"and release from darkness for the prisoners..." (Isaiah 61:1)
One of my favourite films of all time is the 2000 Aardman animation classic ‘Chicken Run’. Chickens desperately trying to escape their pie-based fate on a farm that resembles a prisoner-of-war camp.
The tale of escape is as old as time itself. Other films like The Shawshank Redemption and The Great Escape manage to connect with us on a deeply human level.
The captives achieving liberation from entrapment reminds us that we, the viewer, are lucky to be free. Or are we?
In the New Testament, Paul speaks at length about how people can be slaves to sin. Captured by the fallen world around us, unable to free ourselves from the actions, thoughts, words that seek to separate us from our eternal Father. Or, as Paul says, enslaved.
In many escape films, you will find a deliverer. The individual who seeks to free the collective. In Chicken Run, Rocky the Rooster arrives and gives the chickens a fantastical claim that he will be the one to lead them to freedom. If you want to know how this goes, I’ll leave you to watch the film…
We see our deliverer promised here in the back-end of verse one.
“He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted and to proclaim that captives will be released and prisoners will be freed."
Isaiah 61:1 NLT
The separation of Father from son or daughter is torn apart at the moment of Jesus’ death.
As the curtain in the temple separates, the opportunity for reconciliation to the Father becomes available to us.
If you’re anything like me, you still get things wrong. I still sin. But every morning, I can wake up, recognise and acknowledge the ways sin still manifests itself in my life, and then lift up my eyes to see a Saviour who sets me free.
We invite you to join us as we journey slowly and prayerfully through Isaiah 61 - line by line over forty days.
