Key to the Cage

Someone out there has a key to the cage I am trapped in. It is cold here. It is damp here. It is dark here. It hurts here, but it is not from the physical pain. The prison I am locked in is on an island. The island is isolated. I am the only one here. I am lonely.

I know one day someone special will come and put the key in the lock and let me out of this prison and take me away from this penal institution of doubt, fear, nothingness, and being alone.

I thought I had broken free but I was wrong. I was captured again and placed back in here by someone who I had given the power to do it. I let down the guard to my heart. My mind should never have wandered in her direction.

Someday, someone will bring me a key that will open the iron doors that hold me in. In the meantime, I sit here but my spirit flies free because someone took a cross-shaped key and opened a million other prisons for me when He carried that key up a hill called Calvary and opened the doors to my soul’s prison. I sit and listen to Him comfort me and keep me warm and free of fear and doubt.

Someday, someone special will bring me the key that will free me from my prison of physical loneliness, but Jesus makes sure my spirit is comforted and never lonely.

Belly of the Beast

I lie in bed, trying to sleep, but my mind is away from my body, in some cavernous casino in Las Vegas or Atlantic City or Biloxi, Mississippi, or off the coast of Florida on some cruise ship. Though the casino I am in is brightly lit, it is still dark, like the corners of my mind, which are old, and worn and faded, and tattered. As thoughts threaten to tear pages out of my book of memories, I stand in front of a slot machine and pull a lever.

Each time, I feed the belly of the beast coins, I hope for three sevens to come up, indicating I have won the jackpot, but with each pull, the beast gets fatter and I get broker.

The first pull brings up memories of a love that I wanted so bad to come true that I could taste it. I can still smell her perfume, and the smell of shampoo in her freshly washed hair, and the taste of her kiss that I never even knew. The sweetness of the imagined kiss is tainted with bitterness as vinegar and salt assail my taste buds.

The next pull brings up memories of past dreams; dreams of success and wealth. These dreams are cast upon the ashes of money that seemed to burn in my hands and of long forgotten stories and manuscripts that will never see the light of a bookstore.

I take one last pull on the lever of the slot machine. It takes me into a future; a future called loneliness where I have no one there to care for me. All my life, I have sought love and success, and it has managed to hide itself from me, hiding behind cracked doors, peeking out at me but not revealing itself to me.

I get out of bed. I can’t take the taunting of others winning jackpots as the machines whir and jingle and jangle. I bow my head and pray to the only solace I can find from failure. He is the One who promises me Hope for Today and a Future for tomorrow. He is Jesus Christ, my Savior, and my Redeemer. He is always there for me.

Written by Jacob Bembry, August 27, 2016

Forgotten

They sure were surprised when he walked in the church,
Sweat-soaked clothes, face covered in dirt,
He walked to the front and began to speak,
His words caused knuckles to dig into seats,
“I must have forgotten the lyrics to a thousand hymns,
“From ‘Old Rugged Cross’ to ‘Revive Us Again’,
“I’ve paid for drugs and left my kids without bread,
“Drunk so much liquor I really should be dead,
“I’ve chased loose women and I’ve lost at cards,
“I’ve hit rock bottom and kept falling, falling hard,
“I stand before the Lord and confess all my wrongs,
“Now before you judge me, consider your own songs,
“Many of you wear the name Christian but hide your sins,
“Such as the one popping prescription pills again,
“Over there’s a sister whose life is one hot mess,
“She’s cutting herself and shooting smack and meth,
“Then there’s the brother, always true with his tithe
“That’s been sleeping with another man’s wife,
“There are those among us who have killed the unborn,
“As well as those who are addicted to the drug porn,
“Then there are those who murder with their tongue,
“Their victims can be friends, enemies, old, young,
“It’s time we remove our mask, stop wearing a false facade
“And turn our hearts toward the face of God,
“He is all that counts when the counting is done,
“But it seems we have forgotten the Forgotten One.”

The Wedding

I rush around the huge room that I am staying in, in my stocking feet. I wear the black tuxedo, replete with the white shirt, cummerbund, and bow tie. I have splashed a little Nautica cologne on my face and on pulse points on my body. The search to find my shoes seems futile.

A familiar, gruff voice behind me suddenly startles me, when I hear, “You better hurry up. You would be late for your own funeral.”

I turn around and see my father standing in front of me, holding my shoes out for me.

I take the shoes, sit in a chair, and put them on over the silk argyle socks I wear.

“Daddy,” I say, “I can’t go through with this.”

“You have to,” my father answers. “It’s too late to back out now.”

I arise after putting on the shoes, and look at myself in the full length mirror that not only spans the height and depth of the huge closet, but also the width of it. Although I recognize the face and the body of the man standing in front of it as me, I don’t recognize the man in the mirror at all. I am a stranger to his fear and to his hesitation.

“But, Daddy, I don’t even know…” I begin.

My father tells me, “Boy, you better get out there and go do it.”

I walk from the room and then enter the sanctuary of a huge church, lit with sunlight, streaming in from the huge windows on the side and the bay windows at the front, which show the blue waters of an ocean.

As I stand there, I can hear the people sitting in the congregation talking, whispering in barely audible tones that only I can hear. They are all talking about me and their conversation smells of money like the clothing that the landed gentry are wearing.

“I have no idea why she chose to marry him,” one woman says, “surely, she could do better.”

Everyone seems to murmur their assent.

I realize as I begin to walk in, that I have not even seen my bride before, and don’t know who I am marrying or why I am marrying her. I realize that none of her friends, or family members, likes me. Does she even like me herself?

I start to turn around and walk back on, but my father urges me to “Go on, son. You can do it.”

I awaken with a start, realizing that I don’t have my father anymore, and that I don’t have a bride waiting at a church to marry me.

Sometimes, even dreams like this can fill me with terror, like the recurring dreams of being in high school and having to take an algebra test, or the one where I dream of getting on the school bus without my shoes and socks on.
I realize that they are just dreams and nothing to be afraid of because God has not given me a spirit of fear but of power and of love and of a strong mind. (2 Timothy 1:7)

Written by Jacob Bembry, August 10, 2015