3-18-15- Against Enslavement

12“Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you. 13Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 14but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns, so that your male and female servants may rest, as you do. 15Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. (Deuteronomy 5:12-15)

Thoughts: This day after St. Patrick's Day, we would do well to remember that Patrick fought against slavery- and that slavery is not a past problem but is alive and well today.  Patrick was himself kidnapped as a child by Irish Pirates and enslaved to keep livestock.  We know of Patrick by two documents- one of them is his letter to the soldiers of Coroticus who, in a raid, killed the men and enslaved the women and children.
    In our day, Boko Harem and ISIS brag on doing just that.
    But in the West there are other kinds of enslavement.  There is sex trafficking and enslavement.  There is a growing enslavement to drugs and alcohol.  To send a young adult off to an expensive college today means putting them almost in harms way the abuse of alcohol and drugs is so prevalent.  Those who entice our young with alcohol abuse and drugs and the problems that go with these should be ashamed as Coroticus soldiers were shamed by Patrick.
   The other kind of enslavement that is prevalent today is enslavement to work.  Deuteronomy 5 says to keep a Sabbath to remind ourselves that work will not enslave us- not because of the allure of things that we can get with hard work or because of the master's whip.  Work is enslaving if we cannot escape it.  In our day of cell phones, emails, texts, it is hard to escape work.  Jeremiah 17 warns the people of God that they will be kicked out of the land if they continue to not observe the Sabbath (they continued to rebel and were kicked out for 70 years).  Breaking the Sabbath is a serious offense- for it says that God and neighbor are not as important as our own work and our own use of time.  Enslavement to sex, to work, to drugs, to a warlord- they are all evil things.  God wants us to be set free- and to go not our own way- but His way of freedom and true love. 

Prayer: Lord, help me to go your way and not my own.  Keep me from enslaving myself to my own pride and sin.  Use me to be a key to set others free.