Alcatraz is one of the most interesting places in the United States. It is an island off of the coast of San Francisco that, among other things, was used as a prison. Many famous criminals were housed here including Al Capone and the real Machine Gun Kelly, not the clown.
In 1946 there was a 44hr battle on Alcatraz. The prisoners took weapons out of the armory on the island and attempted to overtake the guards. It did not go well. At one point the military fired grenades into the cell where the prisoners were held up. 3 inmates were killed, including the ring leader.
I was fortunate to tour this iconic “Rock” recently and of all things that caught my attention was the area where you could still see scars on the floor from where the grenades were fired. You can see the picture below.
These scars are still here many years later. The other areas where the grenades landed have been repaired and repainted. How many of us have these scars in our life? Many times things that happened a long time ago but are still very apparent in our lives today. Some of these shrapnel areas have been talked about, repaired, and repainted. Sometimes to the point where they are even hard for us to find.
Alcatraz can teach us a lesson. The saying goes like “Those that have broken the law go to jail and those that broke the jail laws go to Alcatraz”. The beauty of our lives is that you can get out of that jail that you are living in from past mistakes right now. No one ever was known to have successfully completed an escape from Alcatraz. The beauty of our life is that we can create a new path (an escape) from our past today… Thank you Jesus.
“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland” (Isaiah 43:18-19)
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