A Thought For The Week Of August 7, 2017

“You shall not wrong an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. You shall not take advantage of any widow or fatherless child." (Exodus 22:21-22) The entire 22nd Chapter of Exodus - and actually many of the surrounding chapters of exodus as well - seem to be little more than a random series of rules regulating the lives of the ancient Israelites down to the smallest detail. Many of them deal with subjects which seem irrelevant to the 21st century world, or with actions that are so obviously wrong that there seems to be little purpose to reading these chapters of the Bible. easier to just cast them aside as writings that were perhaps once vital to the lives of God's people but that now are little more than a historical curiosity. And yet ... even in the midst of what me might be tempted to dismiss as arcane minutiae, we see God's principles shining forth in ways that are very relevant to our own society - such as in the two verses I opened with. God's people are to treat aliens well, and to make sure that widows and fatherless children are looked out for. I would still argue that it isn't the specifics of those verses that really matter. But I do think that there's a principle involved in those words that we in the 21st century would do well to listen to and learn from. These words reveal to us something of God's priorities; they show us what God expects of his people. And what God expects of us based on these words seems to be compassion - especially directed toward those who are vulnerable and who can't necessarily defend themselves. That's very relevant today. We seem to live in a society in which the vulnerable are increasingly the targets of those with power. Rather than being cared for, the vulnerable are often cast aside, ignored and even blamed for all that goes wrong - and often those who do so invoke the name of God to justify their actions. Passages such as this one may seem old fashioned and archaic - and I certainly wouldn't want to enforce everything we read in Exodus 16 literally. But as a basic statement of God's nature and of how God wants us to treat others (and specially the most vulnerable among us) I think this is very important to read and to learn from.