There is an instructive legend of the Middle Ages. It seemes that a certain citizen was arrested by one of the barons and shut up in a dungeon by a ferocious looking jailer who carried a great key. The door of his cell shut with a bang. He lay in the dark dungeon for twenty years. Each day the big door would be opened with a great creaking; water and bread would be thrust in and the door closed again.
After twenty years the prisoner decided that he wanted to die but he did not want to commit suicide, so the next day when the jailer came he would attack him, and the jailer would then kill him. In preparation he thought he should examine the door, so he turned the handle, and to his amazement the door opened. He found that there was no lock. He groped along the corridor and felt his way upstairs. At the top of the stairs two soldiers where chatting, and they made no attempt to stop him. He crossed the great yard. There was an armed guard on the drawbridge but paid no attention to him, and he walked out a free man. He went home unmolested. He had been a captive, not of stone and iron, but of false belief. He had only thought he was locked in.
Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name: the righteous shall compass me about; for thou shalt deal bountifully with me (Psalm 142:7).
How many prisons have we locked ourselves in by thinking the equivalent of imprisonment. “I can”t, they won’t, it is impossible, that’s just the way it is”: are all forms of mental prisons. Of course we have all said these things. The good news is we have the key to these locks and are our own jailers.
So today, let each of us realize that we have the keys to all limitations of thought or perception. Let us commit to unlocking the shackles of mental restraint by building the mental equivalents of freedom. When we can say that we can “do all things through Christ who strengthens us”, then we will break the shackles of self-limitation and fly above all forms of bondage.
Then we can soar in the garden God gave us, free, alive and filled with the unlimited potential of God’s children.
Soaring,
Z gardener
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