Tom is a man of many useful skills thanks to his dad and the Boy Scouts. One of his handiest skills is tying knots. He’s aces when it comes to fastening things together securely with only a short piece of rope.
Did you know, Dear Reader, most natural fibers for making ropes are grown in tropical areas. Access to the best fibers for making rope made it the tool of choice in ancient Israel. The main plant fibers, hemp, manila, sisal, and coir, are used for the specific qualities (strength, being waterproof, ability to stretch, and resistance to salt water).
(Uh-oh! Sounds like my social studies teacher brain is kicking in. Don’t worry, it won’t last long.)
Some of the use for rope, or cordage, included building ships and monuments, surveying, securing tents, and of course restraining prisoners. Unfortunately for prisoners, most natural fibers used for making ropes weren’t prone to being soft.
Dear Reader, have you ever found yourself in bondage of some kind? For many, I wonder if the pandemic felt like bondage. Maybe there have been bonds, ropes, chains chosen for their strength with no thought to comfort. Restraints that force(d) you to go where you didn’t want to go, or not allowing you to go or do what you did want.
So they bound him, led him away and handed him over to Pilate the governor.
Ropes, chains, many things have the power to bind us. Lack of resources, imposed biases, cultural norms. They can restrain us from going where we long to go just as easily as they can force us to go where we don’t wish to.
Dear Reader, Jesus knows exactly how it feels.
He was arrested and sentenced and led off to die,
and no one cared about his fate.
He was put to death for the sins of our people.
I wonder, Dear Reader, if because he had known bondage, Jesus chose to pay its price of heaven for each of us.
