The Great Escape!

You know, I sometimes sit up nights listening to the rattling coming from the hamster's cage and wonder what drives that beast. She has this overwhelming need to escape from her cage, and she's terribly noisy about it.

She has figured out how to remove the covers from the "toob" connectors, and how to jimmy her wheel off the cage...she has staged an all out war against her feeding dish in an attempt to create a hole big enough to escape through. Once I heard this horrible screeching sound and I thought sure she was being eaten by our cat only to discover she had gotten the lid off her "tower" just far enough to get her nose stuck!! Still...she doesn't learn and continues to eat plastic in hopes of someday finding a way out!

What I don't think she understands is that there is danger out there!! We have a dog who would gladly eat her in one gulp and a cat that would toy with her until she died of shock...not to mention things like the food disposal or the terrifying two year old! She is safe in her cage, she has food and water, she has her running wheel and plenty of things that AREN'T plastic to chew on...yet she persists in her neverending pursuit of freedom.

We are so like that aren't we? From the moment we can scoot across the floor the first things we head for are bright, shiny, and dangerous! My son, at the age of seven, is not happy unless he is climbing on our six foot brick wall or swinging by his knees from the top bar of the swingset!

We are like this spiritually as well. So often we spend our days, instead of pursuing God, pursuing escape. It's called justification. We want to waste time watching T.V. despite the fact there are thirty loads of laundry to be done. So we justify...I'm tired, I've worked hard today, I deserve this.

Sometimes it goes even farther...into internet chatrooms, or bars for "just one drink," or flirtatious relationships with a co-worker that isn't our spouse. It's that dance with danger, that relentless desire to escape.

What ever are we to do then, it seem this instinct is as built into our beings as it is into my hamster's...is there any hope??

As always, we must look to scripture...I love to look at the life of Paul. He was a leader amongst the Jews, and Jesus himself met him on the road to Damascus and confronted him. He must have been a pretty powerful man for our Lord to intervene in his life in quite so spectacular a way. Do you think that in some way Paul was trying to escape? Pushing himself to be the best of the best because deep down he knew he was persecuting The Best?

It is later in his life that we find that Paul has found the hope we seek. He says in Philippians 4:12 "I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want." That's it~!! The answer we seek for our desperate need to escape is to learn to be content! But HOW do we do that! I'm a concrete gal and I want a 12 step program, okay? The apostle Paul goes on to give us that answer as well, in the very next verse he writes..."I can do everything through Him who gives me strength."

The next time you find yourself justifying, looking for an escape from the stress of everyday life, chewing on plastic...remember what Paul found...it is contentment, not of our own strength, but the strength that comes as a gift from God that allows us to remain in the safety of His hand.