The four walls of a sickroom can be so confining, even if we’re only stuck there for a short time.
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Whether in the hospital or at home, we long to escape those suffocating walls.
At such times we may be tempted to cry out as did Jeremiah in our verse for today or as did Job, who groaned, “Why is life given to a man…whom God has hedged in?” (Job 3:23).
But it’s God’s hedge and his walls. Only when we view our restricting circumstances as being placed there by God can we find courage to face the wall or hedge. That’s what Madame Guyon, a French noblewoman who was confined to a dungeon for ten years, managed to do. She penned these thoughts:
A little bird I am shut from the fields of air; And in my cage I sit and sing to him who placed me there.
Well pleased a prisoner to be, because my God it pleases thee. Naught have I else to do, I sing the whole day long,
And he whom I most love to please doth listen to my song. He caught and bound my wandering wing, but still he bends to hear me sing.
My cage confines me round; abroad I cannot fly; But though my wing is closely bound, my heart’s at liberty;
My prison walls cannot control the flight, the freedom of the soul.
The hedge cut off Madam Guyon from the world and confined her on every side. But even a high hedge cannot shut out your view of the sky or prevent your soul from looking up into God’s face. Because there is so little else to see when you are hedged in, you view God more clearly than those who move about unconfined. With a hedge around you, the only way “out” is up!
You CAN read the Bible through in a year. Start today!
Mon: Ephesians 4:17- 6:24, John 2:12-25, Ps 89: 1-14,
Tues: 2 Samuel 1:1-3:21, John 3:1-21, Psalm 89:15-37,
Wed: 2 Samuel 3:22-7:17, John 3:22-36, Ps 89:38-52,
Thurs: 2 Samuel 7:18-11:27, John 4:1-12, Psalm 100,
Fri: 2 Samuel 12:1-14:20, John 4:13-26, Psalm 32,
Sat: 2 Sam 14:21-17:13, John4:27-38, Ps 87, Pro 241-4
Sun: Matthew 21:18-22, Matthew 8:5-13, Mark 6:1-6
He has weighed me down with chains.”
Lamentations 3:7