Independence, or dependence?

Ann Voskamp writes,

Straight up — the guy just liked the frame.

Four bucks.

That’s all this guy had to dig out of wallet at that flew market in Adamstown, Pennsylvania that morning in 1989 to buy one old, odd picture frame.

He handed over the four dollars and frankly, didn’t care one wit about the painting.

It was just a dismal little country scene dabbed across a grimy, torn canvas with a signature he couldn’t even make out — it was only the gilded and ornate frame that caught his eye.

The flea market seller took his four bucks — with absolutely no idea. With not the faintest idea that the frame and painting — were not at all what you’d think.

When the guy got home? The crudely-made frame pathetically fell apart in his hands. Unsalvageable.

Great — four bucks wasted on a bunch of garbage.

But when the unsalvageable frame fell apart in this hands, fell away from the torn canvas?

There, between the slashed canvas and the wood backing of the crumbled frame — was this crisp, folded up piece of paper, the size of a business envelope.

He unfolded it slow. Ran his finger across the inked calligraphy.

It couldn’t be what it read — or was it?

When a friend who collected historical memorabilia dropped by, he took out that crisp piece of paper, unfolded it slow, for him to take a look at it. Laughed a bit when his friend shook his head, mouth agape.

“Well —- what do you think?”

“Get it appraised.”

Turns out?

That folded up piece of paper, one-tenth of an inch thick, that had fallen out between a torn canvas and a falling-apart frame? Was printed by John Dunlap. On July 4th, 1776.

Turns out that it’s one of only 500 copies of the first printing of — the Declaration of Independence.

Turns out only 23 copies are known to still exist, only of which a mere two were privately owned — and then this one.

A flea market find.

...Turns out?

You can have in your possession an actual declaration of freedom — and not actually value it.

You can hold in your hands something valuable enough that it could change everything about your life — and you could send it right out of your life.

...It’s time to check behind the cheap frame of things — because it turns out:

A life of faith may not be what what you think — or what most people live.

It’s infinitely more.

...The greatest freedom we have is the freedom to come right to God at any time.

There under the bloom of fireworks, you can feel it —

the love of Christ exploding a heart —

the way a people can live a declaration of independence from all else and breathe the freedom of dependence in the One who explodes grace across all our skies.

Read more here.