Absolution

I don’t like breaking bonds. We are bound to one another, after all, by friendships, marriages, clubs, common interests, common threats, and teams. Bonds of trust and shared experience, both joyful and adverse, cement our relationships. We get energy from being bound together. We are stronger, happier, and more effective at everything we do. “Blessed be the tie that binds,” we sing, because we’d rather be together than apart. Breaking bonds hurts.

But some bond-breaking is good, especially when the bonds are to destructive things. We bind ourselves to bad habits, caustic attitudes, actions that demean or corrode. We may be bound by evil forces outside our control. When we confess our sin and God forgives, the result is absolution (Latin, ab – from, solver – to loosen). We are loosened from our bonds to the “sin that clings so closely” (Hebrews 12.1). We are released from unhealthy attachments that keep us from becoming whole.

Absolution breaks the spiritual bondage at the core of our being. It’s like when molecular bonds are broken and energy is released so atoms are free to combine with one another in new ways. Absolution sets us free to reconnect in news ways with God and one another.

More dramatic still, when atomic bonds are broken in the nucleus of the right atom, chain reactions happen. Imagine the spiritual chain reaction we release when we break our bondage to the evil within us. The power of love will change the world!

My prayers for you along the way are two: first that our bonds of friendship remain strong, and second that our spiritual bondage to evil, sin, and death is broken, generating love to change the world. Amen.