify yourself.

There’s something there that has a message for us today. I feel, for me, certainly, but for I think many people, because I would argue there is a bondage, there is the opposite of freedom. You might think it’s a freedom, but there’s some kind of bondage in trying to desperately glorify yourself, to chase your career, to live your life,

Trying to chase those dreams that we get from Lord knows, from where we get all those dreams that we should try to realize and to, instead of trying to live your life and chasing those dreams, I think there’s a freedom in saying, ‘I’m ready to submit myself to something else, to a calling to God, to a task something else, not just my own desires’. And there’s something about the freedom to do whatever you want to do, which is, in one way, I would say the freedom that we in the West.

A lot of us can have on one level at least, but I think that that freedom can be very, very terrifying sometimes. It’s been argued that if someone would return from the Middle Ages to our time and would experience our reality, life without God, without the boundaries, the existential boundaries, with a sense of reality being my own creation, that everything centers revolves around me and stems from me, that there is something there that would scare the out of that person.

So to that degree that he or she would just return straight back to the Middle Ages, who knows? Who knows? But there’s something there that I think that the freedom we have today is terrifying because it’s a freedom without boundaries in many respects, and I’m talking existentially here, and that’s why I think today’s message could be that there is a freedom in not glorifying yourself just like Christ did not glorify himself. Quite the opposite.

There is a freedom in not trying to do that, but instead look for something to commit, to submit yourself to. And the question is, what is that in your life? Maybe you have found your calling. Maybe you have not yet, but there’s something to look for there, I’m quite sure.

Anyway, greetings from Sweden. Hi.

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