Scriptures of Hope ~ Captivity

The walls of the pit were sheer with nothing to cling to. The few stray roots snaking out of the clay broke off into my hand when I grabbed them in my desperation to escape. Night was closing in as hope seeped from my heart like the underground spring feeding the clay squishing between my toes.

Fear gripped me.

Hopelessness taunted and jeered at me.

I leaned against the cold confines with - as we used to say - my back against the wall. No where to go. Caught between a rock and a hard place. 

I tossed my head back and looked up. The setting sun, peering through the small opening of my captivity, reflected in the glistening tears escaping down my cheeks. Amethyst sky with apricot ribbons appeared as a stained glass window adorning the edge of heaven. I watched as the clouds parted and a ball of flame lit up the heavens.

"Behold Me," the God of Angel Armies said. "Behold Me, for I AM your Deliverer, your Refuge and the Rock of your salvation."

I gasped. My eyelids flew open and I sat straight up in the bed, pulling Grandma's quilt up under my chin. My hands trembled with the realization that I had been reducing the Lord of Heaven to the confines of my captivity and now I stood face to face before Him. Rather than seeing the power of His majesty, I allowed my circumstances to cast me into a horrible pit that reduced Him to a small stained glass window framed with gnarly underbrush.

I was looking at Him through my circumstances rather than looking at my circumstances through Him, in Him, with Him.

There's a huge difference.

The psalmist said, 

"I waited patiently for the Lord; 

And He inclined to me, and heard my cry. 

He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, 

and set my feet upon a rock, and established my steps. 

He has put a new song in my mouth - Praise to our God..." 

~ Psalm 40:1-3a

In Him. That's where I long to be - surrounded and immersed in His Presence. From the place of the Rock that is higher than I, the troubling circumstances, the impossibilities, and the places of despair become very, very small. Their power is lost in the light of His love.

I'm learning that  "it is in Him that we live, and move, and have our being." * 

In Him.

Now, if I could only take that to heart...I enjoy looking through stained glass windows of amethyst skies and apricot ribbons.

*Acts 17:28



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