Wednesday, January 4, 2012

I am Your Bondage


"O Lord, truly I am Your servant; 
I am Your servant, the son of Your maidservant;
You have loosed my bonds.
I will offer to You the sacrifice of thanksgiving,
and will call on the name of the Lord."
~ Psalm 116:16,17

It's an interesting thing to think of.
I am Your bondman.
The word comes from a word for bondage.
I am Your bondage.
I am Your bondage, the son of Your female slave;
You have loosed my bonds.

Loosed: to open wide, to break forth, to let go free.
Bonds: chastisement, a halter, restraint.

I am Your bondage, the son of Your female slave;
You have broken forth my chastisement.
You have let go free my restraints.
You have let me go free of my chastisement.

I am the bondage of the Lord,
born into His ownership,
unfettered and free.

It ought to bring about a worshipful thanks.
The word for calling on the name of the Lord is also interesting to me.
It actually means 'to accost'.
It makes me think of that blind man
who wouldn't shut up in his calling out to Jesus.

And sometimes I think we lose a little
where our translation simply says 'LORD'.
The word is 'Jehovah'.
Or 'YHWH', or something so much less English-sounding
than our English Bibles tell us.
The Self-Existent.
The Eternal.
And, oh -- that just made me a whole lot smaller than I was.

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