Hi, this is Joni Eareckson Tada and welcome to Joni and Friends.
I remember shortly after I was released from the hospital, -- this was years ago -- I went to stay with my sister, JK, on the family farm. Things were still pretty shaky for me, personally. I was very thin; I was emotionally exhausted, and still struggling with being paralyzed. I was in bed one evening on the television I was watching "The Bird Man of Alcatraz". Remember that movie? It was a story about a prisoner (I think he was played by Burt Lancaster)… a prisoner serving a life sentence on the infamous Alcatraz Island where the hardest criminals were always sent to live out their days. This particular prisoner softened as he grew older and he developed a hobby of tending to the birds who would fly to rest and feed there by the steel bars of his open window. The birds became so friendly that the bird man (as this prisoner became known as)… the bird man of Alcatraz had tamed them, and even placed these birds in cages right there in his own prison cell.
Well, lying there in bed one night watching that movie, I'll never forget one particular scene: it’s near the end where Burt Lancaster, for some reason I can’t remember it exactly, he suddenly was forced to release his birds – I think he was told to do so by the warden. Anyway, I laid there and I watched this old prisoner as he clutched the bars of his cell window, watching his little bird friends fly away. I was there in bed staring at the screen, and I tell you, the look on his face conveyed all the horror of knowing you'll never be free, that your circumstances will never change, you'll always be confined. Lying there in bed, flat on my back, paralyzed, I mean I lost my breath. I began panicking. I screamed to my sister to quickly come and quick turn off the movie. I could NOT get my breath, I was gasping for air. JK had to quick come and sit me up in bed and press on my abdomen to help me breathe. I had never felt so claustrophobic, like I was being suffocated.
And to this day I remember that feeling, that experience of watching that movie “The Bird Man of Alcatraz” and the horror of being confined. To this day every time I'm in a tight, cramped space, with no windows... and I start to feel closed in and cut off from fresh air, it's like someone's holding an invisible pillow over my face. Believe me, I would not do well in a stuck elevator!
And I think this is why I love Isaiah 61:1 where it says, “He has sent me to ... proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.” Wow! You know that was the very first sermon Jesus preached, it was on this passage from Isaiah 61… I am so grateful sitting in this wheelchair, because from the very onset, Jesus was telling me He understands the claustrophobia of captivity -- and not only my physical confinement... but much more importantly, the horror of spiritual claustrophobia when we feel imprisoned by sin of our own making. Friend, I don’t know what may be causing claustrophobia in your life today, but may it not be sin. May you find freedom if you’re a captive and release from your darkness for God wants to set the prisoners free.
Friend drop me a line on Joni’s Corner at joniandfriends.org or you can always contact us at P.O. Box 3333, Agoura Hills, California 91376.
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