In the past two years, many have felt restrained and confined while living under this still present dark cloud of COVID. Perhaps it’s been through the:
·
Social distancing and the
unintended consequences it’s had on relationships;
·
Shelter at home orders or
the lockdowns that ended up isolating people;
·
Requirements of wearing face
coverings that diminished our ability to communicate;
·
Vaccination mandates that
have put some at risk of losing employment.
Restrained and confined, it sounds like and actually
fits the definition for the word “prisoner”.
This word “prisoner” appears in Zechariah 9:12 (ESV). Some versions have translated the word as “captives” or “exiles” or even “hostages”. None particularly sound like something that I would want to be!
However, if you look at the verse, and this is where you will find the word used in a surprisingly counter-intuitive way, it refers to a prisoner of hope: “Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double.”
Those who are restrained and confined as prisoners normally do not experience a whole lot of hope. In fact, their situation is often quite the opposite, that of hopelessness. So what is going on here?
Zechariah was a prophet to
It’s likely a good interpretation that these prisoners of hope were prisoners
with hope. After all, God had told them He was returning
them to a stronghold where they would experience a double fold restoration.
But I still find the words “prisoners of
hope” quite intriguing. I’m wondering if
it is possible to feel so restrained and constrained by hope that one feels locked
up into it and a captive of it. If so,
could it also mean that when one is held in this mighty stronghold of hope that
discouragement and despair cannot even enter in?
I do know that the opposite has been true for me. At times, instead of being a prisoner of hope, I’ve been a prisoner of
discouragement and despair!
Oh, may it be that as I put my hope in Christ, I can become a prisoner of
hope. And, may it be that I am so hemmed in by hope that
when despair and discouragement come to drag me away, they can’t even penetrate the
hope that so tightly surrounds me!
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