"Every day is like a birthday for me. I don't have a dollar in my pocket but look at me. Working, trying to enjoy life."
Those words are from one of two convicts recently set free from an American prison where they spent more than 20 years for a crime they didn't commit. I wonder whether these words resonate with our everyday experience of joy – the same joy we felt the day Jesus set us free?
This is a true story I read in July 2017, prompting me to write this devotional.
It all began when a man was shot in the leg by members of a rival gang and decided to take revenge by shooting indiscriminately at a crowd at a party he knew was hosted by members of the rival gang. A person was killed and several others injured. For some reason two innocent men were sent to prison for life, despite glaring evidence that they had not done it.
Every day, for the 20 years they were in jail, the men wrote letters to prominent people in America, including Oprah and President Obama, seeking influence for their release and justice to be done. In the meantime, one man's father died of heart failure and his mother suffered a major stroke. The other man's widowed mother had to work 3 jobs to raise money to pay lawyers, and later fell into depression as the two men continued to lose appeals.
Over the entire period, faith in God kept the two men afloat. As they held tightly to their faith, God moved supernaturally for their rescue through some concerned lawyers, law students and the Innocent Project charity. In the final moments of their release and with three of the key witnesses dead during the 20 year period, the actual killer was due for a lethal injection for killing another person in a few months.
Wanting to make things right with his God, the real killer finally broke silence and confessed that he was the one guilty of killing the other person. Although he had been picked up by the police and questioned over the issue soon after the crime, the police let him loose though they had caught him in possession of the weapon used.
That reminds me of how Jesus saved us from eternal death. Though He was innocent, He gave Himself up on the Cross that we might live for ever. If the real killer had not chosen to confess the truth, the two men would have died.
Friends, let us not take our salvation and the death of Christ in vain.
"You're my son, and today is your birthday".
Psalm 2: 7-9 [MSG] Let's live life every day as if it's our birthday celebration because God has set us free from eternal death!
You can read the detailed story of the two men in this
link Farai Mutsambiwa
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