“Do not deprive the alien or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the LORD your God redeemed you from there. That is why I command you to do this.” (Deut 24:17-18NIV)
Among the things that are most difficult to manage in life is comfort. And that is because it can make one totally forget where he is coming from or what he has been through in life. To say the fact, God loves to do for people things that will make them forget their years of pains, miseries or sufferings. And that is to show them how powerful He is. For instance, when Joseph would name his firstborn child, he called him Manasseh, meaning God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father’s household (Gen 41:51). That means God did for this young man things that made him look like someone that had never suffered in life.
In like manner, He is still doing for people today things that will turn their lives around and make them forget all their years of pains and sufferings. And why is He doing this? It is so that those He is lifting and comforting may also use their position of comfort and prosperity to help others who may be suffering or experiencing pains the way they used to.
Look at what Paul says about this: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” (2Cor 1:3-4NIV) Did you see that? Apart from the fact that God wants us to live in comfort in life, He also wants us to be instruments through which others will experience His comfort in life. That means we are not the only ones He has in mind when He leads us into comfort and prosperity; He has others around us in mind as well. And we will do well to keep this in mind, so that we do not allow our comfort and prosperity to make us blind to the sufferings of others around us.
Unfortunately, there are many today that comfort and prosperity have blinded already. These ones were lifted by God out of some sticky mud of misery and poverty and set on a solid rock of comfort and prosperity. And they were lifted up by Him like this so that they too could begin to do things that would lift some others out of their muds of misery, poverty or shame and set them on some solid ground of peace and prosperity. But instead of allowing themselves to be used by God in this way, they are yielding themselves to be used by the devil to add to the sorrow and pains of the afflicted ones around them.
You only need to look at the way some rich and influential people today treat their employees, neighbours or other people that are subject to them, and you would most likely conclude that they had never tasted suffering in life. But they have tasted it. In fact, if you hear the stories of what some of them experienced in their days of poverty, you would know that only God could have made them survive. Yet these same people, who have had their own fair share of oppression and affliction, now no longer see anything wrong in oppressing or afflicting others. Why? They have totally forgotten what it looks like to suffer. And if care is not taken, at some point, God may have to send them or their descendants back to where they came from, examples of which abound all around us.
At any rate, it is so that God wouldn’t have to treat us in that manner that He sends us the warnings that we have in our opening bible text. There He tells His people, the Israelites, to remember where they had come from in order to settle in that land of comfort and prosperity that He gave them. They had come from Egypt, that house of furnace, where they were shamefully and brutally treated for more than three hundred years. And now that they have rest and peace of mind from Him, if they are not careful, they also will not know when they will start treating the strangers and the poor and weak people among them just exactly the way the Egyptians treated them. Then, they would open the door for the wrath of God to come upon them.
In the same vein, if, in our days of comfort and prosperity, we do not continually remind ourselves what life once looked like for us, if we do not continually remind ourselves of how God set us free from the hands of certain powerful people that would have made an end of our lives or of all the pledges we made never to oppress anyone if God should deliver us, then, we too may end up becoming worse than our oppressors. Perhaps you have already become worse than those who once oppressed you, especially in the way you treat the people that are now under you. The word of the Lord is coming to you now in order that you may retrace your steps and repent before it is too late. Otherwise, God may change His mind about you and send you back to where He picked you up from or put an end to whatever plans He has to further lift you up or prosper you (Jer 18:9-10).
I pray that things won’t have to end like that for you. I pray that God will never have to send you or your family back into any place of suffering that He already rescued you from, so that you may learn afresh whatever you failed to learn before about how to treat people. But you too have to learn to do what is right and pleasing to Him with whatever measure of peace of mind or comfort He has given you in all your relationships with others. And may you be continually strengthened to do so, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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