Deuteronomy 24:17-19-“You shall not pervert the justice due to the sojourner or to the fatherless, or take a widow’s garment in pledge, 18 but you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I command you to do this.

One clear sign of someone who is trying to walk in the love of God, is that they don’t treat people according to their “lowly status” but according to where God has brought them from.  Every Christian qualifies from being brought from a lowly status of a slave to sin and bondage, to redemption and salvation through Christ…

But the challenge is to be secure in our redemption from the Lord.  Much like the children of Israel, God wanted them to embrace their redemption but not forget what it was like to be vulnerable.  The sojourner (foreigner/immigrant), the fatherless, and the widow all have in common the vulnerability of not being protected or looked out for in society, such as Israel was as slaves in Egypt…

Sadly even us as Christians can forget that we don’t belong to a nation, culture, or anything more than our Lord who has redeemed us.  However if we find our identity in a status, and now pretend we don’t know what it’s like to be “lowly” and vulnerable to bondage, then we have forgotten the essence of our salvation, and root of our identity as freed slaves by grace. (1 Corinthians 7:22-23)

At the heart of compassion and mercy is empathy to understand, whether that’s our children in the foolishness of youth, or strangers in the bondage of their sin. To lack empathy and compassion is to forget what has happened to us, and what we are still in need of from the Lord everyday in His compassion and mercy. (Lamentations 3:22-23)

When we act as if we can treat people a certain way because we no longer think we relate to the “lowly position” others are in, we must examine our hearts and deal with the hardness of it before the Lord, and ask Him to help us understand from a place of compassion.  Prayer is a means to get the heart of God not only for ourselves but for others, and mercy will flow when we are reminded where the Lord has redeemed us from and continues to do so…(Romans 12:16, James 5:16, 1 John 5:16)

In His Love, Ld