JA Gamache a delight.

Following up a post from yesterday, I've got to hear JA speak and gotten to know him personally. What a delightful person! JA is Roman Catholic and a person of deep faith. He approaches his Toastmaster speeches as if they were sermons, even though he doesn't overtly refer to God in them. He told an amazing true story about his life. He is also a DJ and got called to a psychiatric institution to play music for a dance. It wasn't until he was inside that he found out it was a psychiatric prison. Many prisoners in this place were extraordinary violent and pled insanity. As he walked with the guard through the prison to the gym, the guard mentioned that they move prisoners in groups of 15 through the halls and plan it so that the groups never pass each other. This was a precautionary measure to prevent fighting and violence. JA asked how many would be in the gym. The guard said, "150"! In the gym he set up his equipment and the guard placed orange construction cones around him as "protective" boundaries. The cones were to keep the 150 violent, insane prisoners away from the DJ. Talk about crazy. JA was there to teach them to line dance and it wasn't working. He decided to venture out beyond the cones and engage them. As he moved away from his equipment, he saw them smirk. He quickly changed his mind and went back behind the cones. JA told this story during his speech yesterday and then said these powerful words, "I was too afraid to leave an illusion of security. ... I was the only free person there glad to be in a prison" (made of cones). Those words haunted me all day. My security can only ever be in Jesus Christ. Nothing else. But how often am I deceived by an illusion, sometimes self-deceived by: the illusion, or false belief, that I provide for me and my family, or the illusion that I need a certain income to maintain a certain lifestyle to be happy, or the illusion that by cutting myself off from certain people emotionally that I am protecting myself, or the illusion that certain sins aren't dangerous, or the illusion that I don't need others or don't need the church, or the illusion that my wisdom is enough for my life and my family's ... the illusion list could go on and on. Sometimes what we consider a shelter is really a prison. Sometimes we protect ourselves by not risking, and our failure to risk is more dangerous than the risk itself. We are meant to live free in Jesus Christ -- to walk out beyond the cones. What are your "illusions of security" that you need leave behind?