A View from a Prison

Imagine your life being shrunk down to the confines of a single building. Inside are hundreds of people with whom you eat, work, and sleep. Food is provided for you three times a day. You are assigned work duties, and you have free time. Everything you need to physically live is provided for you...a roof over your head, clothes, regular meals. Theoretically you could exist never going outside, but if you so desire, there is a half-mile stretch of road. Cement walls line the road, with barbed wire twisted across the top, and there you are free to walk....to the gate....and back again. Guards with guns stand watch at the wall.

As I walked down that road from the ship to the main gate the other day, I thought to myself: I bet this is what prison feels like.

On the days that I work, this floating dock and hospital are my world. On my days off, I head down that dirt road towards the gate....and freedom...from the stuffy confines of my protected life here. I feel the shackles drop off as I breathe in the humid air and step into the busy street teeming with people, honking taxi cabs, women carrying children on their backs and bundles on their heads, men pushing wheelbarrows, and children calling out to each other.

But it doesn't take much time or distance away from the "bars" of my own prison, that I realize I am looking into the country of Liberia through seemingly unbreakable "bars" of a different kind. Bars of hardship, of desperation, of need and sickness and lack. Bars of corruption, of destruction and constant reminders of war. Mine are bars of isolation, of dissatisfaction, of fear, and insecurity. Theirs are bars of poverty... Mine, of affluence.

How easy it is for one to be held captive. As my eyes are opened to my own prison walls, and as I have the privilege of meeting these beautiful people through the bars of their own, I become more and more convinced that the answers and solutions this world offers are desperately limited. I need something more. And I need to offer something more. I started this post a couple of days ago, and couldn't quite find the words to finish. I was a little overwhelmed, actually. How can a prisoner preach freedom? How can I, with chains of sin around me, offer hope to anyone else? But the Lord is good to shed light into those darker thoughts...and help me to see that perhaps no one can truly know freedom the way that a prisoner can.

There is a man in the Bible who found himself in a real prison because he testified regarding Jesus Christ. A true prisoner, and he wrote: "Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel, for which I am suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But God's word is not chained. Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory." 2 Timothy 2:9-10

What a relief to read these words from this man. He knew what it was to be in prison. But he also held in his hands a precious key: God's word. "God's word is not chained." No matter what binds us, nothing can bind God. And in His word, we can find the key to set us free from the prisons that bind us. Then we can say along with Paul: "I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all things through Him who gives me strength."
Phil. 4:11-13

Praise God our freedom is not found in our circumstances--or many of us would not find it. The key to our freedom is found in Jesus--who is God's word. "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then and do not let yourselves be brudened again by a yoke of slavery." Gal.5:1

I don't want to live as a prisoner when I have been given a key. My prayer today is that I would have the courage to seek God, and in His Word find the truth offered to me by the One who was sent for this very purpose, "to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners..." Isaiah 61:1

Let freedom ring!!:)