Set Free

The trebuchet was flinging accurately, if not at amazing distances.
"We could cheat," suggested Josh.
"How?"
"I didn't really mean it," he said, "They have very stiff penalties for cheating."
"What are they?" I asked, weighing the pros and cons.
"You can be banned from science olympiad for life," he answered.
(And this is a bad thing, how?)
"Maybe even thrown in jail. Science Olympiad jail," he continued.

That is where I already am. Day and night...no escape. Helicopters whir and trebuchets catapult in my dreams.  Endless testing, charting, breaking, repairing.....Two more weeks of science olympiad jail and then I am free....free! Unless we do well and go to States Competition.
Suddenly I knew what I had to do. I had to cheat to insure we did not make it on to States level.
"Do they feed you in this Science Olympiad jail?" I asked.

Some people take my every word seriously so I would like to categorically state right now that I am kidding. I would not cheat, even to avoid any more Science Olympiad. And the kids would not cheat even to win a trophy. They are upstanding and honest and wonderful kids. And they have survived my Attila the Hun leadership with remarkable good humor.

We have our flinging down to a science now. Now we have to just fling a few billion times and chart our results. Unless we break our copters, they are flying long enough to be respectable. The end is in sight. Soon we no longer be under the law of Science Olympiad. We will be free!

We are studying Galatians 4. It talks about no longer being a slave to the law once we have come to faith through believing that Jesus atoning death was the final and only sacrifice necessary for us to be freed to a righteous relationship with God. But Paul begins his letter in Chapter 3 to the Galatians with this phrase, "You foolish Galatians!"
Asherel was perplexed by this.
"He is trying to convince people to believe in Jesus, right?" she asked, "This doesn't seem the way one would talk to people you are trying to win over."
I don't know. Sometimes I need more than kindness. Sometimes I need a good swift kick in the pants to get me headed on the right path. Sometimes I need to be reminded that I am imprisoned, and there is a better way, a whole eternity of freedom that is beckoning me, if I would stop clinging to foolish and stubborn habits and sins.

Science Olympiad is not really so bad. But I am looking forward to the day when I will no longer be under its law, and I will no longer be a slave to the laws of flight and gravity.
But I think God might be urging me to contemplate even further than when I am not bound by Science Olympiad.
"You foolish coach...."  Be a slave no longer to the law but to the lawmaker alone.

Galatians 4: 3-7
...we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world. ⁴ But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, ⁵ to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. ⁶ Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” ⁷ So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.