Bondage, Real or Imagined
Harry Houdini, the famed escape artist from a few years back, issued a challenge wherever he went. He could be locked in any jail cell in the country, he claimed, and set himself free in short order. Always he kept his promise, but one time something went wrong. Houdini entered the jail in his street clothes; they heavy, metal doors clanged shut behind him. He took from his belt a concealed piece of metal, strong and flexible. He set to work immediately, but something seemed to be unusual about this lock. For thirty minutes he worked and got nowhere. An hour passed, and still he had not opened the door. By now he was bathed in sweat and panting in exasperation, but he still could not pick the lock. Finally, after laboring for two hours, Harry Houdini collapsed in frustration and failure against the door he could not unlock. But when he fell against the door, it swung open! It had never been locked at all! But in his mind, it was locked, and that was all it took to keep him from opening the door and walking out of the jail cell. –Zig Ziglar
The Masada Mentality
Archibald Rutledge tells the story that as a young boy he was always catching and caging wild things. He particularly loved the sound of the mockingbird, so he decided to catch one and keep it so he could hear it sing any time.
He found a very young mockingbird and placed it in a cage outside his home. On the second day, he saw a mother bird fly to the cage and feed the young bird through the bars. This pleased young Archibald. But then the following morning, he found the little bird was dead.
Later, young Archibald talking to the renowned ornithologist, Arthur Wayne, who told him, “A mother mockingbird, finding her young in a cage, will sometimes take it poisonous berries. She evidently thinks it better for one she loves to die rather than live in captivity.”
Symbols of Slavery
In 1838, after a strong emancipation movement among blacks, slavery was abolished in Jamaica, to take effect on August 1. On the evening of the last day in July, a large company of former slaves gathered on the beach for a solemn, yet joyous, occasion. A large mahogany coffin had been constructed and placed on the sand next to an accommodating hole in the beach. All evening, the soon-to-be-emancipated slaves placed, with some ceremony, symbols of their enslavement. There were chains, leg-irons, whips, padlocks, and other similar symbols of slavery. A few minutes before midnight came, the box was lowered into the hole in the beach. Pushing sand into the hole to cover the coffin, all joined their voices with one accord to sing: “Praise God from Whom all blessings flow, praise Him all creatures here below, praise Him above ye heavenly host, praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.” They were free from their slavery. How much they were like Christians, who, through Christ’s death are free from their slavery to sin. And how like them are Christians, who in heaven shall be free from the very reminder and presence of sin.