Freedom

And I heard the sound
of a great engine pounding
in the air, and a voice asking:
"Change or slavery?
Hardship or slavery?"
and voices answering:
"Slavery! Slavery!"
And I was afraid, loving
what I knew would be lost. 
-From "Song in a Year of Catastrophe" by Wendell Berry

A couple of weeks ago was Anti-Slavery Week at Acadia. Students raised money and awareness about modern-day slavery through various events, one of which was the showing of a film called Nefarious. This documentary is an honest, harrowing account of human trafficking all over the world. In one scene of the film, a man tells the story of three young girls who were rescued from prostitution in Cambodia. They were promised a safe home, an education, and a good future. You would choose this instead of a horrific life of being raped every night, wouldn't you? But they had to ask their parents for permission. Even when the parents were promised a microloan and job training so that they could have another source of income besides selling their children, they still refused. In the film, the man who is telling the story has tears on his cheeks as he tells of how he had to drive the children back to the place they were enslaved.

That was an extreme example. But how many times in our life do we choose slavery over freedom? How many times do we choose what is known over what is unknown, even when the unknown has the potential to be awesome?

As I think about what is next in my life, I need to remind myself to be ready to say "yes" to God, even if it is to something that is absolutely unknown. There are so many things that enslave me, things that I will choose even when presented with a better life. I am enslaved by money and by my ideas of what my future should be. I am enslaved in wondering what other people think of me. But Galatians 5:1 says "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery."

When given the choice between slavery and freedom, I pray that I will choose freedom.