Thursday, November 12, 2026

Bible in a Year Reading Plan: 2 Kings 21-25 | John 19

When you're seven and told your mother has a disease that will take her from you, life changes a bit. I learned we lose what we love, so I kept people at a distance. That was my identity for many years. 

I wonder how many of us have allowed our circumstances to become our identities. The person who lost everything. The person who failed. The person who never recovered. The person who was betrayed. The person who got put into the system.

Let's focus on the person who got put into the system. I think about the movie, The Shawshank Redemption. It challenges the idea that a person's circumstances tell us everything about who they are. How often do you think about the circumstances of someone society sentenced, dismissed, or forgot? It's easy to assume the punishment fits the crime, but don't fool yourself into thinking everyone fits the punishment or that God also dismissed or forgot about the person.

In the movie, Andy Dufresne spends years locked away, while maintaining his innocence. The walls of despair never fully contain who Andy was before, or who he is at heart. He brings music into silence, education into confinement, and hope into a place where Red and others survive without it. Andy shows that he is more than a worse moment or a system that holds him in place. 

Romans 8:28-29
And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.

The Book of Romans challenges the idea of circumstances becoming your identity. God never said every experience would be good. But he promises that HE will work through everything to fit his purpose for you. It's less about making it beyond this place, and more about allowing God to develop something within you while you're still here.

Be resilient, but also be more like Jesus. Strive to see others with compassion, dignity, and grace. See them for more than what they've been through.

Questions: 
Have you allowed your circumstances to become your identity?

Does your past explain your behavior or excuse it?

If someone experienced your environment through you, what would they encounter?

Next Steps: 
Identify your invisible prisons by asking God to reveal what you've accepted as permanent but that God can change.

Choose growth over repetition by practicing new behaviors instead of unhealthy patterns. That may look like trading in a night out for a Bible study, or choosing worship music over scrolling through social media.

Poet, educator, and activist, Clint Smith, paints a vivid picture of humanity, identity, and a story beyond the walls through the lens of incarcerated people in his visual poem Beyond This Place. Check it out for a better understanding.

Prayer: 
Father God, you see me beyond my circumstances, mistakes, and the environments that I've allowed to shape me, but thankfully, your love for me shines through it all. I don't want my experiences to leave me bitter, broken, and vengeful. Teach me compassion, healing, and peace. Help me develop maturity, grace, endurance, wisdom, and character so I can be more like Jesus and bring light into this dark world. Amen.

Series Theme Verse:

Acts 17:28
“For in him we live and move and exist. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’” 

Written by Jaron Camp, a regular contributor to the Daily Devotional.