Incarceration

I am thinking about jail. No, I've never had to be incarcerated and I'm not expecting to be, though sometimes I wonder if my Joan of Arc tendencies might land me there someday. When our middle son hoisted a pirate flag on my house recently, I thought about the old adage, "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree..." We're not pirates but we might not exactly comply. At the same time, when Jesus tells us to do something, we want to lay our lives down for that, though we're admittedly, grievously, sinners. 

When I gave my heart to Jesus, or rather, He snatched it up off the bottom of the ocean, I was just a small child. I remember talking to Him by starlight as a breeze tickled the curtains by my bed. It seemed as natural as breathing to follow Him, to sing His praises, to trust Him with my small world. The harder part has been to see the big, bad cosmos expand and to understand how to trust Him when life grew big and scary. The ever-complex tapestry woven on this side, with its tangles and confusion is, however, perfect on the other. 

My husband's story is very different. He grew up hearing all the right things, going to church from a young age and then, at youth camp, going down an aisle and saying a magic prayer then getting dunked. It didn't take. He descended into all sorts of bad mayhem, over many years. I didn't know that man. Ken says that I wouldn't have liked him. Then there came a day that God just plain-out chased him down. But Jesus loved him, and He swooped down and redeemed him too, like He did me. I love God. He gets us out of jail, just like that. 

And where people would like to keep you in their own personal jail, or hate you or not forgive you, or even if you are in a real prison, there's a God who transcends all of that and can set you free. From others. From ourselves. From all our transgressions. "If the Son sets you free, you are free indeed..." John 8:31-36