A little bird I am

"Our soul has escaped like a bird, / Out of the snare of the fowlers; / The snare is broken, / And we have escaped. Our help is in the name of Jehovah, / Who made heaven and earth." (Psalm 124:7-8) Recovery Version

In Psa. 124:7, the Psalmist doesn't say "we have escaped", but "our soul has escaped." "Prison walls cannot control the flight, the freedom of the soul." Even if we're still in circumstances that restrict us outwardly, nothing can fully prevent us from the freedom of our soul we experience when we find our help in the name of Jehovah (Psa. 124:8). Indeed, "Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved" (Rom. 10:13)

Jeanne M. B. de la Mothe—also known as Madame Guyon—wrote these words while in a French prison, probably sang more songs “in the night” than any other hymn writer in the latter period of the 1600’s. She was born in Montagris, France, in 1648, and died at the age of 69, in 1717, in the old city of Blois, on the Loire Valley in central France.

She was born into an affluent family of nobility and at age 15, her father made arrangements for her to be married to the wealthy aristocrat Jaques Guyon. She was married for 12 years and had 5 children of which 3 survived. At 28, she became a widow. At the time of Louis XIV, when society was dazzling but corrupt, she was ridiculed for her piety and devotion to God. This blossomed into a life-long ministry and the writing of sacred poetry.

She became a mystic, and her book Spiritual Torrents is an indication of her ardent love for God. It was in this way that Divine Love came to her. In the spiritualized Book of Canticles, a pious Franciscan priest wrote, “seek God in your heart, and you will find Him. ” She became the personification of these words by the deepening of visions and raptures during her private times with God and living before Him.

She began to teach as well as enjoy the new light so different from the glitter of the traditional worship. But her “aggressive holiness” became oppositional to the established Church. Her writings were branded as “Quietism” (the heresy of elevating contemplation over meditation) and therefore suffered persecution and imprisonment. Jaques Bénigne Bossuet, a court preacher to Louis XIV, became her great adversary. Father François Fenelon was her friend, but he could not protect her. She was shut-up like a lunatic in 3 different prisons until after 4 years in the Bastille, expecting to be executed for heresy, she was banished to a distant province for the rest of her days.

Madame Guyon had most definitely the martyr spirit. Today because religious persecution of that nature is almost unknown, we can dimly understand the triumph of her soul under suffering and her utter absorption in God.

She wrote the hymn below when she was exiled after her imprisonment:

My Lord, how full of sweet content
I pass my years of banishment.
Where’er I dwell, I dwell in Thee,
In heaven or earth, or on the sea.
To me remains nor place nor time:
My country is in every clime;
I can be calm and free from care
On any shore, since God is there.
While place we seek or place we shun,
The soul finds happiness in none;
But, with a God to guide our way,
‘Tis equal joy to go or stay.

William Cowper, and also Dr. Thomas Upham, translated from the French the religious poems of Madame Guyon. This hymn is Cowper’s translation.

The tune written for the aforementioned hymn is entitled “Alsace” which has a gentle and sympathetic melody. It is a choral arranged from a sonata of Ludwig Von Beethoven, born in Bonn, Germany, 1770, and died in Vienna March, 1827. Like the author of the hymn, Ludwig felt the hand of affliction when he became totally deaf soon after his 40th birthday. But, in spite of this privation, he kept on writing sublime strains that only his soul could hear. He is famous for his oratorio, “The Mount of Olives, ” and his nine “Symphonies” among others.

Nice poem

Praise the Lord

I feel this is a Covid 19 song. May the Lord teach us in our confined spaces to find Him to be there with us.

He is so close to us, for if we sings to Him, He is not only with us in the cage but even inside of us. He is one with us- our Emanuel God with us!

I sit and sing to him who placed me there.

This hymn portraits the imprisonment experiences of M. Guyon and makes very well to remember when we're suffering for the Lord's sake. Maybe one day I pass through the same way too.

Wow, so wonderful to hear this hymn. My son read it as a poem in school. I recognized her name and was delighted that it can be sung. Thank you for providing the music to hear it played.

主我就是这笼中的小鸟

This hymn is wonderful!

I enjoyed it so much! Really we're prisoners in the Lord and we have the real liberty in Him.

"Well pleased a prisoner to be,

Because, my God, it pleaseth Thee".

This lines remembered me a verse that says: "I love my master, […] I will not go out free". (Exodus 21:5, King James Version)

How good is to be a prisoner in the Lord! Amen!