I am no art expert, but I as far as I know the great sculptor Michelangelo created a sculpture called The Prisoners.
That is not the name he gave it, but that is how it is known. It depicts a group of people who appear to be emerging from a block of granite but they are incomplete, captured and unable to be released.
I am no art expert, but I as far as I know the great sculptor Michelangelo created a sculpture called The Prisoners.
That is not the name he gave it, but that is how it is known. It depicts a group of people who appear to be emerging from a block of granite but they are incomplete, captured and unable to be released.
An important truth about the sculpture is this no one else has ever tried to finish it. Neither would you nor I, because only Michelangelo could possibly have done it.
This could be a very accurate description of us. We are incomplete. We are made in the image of God. No matter how distorted that image may be, we are nevertheless made in His image; we are of the ground and substance of God.
But we are prisoners and we need the Lord Jesus to come and finish the work and to set us free. So many of us are prisoners of our inhibitions, fears, uncertainties, and anxieties.
We find ourselves bound by the opinions of others and we put on a tough exterior in order to protect ourselves from being hurt.
But Jesus has the power to set us free and He does this when He breathes His Spirit into us. He frees us from our sense of heaviness and enables us to walk away from our granite existence to worship, to live and to share.
We are freed from our fear and empowered to serve boldly and to minister with gladness. We are freed from criticism so that we enjoy fellowship.
We are freed from fault-finding and enabled to accept the ministry of other people whom we know are like ourselves sinful and imperfect people, but nevertheless God’s agent. We are freed from all our heaviness to delight ourselves in Christ.
Rev Geoff Probert
Trinity Presbyterian Church
