WRITTEN BY TIM LABRECHE
There’s a website I’ll visit from time to time that showcases interesting stories and images. Some posts I have no interest in. Some are really intriguing to me. The other day, as I sat on our couch and was scrolling through, I saw a post titled “50 Incredible History Moments That Were Caught on Camera Decades Ago.” It caught my eye, so I opened the thread. There were some fascinating photos. One was from 1966 of the first woman who ran in the Boston Marathon. She snuck into the race because they believed that women were not physiologically able to endure a marathon at that time. (She finished in the top third of all runners!) Another image was of Jim Rice, who played for the Boston Red Sox. He was holding a severely injured boy who had been hit in the head with a foul ball. Realizing that it would take EMTs too long to arrive and cut through the crowd, he sprang from the dugout and scooped up the boy. He laid the boy gently on the dugout floor, where the Red Sox medical team began to treat him, saving his life.
As interesting as those stories are, and there were quite a few of them, one image in particular stuck out to me. It was taken in April of 1945 by Major Clarence Benjamin. It shows Jewish prisoners exiting a train and walking up a hill from a Nazi train intercepted by Allied Forces. This is when they learned that the train would not be heading to a concentration camp and they had been liberated. The moment they realized that they were no longer held captive, that a horrible death was not around the corner, and that their freedom had been guaranteed; they couldn’t hold in their emotions. They experienced unbelief, gratitude, and joy in the same breath.
Did you know that many of us live like we are being held captive? Maybe you continually hear in your head the malicious and degrading words you spoke when you lost control. Could the time you were unfaithful to your spouse be replaying repeatedly in your memories, even though forgiveness and healing have come in your marriage since then? What if you’ve cut somebody out of your life and hurt them incredibly because they believe something different than you, and you’ve come to realize the hurt you’ve caused?
We can all be held captive in many different ways. Those thoughts and memories keep playing over and over in our minds. So much so that we believe that there is no way God could ever love us, let alone prepare a place for us with Him in eternity. But that’s where our human stinkin’-thinkin’ comes into play. Our Savior approaches things differently. In Isaiah 55:8, God says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways.” In verses 6-7, right before that, God says:
“Seek the Lord while he may be found;
Call him while he is near.
Let the wicked one abandon his way
and the sinful one his thoughts;
Let him return to the Lord,
so he may have compassion on him,
and to our God, for he will freely forgive.”
We are to abandon our thoughts that God will never love us because our sin was so severe. All we need to do is let go, abandon those thoughts, and return to the Lord. He will not only have compassion for us but also unconditionally forgive us of the sin that separates us from Him.
That isn’t easy to believe and accept. God’s forgiveness and open arms are unconditional, and we can be set free. I also love Romans 8:1-4. It reads:
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do since it was weakened by the flesh, God did. He condemned sin in the flesh by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh as a sin offering in order that the law’s requirement would be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:1-4, CSB)
With everything you’ve done in your past, with all of the red in your ledger, don’t forget the sacrifice made for you on the cross. Yes, Christ died on that cross for all of humanity to allow us communion with God Almighty. But that one act liberated you from the train that meant certain death, too. I don’t know about you, but it also makes me experience joy, unbelief, and gratitude in the same breath.
