Finding Freedom in Slavery

My soul bore open wounds from the shackles that confined me. The chains that kept me bound were rusted and old; the past I could not forget was a bleeding reminder of my sin.

The woman in Luke knew how it felt to be shackled, tied to self hatred, and nursing old wounds that would never heal on their own. 

“When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town heard that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, and as she stood behind him weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears.  Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and poured perfume on them.”

She came to the home of the Pharisee that day, dragging her chains behind her, and laid them aside as she knelt crying at Jesus’ feet, knowing that He was the one who could set her free. Her shame covered her as she bowed low before Him, face to the ground as she kissed His feet. The pouring out of perfume, the overflow of her love for the only One who had ever loved her. The condemning eyes of the Pharisee rested upon her as she wept, but her eyes, they never lifted from her Savior. She loved much, and so her faith, Jesus said, had saved her.  She, who had been bound for so long, left there knowing what it meant to truly be free.

Christ tells us that we are to take up our cross and follow Him, and for me that wasn’t easy.  It was so hard to move forward with Him when the rusted chains kept pulling me back.  But, like the woman in Luke, I stood behind Jesus, weeping for my sins in the presence of the Pharisees, and washing his feet with my tears.  He lifted me up and loosened the shackles from my wrists, His touch alone healing the open wounds, and He forgave my sins and called me beloved. The Pharisees, they sneered and condemned, the planks in their eyes blinding them to their own chains.  But I walked out in freedom that day, never to be bound by a yoke of slavery again.

I still bear the marks of the chains, but they no longer hurt; the scars, they remind me that I am a slave to Christ, to the one who set me free.