Let Go

Jeremiah 34:8-16

I purposely did not write out the whole passage from Jeremiah but I wanted to share what I learned this morning as I was studying this passage.  

I've been in Jeremiah for a few weeks now.  

While captive in Babylon, the Jewish people were told by Adonai to release their Hebrew brothers and sisters they had taken into slavery.  These were people who had given themselves up to slavery as payment of debt but they had long since served their time.  The Jewish holders refused to release these slaves into freedom.  At long last, they did release them and the people went free.

Adonai had long ago made a mitzrah, a law, that stated if a man (see Exodus 21:1-6) became a slave he/she was to be released at the end of a six year period, set free in the seventh year which was a Sabbath year, a year of rest for all from their labor.  In that seventh year fields that had been in use were to be allowed to lie fallow and go unplanted.  Lands that were sold reverted back to their previous ownership in the 50th year (after 49 years).  The 50th year being a Sabbath year of Jubilee.  All of this was God's plan.  

So imagine being a slave, thinking you were contracted to seven years and finding you were denied the right of freedom.  You did not simply walk away.  You had to be released.  Imagine how it felt to walk in freedom after years as a slave.

But the passage goes on to say that later those who owned the slaves changed their minds and took them back into slavery once more.  Can you imagine anything more cruel than to have walked in freedom and then find yourselves taken back into slavery and forced to serve once more?

And yet we do it every single day...

There is always a burden of sorts on my heart that deals with a close relationship in my life.  There's always a bit of anger, a bit of hurt clinging to the edges of my heart.  Again and again, I find myself taking up those little bits and pieces, the dregs of some incident that happened long ago, and I begin to handle them until they again grow into something more than dregs, much like working a dough will cause it to deflate and then rise again.  

All I am doing is taking captive once more that which I have released.  I do it.  You do it.  We lay down a worry and cry out to God to take it over, we release it and then later in the day or perhaps the next  week,  we take it up once more and weep and cry over it and beg God to release us from it.  It becomes something of a habit with us really to turn it over to God and take it up again and again.

Taking captive again those whom I have released, those whom I've said "God I forgive...I want to forgive."   

Do you know what God says in his passage about it?  He says that when the Jewish took captive those they had released that they profaned  his name.

I think we hear certain words all through our spiritual walk, usually from the pulpit and yet we never really know what they mean.   We know only that they are somehow related to God.  The definition of  profane is enlightening.

Profane means to be disrespectful or to treat with irreverence.  In other words,  to do that which we've been told NOT to do.  Isn't that that what we teach our children when they treat our home rules lightly or they misuse property that doesn't belong to them, that they are being disrespectful?

So what do we do?  Ask for forgiveness.  Repent of our behavior.  Forgive those who hurt us that we are continually taking captive once more.   And do it over and over again until all those little dregs and bits that litter our hearts are gone.

Matthew 18:21-22  Jesus obviously knew us well.  When Peter asks how often he must forgive and says "Seven times?", Christ says, "Not just seven times but seventy times seven..."

We tend, as humans to forget how forgiving God is towards us.  And look at the grace He gives us in forgiving those who have hurt us.  I guess He knew that forgiveness was a process we must repeat over and over again.  What He doesn't forgive is the refusal to do so.  That's when we're being profane, when, in our hearts we think we're somehow fooling Him by saying, "Oh look I let this go..." and then we run after it and take it captive once more.