When I was 6 years old, visiting relatives in the Philippines one summer, I found myself trapped inside a small rental cabin behind my aunt’s home. My playmate at the time thought it would be funny to lock me inside from the outside and then run away when I wasn’t looking. Panicking, I climbed up onto a window sill and started banging my hands on the window pane until I got the attention of a passerby, who ran for help and got the key to the cabin. Freed from my prison, I cried with relief and joy. I also decided never to play with said-playmate again!
Have you ever felt —or are you currently feeling — trapped? Trapped in a death-dealing, toxic relationship? Trapped in a situation in which you feel powerless, without agency, to effect change? Trapped in habits, routines, and ways of thinking and reacting, that — while familiar — are no longer life-giving, and simply play out in the same tired way, over and over again, like a rerun of an old show that you’ve seen one too many times, already? Trapped in and trapped by an unjust, entrenched system?
In yesterday’s Wednesday morning bible study, David led us through a reading and discussion of the 12th chapter in the Book of Acts, when Peter is arrested and imprisoned by Herod, during the Feast of Unleavened Bread or Passover. Peter is then set free by “an angel of the Lord” as “light shone in the cell”, who instructs him to “Get up quickly” as the chains fall off Peter’s wrists (Acts 12:7). Our energized and energizing discussion covered rich territory and questions, including “What is an angel?” and how might “light” — as in the “light of truth” — be liberating?
For a few moments, my own imagination transported me away from our discussion in the Women’s Council Room, to a prison cell on Robben Island off Cape Town, South Africa, where Nelson Mandela spent much of his 27-year prison term. What greater reality did he encounter — what light and truth were revealed to him — inside the depths of his own soul and expanded consciousness, that empowered him to emerge from prison, after all those years, as a truly liberated human being, unshackled by hatred, anger and resentment?
How might you and I engage these ancient and modern stories of liberation and salvation, in our own lives, during this season of Advent? What light, what truth, what God-inspired-experience is breaking into the confines of our limited perception and reality, revealing something more, something greater, something holier and more whole?
Stay awake! Be alert! Pay attention!
Salvation is at hand.