Break Off Thy Sins By Righteousness

In Daniel chapter 4, Daniel pleads with the King Nebuchadnezzar to "break off thy sins by righteousness" (Daniel 4:27). Sin is often compared to captivity, to prisons and bars and chains. The one thing that even God Himself would not dare to take away is our freedom. Therefore, it ought to be our strongest desire, our duty even, to break off the chains of iniquity, to escape from the prison of sin and flee our captivity and become free once more. God did not endow us with the agency and intelligence to think and act for ourselves just so that we could fall into bondage. But how do we break free when we have become shackled by our sins? Through righteousness. Through finding some small, simple, good right thing that we can do right now to make the world a tiny bit better. Every time we choose the right and do the decent thing, every time we give someone the benefit of the doubt, every time we stand a little taller and walk a little straighter and put the needs of someone else above our own - that is like running the file against the chains that bind us, or scraping the stone of the prison that confines us. We may have to tunnel out of six feet of solid stone with nothing but a spoon and our bare hands, but if we keep choosing to do the right thing even when we are tired and confused and lost and depressed and desperate and hopeless, then with every righteous act we make one more scrape against the stone and get one millimeter closer to breaking off our sins by righteousness.