The Hostage

I was trapped; held hostage in a repetitive cycle of sin.  I would tell myself it was not my fault, that they had chosen to eat from the Tree; not me.  Why should I suffer for what they had chosen to do?

I was captured; held hostage in a prison of fear.  There was sickness, pain, and death everywhere I turned.  But wasn’t it Cain who killed Able?  So long ago that it was the Genesis, yet now we see it all around us. 

I was corned; surrounded by walls of hopelessness, doubt, and confusion.  He stood there staring me down with vicious eyes. “You will follow me…” he sneered, “Bow down, I’ve arrested thee.”

I raised my bound hands, and silently dropped the mustard seed that I held pinched between my fingers.  I knew it was my only hope. The seed shattered on the barren cement floor of my prison cell, and what had once been a tiny seed became hundreds of eagles.  They beat their wings; creating a wind that would have blown down even the strongest trees.  I had to close my eyes against the force of the fierce wind, but I heard the eagles’ shrieking cries as they clawed at my captor and crushed his head.  

Then suddenly I was free.  My hands were no longer shackled.  In fact, I raised them high; extending them toward the man who hung in my place.  He wore the crown of a king, but hung lifeless where I had once hung.  I saw the blood which poured out from him when he had made the exchange; Him for me. 

My captor had fallen; he lay lifeless on the floor of the cell. 

My ransom had been paid; although all I had was a mustard seed, it was enough.  I was no longer a prisoner, I was free.  Now my mission would be to tell the world of the man who became a hostage in exchange for me.

Written in response to the One Minute Writer prompt~The Hostage