Caged

A man called home to talk to his wife; and got a serenade. It was not from her; it was from a canary. They had just gotten the canary a couple weeks before, and man, did he sing up a storm! The whole time he was talking on the phone to his wife, the Yellow Bird Symphony was going on in the background. It was hard to hear that canary sing and stay gloomy for long! Every night they would put this cloth over the cage and all the singing stopped. The next morning, when they went into the living room, there was not a sound coming from under that cloth. Had something happened to him? No. As soon as that cover came off, the canary started jumping all over the cage and singing his wake-up song.
Each day in the life of that canary, it's as if life begins when the cover comes off the cage. In a way, it's like that for you and I. Your cage might be your painful memories, a broken heart or a broken dream. Maybe you're caged in by an addiction or a habit, or some anger that's eating you up on the inside. For some of us, it's depression, maybe even suicidal thoughts. That's the stuff that's held us in. There's a cover on that cage, whatever it is. It's dark in there, and maybe there's nothing to sing about.
There's some good news for you from the Word of God, Psalms 40:1 King David said, “I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God:" Now David's imagery is a little different, but in canary terms, the cover came off his dark cage and gave him a reason to sing!
The same Lord, who did that for King David years ago, wants to do that for you right now. In fact, that is exactly why Jesus Christ came. He said, Luke 14:1 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
Just like the little bird in the dark world that he cannot change, until someone bigger and more powerful comes along to remove the cover and release him from the darkness.
The Savior came to do that for you. He literally came to die for our darkness and our sin; to remove the death sentence that you and I have on our head because of our sin. And when you tell Jesus you are trusting Him completely for a relationship with God, the cover comes off! All the guilt; all the shame of the past is forgiven. So many people have said right after they've trusted Christ, "I feel like a hundred pounds has just been lifted off my shoulders." And the pain is suddenly lightened because God Himself has picked it up, the dark feelings and the power that may have kept that canary had no choice about when the cover came off his cage, but we do. The release from darkness comes when you open your heart to Jesus Christ; which could be this very day. If you're tired of the darkness, if you're ready to let Jesus come into your heart, let me encourage you to tell Him that today, "Jesus, I will run my life no more; you will from now on. I was made by you. I was made for you. You gave your life for my sin. I am yours."