It’s Independence Day weekend — time for cookouts, watermelon, flag-waving and fireworks! Even the New Testament talks a lot about freedom — although in a different way. St. Paul famously writes to the Galatians:
For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery…do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indugence, but through love becomes slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall your love neighbor as yourself.”
~Galatians 5:1, 13
So although we enjoy a lovely civic holiday, what we celebrate as Christians is not so much independence as interdependence — the relationships that we experience when we love one another as Christ loved us.
Let us not ignore the beauty and hope of interdependence that is possible when we faithfully love God and neighbor. Happy Interdependence Day!