I remember the freedom of owning my first car.

No more borrowing from my parents, sharing a car with siblings, using it only when it fit into their schedules. (see facsimile below)

No, now I was free to come and go as I please! I could go anytime, anywhere. At last, true freedom!

That was before I fully understood that I also had a car payment, an insurance payment, gas and repair costs, and the creeping anxiety of knowing that I was now solely responsible for taking care of this car upon which something could break anytime, anywhere. In my search for freedom, I had also found bondage.

While there is truth to the notion that the more we have the more freedom we will experience, that's not the whole truth. That term, financial freedom is a half truth, and in some ways a lie.

On this holiday weekend upon which we celebrate the blessings of freedom, Christians acknowledge that true freedom is not earthly, but divine. It doesn't come through things, but through God.

In Sunday's a gospel Jesus will send his followers out to spread the divine news of freedom. And he will do so by sending his disciples, not by chartered chariot, or by well-equipped caravan, but on foot, with a bare minimum of supplies. 

And you and I will contemplate the ways we are sent out by God, and the ways we are to emulate their example by traveling light.

This is about the things we carry, and not necessarily tangible goods. Jesus bids us to travel light by casting upon him our anxieties, our worries, our unforgiveness, our pain - everything that binds us and keep us from being free.

If we are to preach a gospel of freedom, how are we free? And how are we in the process of being free? What are the things binding us?

The more we discover God, the more we discover freedom.