Partying in the Prison!

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We had a party in the prison today. (I LOVE those girls!) We were celebrating a course we had just completed and readying ourselves to get started on a new one.

I told them that instead of us bringing food in to celebrate that I wish we could take them out to Red Lobster or somewhere instead... promising, of course, to the warden that, "We'd bring them all right back." Oh, wouldn't that be fun!!! They laughed at the picture. Most agreed with the want-to. And another (one of my favorites) said, "I don't know. It'd be bitter sweet. After we left and we were exposed to such freedom and indulgence... it'd be hard, almost cruel, to have to come back."

The truth of her statement both stunned and saddened me. I saw her point. And I knew she was right.

My youngest daughter came home from shopping the other day with a bird! She'd gone and bought herself a Parakeet. It was totally unthoughtout and unplanned. A non-restrained impulse of some crazy moment. And though she's such a pretty bird, her clipped-wings and caged imprisonment horrifies me! How cruel it seems to take such a thing of beauty and set it up to such cruelty for a dollar, to make a buck. Watching the bird took my mind back to the girls.... who once sold themselves for "a buck" (or something as frivolous), and their wings have been clipped... and satan first, then man, has caged them because of what they'd sold themselves to or to do. I have such a want to open the cage, to push them out, to give them their freedom, and for them to be able to fly again!

And then I thought.... that's what Christ wants! That's why Jesus came! He hates and is grieved and full of sorrow at our imprisonment. He came to set the captives free! He died in their place, so they could be freed to fly again! Soaring like on the wings of an eagle!!!... Now that's the kind of Savior I serve!

"But those that wait upon the LORD SHALL renew their strength; THEY SHALL mount up with wings as eagles..." ~ Isa 40:31.

AMP, "But those who wait for the Lord [who expect, look for, and hope in Him] SHALL change and renew their strength and power; THEY SHALL lift their wings and mount up [close to God] as eagles..."

NIV, "But those who hope in the LORD WILL renew their strength. THEY WILL soar on wings like eagles...".... THEY WILL..... THEY WILL!!!... THEY WILL soar on wings like eagles!
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