The Bust Out

Sometimes there are movies that are so analogous to your own life that they move you to tears and rip your heart wide open...while mending it all at the same time. "The Hurricane" with Denzel Washington did just that as I grasped the deep and powerful message within the true story depicted in the movie. Everyone needs to see this movie, it's more than a story about injustice, it's about what happens within a person when they transcend it. And that's what a life of faith is all about.

I couldn't help but reflect upon my own life as I watched the pain that consumed an innocent man as he spent nearly 20 years behind prison bars. I've been behind prison bars, not literal ones. I'm guessing you're within prison walls too, or you've been so in the past, they're just walls no one can see. You might be imprisoned by fears, doubt, addictions, sin, or the sins of others...they may not be literal walls, but they're just as real. And the only thing that will bust you out is the love of God.

"Hate put me in prison. Love's gonna bust me out." ~Rubin "Hurricane" Carter

The thing is...when you're in a prison that has no visible walls, it's easy to give into what binds you up. But Rubin "Hurricane" Carter reminds us of what we need to remember in our faith:

"It's very important to transcend places that hold us."

And what we find, as we take a look at our lives and the bars we daily sit behind, is that our prison walls are often "built upon a foundations of lies." We give up and give in to our circumstances instead of transcending them. And it's only the Word of God, given to us out of His love, that will bust us out. Because when we're asked why we believe, it's His Promises that enable us to believe even without the fullest extent of proof. Faith goes beyond that. When Rubin "Hurricane" Carter asked Lesra why he "believed" him, without proof, he replied, "I just know." And that's what our faith must live on, the fact that we just "know." We know truth, so we can fully trust God, even while we're behind bars. Even when our heart is breaking and injustice reigns.

Rubin "Hurricane" Carter faced judgement when he was behind bars and when he was on the other side of them. We all will face that judgment by others. God busts us out, and others want to judge how, when, why and where He did it. People "think" they know what you're living/lived through and take it upon themselves to judge your guilt or innocence. They choose to play God in an attempt, whether consciously or not, to throw you back into prison. Yet, what they don't realize is that something happens within the soul, when you're suffering through your own personal hell, something that transcends even the harshest judgment:

 

I reflect on Mr. Carter's words so powerfully spoken as he sat imprisoned, an innocent man:

"I will bend time to my own clock. When the prison is awake, I will sleep. When they sleep, I will wake. I will live neither in their cell, nor in my own heart, only in my mind and my spirit."

It was nearly nineteen years, only I didn't recognize my jail walls until only ten years ago. And then the reality of my prison taught me to trust in the LOVE that would bust me out...God's love. I learned to "bend time to my own clock"...I didn't live in the cell that existed in my situation, nor in my own heart, I transcended by devoting myself to Christ in my mind and spirit. You can too. Whatever walls surround you, God's love can bust you out. And He will do it in the most unexpected way...as "The Hurricane" discovered, it was writing his story that set him free and helped him to transcend the place that held him. Through the years, I found God leading me to write, even as I sat for years, empty, behind the prison walls that were the my circumstances in life. It was God's way of setting me free, even as chains bound me. And His glory that is being daily revealed, as my ashes are made into beauty, is breathtaking. I daily fall to my knees in a silence that consumes my spirit and floods my soul.

Whatever you're going through right now, it may not be just; in fact, your circumstances may even seem far beyond redemption, but they are not. Whatever has caused you to be imprisoned by the walls that surround you, know that it's God's love that will bust you out!

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