The Trapped Pigeon
Last week when a friend of ours went into the church building, he heard a noise from the washroom area. On opening the door, he realized a pigeon had crawled in the air vent pipe and was now trapped inside. There was a window in the washroom and the bird kept throwing itself at the window on the hopes of getting outside. Other birds were flying around in his line of vision and he wanted to join them but kept hitting himself against the window pane and of course could not get out.
Our friend decided to leave the door open to try and allow the pigeon to fly through, but there was no way it was coming out into the room where he was. And so the confused bird kept trying to fly through the window pane. Eventually, our friend hid himself and after a while the pigeon decided it was safe to leave and so he did, as quickly as he could! But the mess he left behind was something awful.
There was not only pigeon droppings everywhere but feathers also, as in panic he had flown around and hit repeatedly against things. Our friend spent a good few hours cleaning up after the pigeon and as he was doing so began to see the parallel between our behavior and that of the pigeon.
God has provided a big area for each of us, where we are free to move around and be happy. Yet it is so often the cramped, difficult things that attract us. The things we are not allowed for our own good! We end up costing ourselves precious time and alienating ourselves from others who are believers. We lose so much joy because we do not want Christ”s way out of a problem. Especially, if it means we may have to ask someone”s forgiveness or maybe even forgive what someone has done to us. We would rather beat ourselves up than get to the root of the problem and return to the joy of the Lord.
Then we look back on the life we had before. We see others enjoying these freedoms and we are stuck and can”t go anywhere. We have caused a prison for ourselves and there seems to be no way of escape. The pane of glass lets us see through to the outside, but no matter how hard we bang our heads we remain imprisoned of our own doing.
Even although we may have learned there is Someone, who will release us and allow us our freedom, we will not go that way. Fear and rebellion makes us want to do it our own way! Yet the offer of freedom is staring us in the face. And while we are trying to free ourselves, what are we actually doing? Making a huge mess of everything we try, and leaving that mess for others to try to clean up for us.
If you don”t already know Jesus as your Saviour, He is offering you the freedom of sins forgiven and an eternal home in Heaven. If you are His child, but find yourself trapped again in sin and have lost the freedom you had in Christ, return to Him, He will allow you to be free again and will even help you clear up the mess! John 8: 36, “If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.”
If you are a Christian keep witnessing, keep showing those trapped in sin that there is a way out and He will bless you for it. Ask Him for opportunities to serve in this way!