Oaths

Greetings Dear Reader,

You have taken oaths.

It is time to fulfill them;

To your King and to your land. – Return of the King

Whilst watching the Tolkien trilogy movies it occurred to me just how far we get sometimes from concepts like honor and fealty. Vows and oaths used to mean something. I and so many others have treated them like just words in our lifetime. It is far too easy within us to change our minds and move away from our oaths.

So often we mold our obedience to Christ around our current thinking, philosophy, or opinion of what is true. If I take an oath to serve Christ at any cost, should not that cost include my doubts or changes in my own reasoning? Instead new “truths” supplant my loyalty and faith to the detriment of my honor.

Whether I did it at six, thirty, or sixty, giving my life to Christ to use as he wills is not subject to latter changes in my own reasoning. It is too easy to decide that the basis of my oath is not real as an excuse to work out my own anger and disappointments. It is too common to abandon oaths and honor in place of current thought or desire. I have done this too easily in the past and in anguish I watch others do it now.

Following Christ is a life of faith fraught with challenges to that faith. We indulge our own reason, intellect, fear, and anger in forsaking that faith for both short and long term ventures into hollow pursuits. The terror is that we never act alone. We always damage someone else in our selfish journey away from path of Christ. I can see the long term pain of my acts of faithlessness coming to fruition in others.

We have taken oaths to our King. No thought or circumstance gives us leave to abandon them. Breaking them does not free us from them but rather further imprisons us in their debt. The only way to be free of our vow to follow Christ is to fulfill it.

Wishing you joy in the journey,

Aramis Thorn

Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every scribe who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a home owner. He brings new and old things out of his treasure store."