The House Arrest
Isaiah 61:1 - The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
Another week goes by and another week of living paycheck to paycheck. A man can’t get a break like this and everything is getting more and more expensive. Payday has arrived and luckily it falls on the day when there’s a big lottery jackpot. The deposit is in the bank, cash in hand, and then another lottery ticket bought. He never wins the lottery other than some petty cash, but he sees the pictures of happy jackpot winners on the lottery website. Maybe he will make that life changing win one day. Maybe today will be his lucky day.
He checks the numbers and sure enough it is his lucky day. He gets a nice payout from this one. Not enough to change his lot in life. Not enough to quit a job over. Not enough to go on a spending spree, but enough to gamble a little bit higher stakes. He’s riding out the dopamine rush and headed to the casino on a Saturday night. He can test out his skill to rake in some real cash. He plans to have a good time, deluding himself with gulps of bad judgment and overconfidence. With a bit of luck, he will be rich after this night.
What he fails to realize is that he does not have to seek riches by chance; he has access to the greatest wealth in human history. But it’s not of this world. However, he’s not looking for that right now. His vision has been obscured to only look for worth in material things. He would rather have the perishable wealth that can be cashed in for decaying possessions, fleeting comforts, and every sinful passion he could dream of.
He pulls the levers of hope, but emptiness pours out. He rolls the dice of chance, but it’s already loaded against him. He sits at the table and hits for a higher number, but the next unpulled card is already going to make him go bust.
He is deceived. He forgets the house always wins. He smells the perfumes, the money, and his imagination is tantalized by the opportunities. The endless noise in his ears imply others are winning around him. His eyes gorge on the advertisements of supposed winners and make him greedy for more. Somehow… he fails to understand how much of this place is just an illusion, a dream.
With the time of his life, he earns money which he inserts into the machine while the corpulent god of avarice laughs and takes his life from him. He’s bought in. With both hands, he slides his stack across the table to raise the bet only to get handcuffed by the avaricious passion. He is cuffed to the table to stay in the distracting fantasy, to play the game, and is promised wealth beyond his wildest dreams. The man is imprisoned in an endless desire for more of something that can never satiate what his soul really longs for... freedom.
Hours fade into days, days into months, and months into years. It’s the same old game with the same old rush of excitement, the frustration of losing, and another winning hook to keep him spending a little bit more money, a little bit more time, a little bit more of his life. There are no clocks on the walls here. There are no clear signs of how to leave. He reflects on the countless weekends spent here over the years and he realizes that he's straight flushed away his life. He is a prisoner of sin.
The house arrest has made him sick to his soul. He wants to be healed, but doesn’t know what is the cure. He wants to escape, but he can’t find the way out of this maze. He wants to be free, but he’s paralyzed by this wretched greed. He lowers his head, his tears fall onto the spinning wheel, the sounds fade, the colors blur, and the shuffling stops.
A new Man not of this place, not entrapped, not enslaved, but wholly free, sits beside him at the table and looks into his eyes with compassion and understanding. The imprisoned man doesn’t know how to ask the question, but his heart is internally crying out. For some inexplicable reason, it seems that this new Man knows the groans of his soul and the words he’s struggling to find. So the new Man asks the imprisoned man,
“Do you want to be healed?”
“Sir, I would leave this place, but my soul is paralyzed by this greed and I have no one to help me.”
The new Man pauses and the silence fills the place. There are no distractions between them. Everything folds away and the imprisoned man humbly longs for nothing more than to be healed, to be set free, to be rid of these passions by the One who is wholly free of them. Then the new Man says,
“Stand up, get your coat, and leave this place.”
The man who had been cuffed by greed found that he now had the strength to stand up and pull himself free with the help of this new Man. He is finally unchained from this nightmare.
With the first taste of victory over what has so long controlled his life, his thoughts, his desires, his ambitions, he sheds tears of joy. He clearly sees that the new Man before him is the Way out of this place. He is the Life-giving Physician he’s been looking for. The man’s soul never found a chip of truth in this place, but this God-Man, this new Adam… He is the Christ, He is the Truth. Christ leads him to the exit and as they walk into the light, the man knows his journey to true freedom is only the beginning… a new beginning.