Near our home in the Channel Islands there is a herd of traditional Guernsey cattle. They are large, intelligent, beautiful creatures who lead the world in the production of golden, creamy milk. Having said that, I would not want to be confronted by a stampeding group of them in a country lane and so I 'm grateful to the microscopic strand of wire that effectively keeps them in the field. Attached to a battery this flimsy barrier is effective because these huge beasts are prisoners of their painful memories. 'Once bitten twice shy' means that they learned very early on not to push past these boundaries. So effective is this that even if the battery was disconnected for long periods, the cattle would still stay in place. The sting of past pain is sufficient to prevent them from going free.
Many of us have been stung in the past and are left as prisoners of pain today. Some might say that we have become mature and discerning by our brushes with pain, but it is hard not to feel like a prisoner when your life is curtailed by things you cannot do and places you cannot go due to the pain or other reminder of life-limiting experience. But with God's help even those of us held captive by pain can become prisoners of hope!
I was, therefore, so helped and challenged this morning by my reading of that Old Testament prophecy and especially the second part of the verse. "Return to your fortress, O prisoners of hope; even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you". It appears then that God is planning to restore to his people that which they have lost while prisoners of anything less than hope. This is reminiscent of another passage where God promises to restore to us "the years that the locusts have eaten" (Joel 2:25). Now that is good news!
So - what kind of prisoner are you?
