Living Life by Design

Rabindranath Tagore was a author, writer, poet, painter, composer and social activist who lived in India in the early 1900’s. He was even knighted by the British Government in 1915 (a few years later he resigned the honor as a protest against British policies in India). He once wrote, ‘I have on my table a violin string. It is free to move in any direction I like. If I twist one end it responds; it is free. But it is not free to sing. So I take it and fix it into my violin. I bind it and when it is bound, it is free for the first time to sing.’

Tagore believed that freedom came from binding yourself to a cause larger than yourself. As Christian’s, our true freedom comes when we bind ourselves to Jesus and fix our eyes on him. Just as a violin string comes alive when it is bound to a bow, so do we come alive in Christ. Bound to him, we are alive.

When playing a violin, if the strings are not fashioned to the bow properly, they will break.

The letter written in Hebrews 2:1-18 is written to warn us that if we are not bound to Christ property, we will drifting away in our faith. Most people do not suddenly give up being Christians, like a string breaking, but we can drift. The author of Hebrews gives us this warning, “We must pay careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away” (v.1).

At the heart of our Christian faith is a personal, one-on-one relationship with Jesus. Jesus died for you and me. He was raised to life and he is alive today. We may not be able to see him or hear him physically (as the writer of Hebrews did) , but we can see him as we read his Word, with the eyes of faith.

When was the last time you opened your Bible (Sunday church doesn’t count) and read?