Harry Houdini!  How does the great escape artist extricate himself from the seemingly unthinkable?  Is there one greater than Houdini?  Guess who.  Looking back, I can you see how God has gotten me out of impassible and impossible messes.  Some of my own making.  Other times the finger points somewhere else. 

Yet I can’t remember when life doesn’t bring more blessings than regrets and failure.  That Romans 8:28 still runs a booming and profitable business.  That Jesus continues to float my boat, making delicious lemonade out of the spent, rotten ones I hand over to Him.

Sadly, we’ve known others who get handcuffed in their own bitterness.  Shackled into righting some wrong in their own ways.  Trying to prove a point, always grasping to come out on top.  Broadcasting how clever they are while blaming everyone else.  Driven more by revenge than forgiveness and mercy.  Cooped up, cornered by sin’s stubbornness.  Thinking of someone?  Looking in the mirror?

Is God this way?  Hardly.  Jesus lives to forgive.  We can count on Him… always.  No need to fight our own battles…in our own strength…all alone.  He’s way ahead of us.  If only I’d rely on Him, His ways in His timing.  Watch Him handle my life’s muddy jumbles.  Why not?  What’s to lose?

Unfortunately, I’m hard-headed.  Not an easy sell.  Quickly tinkering with my little grey cells instead of falling on my knees (so to speak, at my age!) before God.  Thinking twisted thoughts rather than letting the Bible clear up my muddled mind and emotions.  God’s Word does that.  Even cuts through like a skilled surgeon’s knife bringing health and healing (Heb. 4:12).  Time to face heaven’s Sawbones?  

King David knows his share of troubles.  Many of his own making.  Like me.  Anyone else you can think of?  Still gawking in that same old mirror?  Psalm 68: 19-20–‘Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears us up;  God is our salvation.  Our God is a God of salvation, and to God, the Lord, belong deliverances from death.’  The Hebrew word ‘salvation’ means ‘escape’. 

Like Houdini?  No, from One far greater.  The Lord loosens the manacles of sin, unforgiveness, pride, you name it.  In this life, escape from what ties us up is often short-lived and incomplete.  But in heaven, well, that’s a different story.  For another time.  In another place. 

‘For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face’ (1 Cor. 13:12).  

Lord Jesus, thank you for helping us to live with more victories than failures.  For your sake.  Amen.