This is a picture of a Holocaust survivor named Rena Quint. She told us her story while we were at Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Museum.
At one point she tells of when the British liberated her camp. People were rejoicing. Everyone was shouting that they were free. She was completely confused about why everyone was so happy. She had no clue what freedom was.
She had entered the Polish Ghetto at the age of three-and-a-half years old and left the concentration camp at the age of nine-and-a-half. Her world consisted of sickness, lice, sores and death. Her entire life was spent behind walls and/barbed wire. Her norm was bondage. Thus, she had no concept of freedom when she was liberated from the camp.
It wasn’t until she was adopted by an American Jewish family, who raised her through adulthood, that she began to understand the meaning of the word “freedom.”
We are like Quint. Our norm is the sum total of our experiences up to this point. We only know what we know when we know it. And we will not know anything different until we are exposed to something different.
It wasn’t until Jesus modeled for us the concept of freedom and real living that we could even begin to realize that something better could exist for us. Just like Quint, we need an outside source of truth to show us what freedom is and can be. This is why we need a source of truth that can be trusted – the Word of God. How can we ever discover that our norm is abnormal unless we let Jesus lovingly show us?
Keep listening to Jesus in His Word. He’s the only One who can show what God’s healthy normal is. Keep learning to hear Him so you can experience freedom in your daily life.
S“E”t Free Nowww.