You Don't Have to Live Like a Refugee

Tom Petty
Refugee
Listen, it don't really matter to me
Baby, you believe what you wanna believe
You see, you don't have to live like a refugee

Somewhere, somehow, somebody must have
Kicked you around some
Tell me why you wanna lay there,
Revel in your abandon

Honey, it don't make no difference to me
Baby, everybody's had to fight to be free
You see, you don't have to live like a refugee
No baby, you don't have to live like a refugee

Tom Petty has always captured my attention with his barely whispered, gritty vocals and devil may care attitude. I was listening to one of his discs recently and this song stuck in my head for a few days. I couldn't move past the fact that as humans we choose to live like refugees when we live alienated from God and keep him at arms length. The good news of the gospel is a reminder that we don't have to revel in our brokenness and our sense of abandonment when the world casts us aside...truly we have the greatest hope, the greatest love, the deepest awareness of grace in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are declared righteous in God's sight no longer bound to flounder in chains of sin and death but liberated to live in community with God and his people.