Many of you are living inside walls that are so confining, such that you're convinced that you're stuck for a lifetime with no hope of a rescue. What are these walls? Sickness, depression, soured marriage, rebellious children, loneliness, excessive debt, career choice, family disputes, relative/friend losses, disability, old age, financial misfortunes, and the list goes on. At such times you may be tempted to cry out as did Jeremiah (Lamentations 3:7) or as did Job, who groaned, "Why is life given to a man...whom God has hedged in?" (Job 3:23). You long to escape these painful, suffocating walls. Only when you view your restricting circumstances as being placed there by our loving God can you find courage to face these walls head on. Becoming angry and critical will only solidify your oppression and thus lengthen your stay.
During World War II, a lady named Corrie Ten Boon from Holland, was captured and thrown into a German consecration camp, called Aushwitz. She relied on her faith in a loving God to rescue her from God's Hedge and His walls. God was faithful. Corrie was miraculously set free one day before she was due to die in the gas chamber. God then sent Corrie around the world to tell her story (made into a movie called "The Hiding Place"). Even a sweltering, high wall cannot prevent your soul from looking up into God's face. One can view God more clearly than those who move about unconfined. With a hedge around you, the only way "out" is UP.
Psalm 18:6 - "In my distress I called upon the Lord; to my God I cried for help. From his temple He heard my voice, and my cry to Him reached His ears".
2 Kings 20:5 - To Hezekiah's lenghty illness ..."I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears. Behold, I will heal you".
Mediate: My loving Father, help me to remember that hedges and walls protect as well as confine and that your good pleasure is to use whatever means necessary to turn my gaze toward you.
