From my childhood I remember the princess singing in a children´s cartoon movie (the fairy tale story “The Tinder-Box” by Hans Christian Andersen), "I feel like the bird in a cage..." longing for the freedom waiting for her outside her rich palace.

A young girl just wrote something similar to me after having read my devotional "Are you a Free Bird?"  She often felt like being a bird in a cage, spiritually speaking.

But the truth is that as soon as Christ is ruled out, we are all in a spiritual cage.  To a child of God it shouldn´t be so, however the subtle snares of circumstances and unbelief are still lurking.  Our calling is to live in the freedom of Christ found in Him and in Him only.
My stay with the treatment centre is now (Febr. 29) over.  Many physical programs have treated our frail bodies.  It impressed me to be surrounded by patients who are not being spiritually treated but are confined to a spiritual cage with the TV at night as their only entertainment.
(What a privilege to share with them a trustworthy gospel testimony!)
The epistle to the Ephesians is a paradox, a blessed paradox of faith.  Paul is chained in a prison when he wrote that free message starting to remind us of our high position "in the heavenlies" in Christ Jesus, and so he opens the epistle with a song of praise.  "Blessed be God the Father of Jesus Christ..."

So the apostle was in a prison, but not in a cage.  He could still "breathe" in the blessings in Christ.  That is our privilege too being an anti-thesis to the boredom of TV and the world.

I like to watch the seagulls at the water side.  They let the wind do the work as they spread their wings and smoothly glide along.  They just cooperate with the wind.  We are invited to do that also.  I´m referring to the wind of the Spirit.

The life with Christ is not a law religion, but a "wind" religion - the blowing of His Spirit.
“We serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.”  Rom. 7:6

From my treatment centre, Febr. 27, 2012 – jn