The report of three women found alive in Cleveland, Ohio after they went missing about a decade ago is the kind of news we could live for. While much information isn’t yet available, it appears that all three were abducted in separate incidents and held captive, for 10 years, in a normal looking home with neighbors completely unaware of their plight.
As I think about the joy and sweet taste of freedom that these women and their families are experiencing today, the story keeps getting bigger. Am trying to imagine how many around us are living in a silent captivity created by the cruelty of a parent, spouse, stranger, or worse.
The worse is the real story.
On the surface, much of our human captivity appears to be the unintended results of our own choices. Yet the deeper explanation is of an enemy who has deceived us, and who is responsible for holding us in an imposed confinement that we don’t begin to understand until Christ sets us free.
Without this bigger picture, we are probably inclined to be critical of and uncaring for those who seem to be responsible for their own misery. Yet, even while acknowledging that all of us are accountable to the Lord for our own choices, who can deny that there is a real self-absorbed sadist, of the most extreme kind, who under the cover of invisibility holds us captive in our own sins…
Maybe that’s why angels rejoice over such rescues– while demons remain convinced that such mercy isn’t deserved.
(Isa 61:1)
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