The Wind Beneath My Wing

Full Moon Over the Applachian Mountains

Many years ago at a state prison just outside of Huntsville, Texas they were adding a new addition on to the prison.  This was back before the days before we had over one hundred prisons.  Matter of fact, Texas had just a handful at the time.

Things were very different then, but guarding prisoners was much the same as today.  At this particular prison they were constructing a new cell block.  It was on the west side of the main prison.  This particular prison had one nine foot high chain link fence with barbed wire on top.  There was an immaculate yard that was constantly groomed.  Located  on and around the yard were beautiful flower beds with every kind of flower imaginable.  These beds were perfectly maintained. Actually, all over the prison grounds were beautiful flower beds.  They lined the roads and were even around the employee houses.

Every so many yards along the giant link fence were towers or pickets as they were called in those days.   In the pickets there was a guard who was heavily armed.  His arsenal may consist of rifles, shotguns, pistols and even a machine gun.   There were also gates.  There was a front gate and a back gate in those days.  At the gates people were screened for entrance and to exit.  You would not want the wrong people going either way out of these gates, especially those dressed in white.  You would not want someone from inside escaping into the free world as the prisoners called it.

The guard quickly came out to see just what was so urgent that the man on the picket wanted to show him.  The guard on the picket pointed out the mud chimney way across the yard and the mockingbird.  He told him what the mockingbird’s peculiar behavior was and requested that he walk over and look down in the hole and  see what the bird was looking at.  The guard hesitated in disbelief at his request as if to say, “you have got to be kidding”, then preceeded with haste across the yard.

Upon arriving at the small mud chimney he knelt down and looked.  To his amazement he did not see the darkness that he fully expected.  What he saw was a light.  Yes, the men in white were tunneling out.  They had chiseled through several inches of concrete floor into the earth below.  They had set up lights and communications and all of the dirt had been carefully flushed down the commodes  in the cell block.  They were almost to the fence ………..just a few feet from freedom.

A mockingbird had given their secret away.  As these desperate men were just a few feet from the door to certain freedom I am reminded about true freedom.  About a door and a way to which was not designed  by human hands and was not constructed in secrecy.  It is a portal wide enough that all men, women and children can go through and it has a simple key.

Jesus said in Revelations 3:20 “Behold I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with Me.”  He will show you not only to the door to freedom, but eternal life.

There are many people in the world that are trying to find the way  to freedom.  The next time you see someone trying to tunnel out,  show them the door………….to Jesus.

Steve