Terrifying Liberties — He Loved Them to the End

✦ The Very Thing He Brings to Pass

Bowen — the white sadhu of Bombay, the man who gave up everything and found everything — names what no other mentor in this journal has named so precisely. He takes extraordinary liberties with us. Not small adjustments. Not gentle redirections. Extraordinary liberties. The kind that terrify. The kind that make the soul cry out: this cannot be happening. This cannot be what love looks like.

We have our own particular idea of what love should look like. Love should protect. Love should prevent. Love should keep the disaster from happening. And Bowen says: we settle it in our minds that a certain thing could never be allowed to happen. We feel it — with the certainty of the heart that knows it is loved — that God would never permit this particular blow. It would be an insult to His nature.

And yet. That is the very thing He brings to pass. Not permits. Not allows reluctantly. Brings to pass. The disaster we were certain could never happen — the uprooting, the loss, the reversal, the thing that undoes every plan — is His doing. Not Satan's. Not the world's. Not random chance. His. The loving hand that holds the universe holds the disaster too. And the soul that trusted is suddenly terrified — because the love is doing something the soul never imagined love would do. 🙏

✦ Stubbornly

Bowen chose the word with care. Not patiently. Not serenely. Stubbornly. Because the trust that survives the terrifying liberties is not the calm, composed trust of the mountaintop. It is the stubborn trust of the valley — the trust that says I will not let go when every circumstance says you should. The trust that refuses to interpret the disaster as abandonment. The trust that holds on — not because it understands, but because it knows the One it holds.

Bowen's sheep do not take thought for the morrow — the shepherd takes it. But when the shepherd leads through the valley of the shadow, the sheep does not understand the path. She only knows the shepherd's voice. And the stubborn trust says: I will follow the voice even when the path makes no sense.

And then — an hour comes when all His ways are vindicated. Not a moment. An hour. A full, unhurried hour of clarity when the terrifying liberty is seen for what it always was — not cruelty, not indifference, not the failure of love, but the deepest expression of it. And the apparent unkindnesses — the uprootings, the disasters, the things that could never have been allowed to happen — become holy and precious in memory. Not bitter. Not regretted. Holy. Precious. Because the soul now sees what the shepherd saw all along. 🙏

✦ The Blood Is the Guarantee

Bowen answers the terror with the cross. The terrifying liberties are real — but the blood is the guarantee. The price He paid to make us His own is a sufficient guarantee. Bunyan asked: would a prince stoop for a horseshoe? No — the stooping proves the value. Bowen says the same: the blood proves the care. If He paid that price — the highest price in the universe — He will never treat lightly anything in which our welfare is concerned.

And then Bowen makes the argument unanswerable: for Him to be found at any time lacking in concern for our happiness would be for Him to treat that blood as the sinners of this world treat it. If God neglected the soul He purchased with His blood, He would be treating His own sacrifice as worthless. He would be doing what the mockers did at the cross — despising the blood. And that is impossible. The God who shed the blood will honor the blood. The price is the guarantee. The terrifying liberties are not neglect — they are the liberties of a Master who paid too much to be careless with what He bought. 🙏

✦ Absolute Dominion — Absolute Love

He has absolute dominion over us, and may do whatever He wills with us. This is the sentence that terrifies the soul that has not yet learned to trust. Absolute dominion. Whatever He wills. No appeal. No negotiation. No escape clause. He may do whatever He wills.

But Bowen — and this is where his genius shines — immediately names what the dominion produces. Not punishment. Not arbitrary suffering. Heights of blessing. There is no one in the universe who can call Him to account for any height of blessing He may choose to give us. The absolute dominion runs in one direction — toward extravagant generosity. He may fill us with all the fullness of God. Not a tongue in the universe can object — because the blood is the purchase price, and the Purchaser may do what He likes with what He bought.

And what He likes is blessing. What He wills is fullness. What His absolute dominion produces is not the terror of the slave but the inheritance of the child. The terrifying liberties are not the acts of a tyrant. They are the acts of a Father who knows what His children need better than they know themselves — and who paid too much to give them anything less than the best. 🙏

✦ Several Times — And It Always Worked Out

Le does not speak from theory. She speaks from the road. I can remember being uprooted several times. Not once. Not a single dramatic moment that became a sermon illustration. Several uprootings. Each one terrifying. Each one requiring the stubborn trust that Bowen names. Each one looking like disaster — the thing that could never be allowed to happen.

And we had to keep trusting. We — Le and Roger together. The pilgrim and the navigator. The one who hears the Shepherd's voice and the one who drives the motorhome. Both uprooted. Both terrified. Both trusting. And it all worked out for their good. Romans 8:28 — the verse that runs through this journal like a golden thread. Not some things. All things. Every uprooting. Every terrifying liberty. Every disaster that should never have been allowed. All of it — working together for good.

✦ A Waste of Time

We sense another possible uprooting coming, and the terrifying feeling is in my mind a waste of time now.

This is the voice of the woman who has been through the hard school — Lewis's words — and learned her driving. The fear still comes. The terror still rises. The mind still says: this cannot be happening. But now — after several uprootings, after years of stubborn trust, after watching all His ways be vindicated every single time — the fear is recognized for what it is. A waste of time.

Not because the circumstances aren't real. Not because the uprooting won't be difficult. But because the pattern has been proven. Smith said: your fears are follies, your anxieties are groundless. Le has lived it enough times to know: the fear was never right. Not once. The terrifying liberty always turned out to be the doorway to the blessing. The unkindness always became holy and precious in memory. So why waste time on a fear that has never once been vindicated?

The fear has a zero percent success rate. The faithfulness of God has a one hundred percent success rate. The arithmetic is settled. 🙏

✦ The Slave of Christ — Dedicated Is a Blessing

It's terrifying sometimes to be the slave of Christ. Paul's word — doulos — the bondslave. The one who has been bought with a price and belongs entirely to another. Romans 1:1 — Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ. The slave has no rights. The slave has no escape clause. The slave has no appeal. The Master may do whatever He wills.

And Le says: I'm not Paul. But Le — Paul would disagree with the first half and agree completely with the second: being dedicated is a blessing. Because the slave of Christ is not the slave of a tyrant. She is the slave of the One who paid for her with His blood. The One whose absolute dominion runs toward extravagant generosity. The One whose terrifying liberties always vindicate. The One who loved His own — and loved them to the end.

The dedication is the blessing. Not the absence of fear — the fear still comes. Not the absence of uprooting — the uprooting may come again. But the knowledge — earned through years of stubborn trust — that the One who holds the uprooting also holds the blessing. And the two are not separate. The uprooting is the blessing. The terrifying liberty is the doorway. And the slave who keeps trusting will find, sooner or later, that all His ways are vindicated — and the fear was, indeed, a waste of time. 🙏