Slavery

Household slaves, submit with all fear to your masters, not only to the good and gentle but also the cruel. For it brings favour if, mindful of God's will, someone endures grief from suffering unjustly. For what credit is there if you sin and are punished, and you endure it? But when you do what is good and suffer, if you endure it, this brings favour with God. For you were called to this, for Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in His steps. 1 Peter 2:18-21

We live in an era when we rail against injustice, create wars and fight for our rights. Yet there are gentle souls caught as slaves, some as sex slaves. Yesterday I read about a woman who had fled Africia to Europe with the refugees. She has been a sex slave for 12 long years. She fled without her children and found herself at a boarder which denied her entry because Africans were not a race that was being accepted. When I read her story I grieved for her and prayed God's mercy upon her.

What should we do for people like this? Should we make them return to slavery? The apostle Paul had such an instance. A slave had run away from his master and stayed with Paul in Rome. Eventually Paul sent him back with a letter asking for grace toward the slave. Christianity is about freeing slaves. Paul's letter was indicating this freedom, but he knew he could not insist, the slave's master had to choose to give the freedom.

I could not send a woman back to being a sex slave. We see groups like A21 fighting to free people from slavery. Wilberforece fought for freedom for slaves in England and eventually won, it took a long time. Yet America had to have a war to see the slaves set free and even then some would not give the freedom.

However, there are situations where people find themselves, still, as slaves. The scripture above is a hard word, yet it is one we need to digest and allow the Lord to speak to us about. Whilst I, a free person, just like Paul, fight for freedom for slaves, while they wait for freedom they have a task, a hard task. What they must endure hits me in my selfish core and causes me to raise up in their defence. I will fight and I will pray for their freedom. I cannot live a life of ease whilst they suffer. Amen!