ESCAPE ROOM August 2, 2020

I watched two movies dealing with rooms, one many years ago starring Jodie Foster, with the title ‘Panic Room’, and a few years ago, starring Brie Larson, simply titled, ‘Room’.  Both are really good movies, and both make one think hard about safety, and about freedom, because although in the first movie, the room was a place of safety, it was also a prison because one is literally hemmed in, while the antagonist is outside, while the second is a prison room, but the characters have enabled it so that even with all hardships, both she and her son were able to make their imaginations soar free in spite of being inside for many years, until the day they got their physical freedom from their abuser.

 

Sometimes, we feel this in life too, how with all the difficulties and challenges we face every day, it seems that we are being hemmed in, imprisoned in our circumstances (and with this pandemic, literally locked down, or if allowed to go out, with very limited freedom), that we think we need to escape.  Like the first movie, sometimes we think that we need to have a hiding place, a place that sustains us, protects us, and keeps us away from everything that makes life difficult and unbearable.  Sometimes too we feel like in the second movie, that the things that make life burdensome for us are in the very place we are imprisoned, and we want a means of escape.

 

However, in the Word we read today in the book of Psalms, chapter 32, the Psalmist stated why we need to have a hiding place, or an escape, should life prove difficult for us to bear:  because of our sins, because of problems and troubles that come up on us like floods of great waters, because of everything that ties us down and disables us from being all the best we can be according to GOD’s plan for our lives.  And we need Him as our means of escape, our Redeemer our Savior, in that He can forgive our sins, cover over them, and will not impute guilt on us or count our iniquities, when we acknowledge our sins to Him and ask for forgiveness.

 

And for this, the Psalmist stated in verses 6 and 7, “For this shall every one that is godly pray unto You in a time when You may be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come near unto him.  You are my hiding place; you shall preserve me from trouble; you shall compass me about with songs of deliverance. Selah.”

 

I learned a few years back that the ‘Selah’ in this passage signifies a change in tempo or mood, or tone, so that in the next passages we learn that it is not anymore the Psalmist speaking, but GOD who answered his prayer and supplication (verses 8 to 11): “I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you shall go: I will guide you with my eye.  Do not be as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto you.  Many sorrows shall be to the wicked: but he who trusts in the Lord, mercy shall compass him about.  Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, all you righteous: and shout with joy, all you that are upright in heart.”

 

When we trust GOD and surrender our lives to Him, asking forgiveness for all the wrong things we have done to offend Him and other people; He will hear and answer us; He will give us wisdom and understanding and lead us in the right path; He will protect us and have mercy on us, thereby keeping us from the sorrows of the wicked.  In the movies I saw, the survivors still had to overcome post-traumatic stress disorder, but if we in our lives trust GOD to give us freedom and deliverance, even PTSD is done away with, and we can spend the rest of our days not in sorrow but in gladness and rejoicing.  Our righteousness and uprightness will not be of our own efforts, but from His grace and salvation.  Let us take Him up on His offer then: more than an escape room, a hiding place, a shelter in the cleft of the rock.