Mercy, Deliverance & Trafficking
Below is a devotional prepared by one of our Red Community trustees, Robin Davies, for July’s prayer meeting.
God’s Law in the Torah is clear on how the Israelites are to treat aliens in their midst:
“Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him(her), for you were aliens in Egypt”. (Exodus 22:21)
God shows His love for the oppressed, vindicating and rescuing them from their oppressors:
“The Lord longs to be gracious to you, He rises to show you compassion for the Lord is a God of justice.” (Isaiah 30:18)
God’s mercy, is often connected with deliverance, as is His justice. God showed mercy and ensured justice to Joseph though thrown into prison without just cause after being sold into slavery by his brothers, the first trafficking victim it seems recorded in Scripture (Genesis 37: 25 – 28). All His dealings with Joseph were a message of God’s heart for deliverance, not only for Joseph himself but also for his family and his people, as famine threatened to overwhelm them. Later when his brothers are before him, now second only to Pharoah, and he could have exacted retribution, instead he could say:
“Do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been famine in the land and for the next five years, there will be no ploughing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.” (Genesis 45: 5-7)
Joseph has of course re-ordered the whole of the Egyptian economy as a result of God elevating him as Pharoah’s right hand man, after he interpreted Pharoah’s dreams. Later, when Joseph had arranged for his father Jacob to come and settle in Egypt for the duration of the famine and Jacob died due to his elderly years, Joseph asked permission of Pharoah to take Jacob’s body back to Canaan for burial. This was agreed and Joseph and his brothers and many Egyptian officials accompanied the burial party and saw Jacob buried “in the cave in the field of Machpelah, near Mamre, which Abraham had bought as a burial place.” After this was over and they returned to Egypt, the brothers were now afraid that Joseph would make his move to hold them to account for the way they treated him, in fact they offer to become his slaves. But what does he say?
“Joseph said to them “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me , but God intended it for good, to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children. And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.” (Genesis 50 :19)
So then, how does this relate to trafficked situations and people trapped now in this desperate evil ?
I think Joseph’s story shows us that no matter how desperate the situation, when those suffering as Joseph did, put their complete trust in God to do justice and change the situation, it opens the door for God’s deliverance. I know that is easy to say and not the living experience of many trapped in these situations. But isn’t that why we come to pray? For those who can’t pray for themselves, we can seek to hold up our hands in prayer to God for His delivering outcome in those who truly call out to Him.
For many perhaps, going through this, their hearts will be hostile to God. We can pray that their hearts will be softened to be able to hear God and to trust Him for deliverance to come to them
Can we be so bold as to pray that like Joseph, they will come so close to God even in their distress, that their trust in God will not only change the hearts of those oppressing them, but that God’s answer might mean they become a living witness to their home communities how wrong it is to put their (often young) people at risk of these activities, whether knowingly or unknowingly.
We know that in many countries sadly there is such lack of any God awareness, that the communities that victims come from, have either parents or other family members who push their young people in the direction of trafficking gangs thinking this is a source of income for themselves, with money supposedly sent home.. We need to pray that they will come under conviction that this is dreadfully wrong and not in fact correct and that they can be reached with the gospel to transform them from this way of thinking.