More Than A Game
As a child we used to play a game called hide and seek. We would usually designate a particular tree as “home base”. One person would be the seeker whose task was to go look for the other children who had gone off to hide. The seeker, having found one of the hiding children would then race back to home base, touch the tree and say the child’s name. The child who had been found would also run back to home base, hoping to get there first, otherwise he was “put in jail”. The goal was to get all the children in jail. If by chance one of the children beat the seeker to the tree he could set all the captives free. Hide and seek was a child’s game. Only a game.
Life isn’t a game. But, like that childhood game, life has prisons and captives. There are prisons that restrict us, and hold us captive. There are prisons of our own making. When we look for purpose in some form of pleasure or in a drug we create a prison that confines, restricts and sometimes suffocates us. We can make prisons of things, behaviors, and habits or even out of relationships. People can become a source of captivity.
Jesus had an encounter with a woman from Samaria. He met her at the town well and asked her for a drink of water. While conversing with the woman Jesus said, “I can give you living water.” The woman requested some of this living water so she would not have to draw water from the well ever again. Jesus replied, “I am the living water, whoever drinks of the water I give will never thirst again.”
Jesus then, having gotten her attention told her about her history of having had 5 husbands and now she lived with a man who was not her husband. He was pointing out her prison. She was a prisoner to relationships. She went from one man to another seeking something meaningful. But she never found it. Her thirst for purpose was never quenched. She was bound, held captive, never being able to find “home base”, that place of fulfillment and purpose. Then she met Jesus, he set her free. Jesus quenched her thirst for meaning.
Jesus had made many promises to those who by faith embrace him as Lord and Savior. He promises freedom from sin, rest for our weary soul, he will lift our burdens, provide us a place in heaven with God himself. In him you will find everlasting purpose, the purpose of which you were made in God’s image. Hope will spring up within like a fountain.
When Jesus began his ministry, he was in the synagogue, and he said, “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news and to set the captives free…” (Luke 4:18, 19). His mission was to set prisoners free. In Jesus you can have a peace and freedom that passes all understanding. He breaks prison bars that confine us and keep us thirsting for that which only makes us thirstier. Jesus still promises freedom. It’s yours for the asking. Thanks for listening.