As I blogged about liberators earlier this week, and rulers and the ruled yesterday, I was also thinking of some lands which are still looking for liberation today.  Their number is legion.  Some are in Asia, some the Middle East, some even in the Americas.  Beset by war, dictators, terrorism, and the like, these lands, and those who live in them, live lives of fear and trepidation, their hours punctuated by gunshot, kidnapping, rape, and disappearance.  Rarely do they feel safe, and rarely do they find relief:  the violence and angst are unremitting.
     We pray for these lands, we weep for those who inhabit them.  We hope for better days, we wish for improvement.  Occasionally, we watch dumbstruck as nations with the military capacity to effect some change stand by, not wishing, sometimes for good reason, sometimes not, to involve themselves in the conflict.  Unless the tremors of panic reach their shores, they seem to pretend that nothing is wrong.
     Geopolitics is of course an imprecise science, and emotions cannot always carry the day.  Yet we wonder:  did not Jesus say, quoting Isaiah (chapter 61), that he had come to free the oppressed and set the prisoners free?  Did not Mohammad advocate for the poor? Does not Judaism give primacy to good works?  God mourns over situations of pain and inequity more than we do.  It seems as if we ought to do something.
     We should understand that God is not on the side of wealthy and privileged but on that of the underresourced and exploited.  God looks after the marginalized and forgotten, the destitute and abandoned.  We therefore hold several things in balance.  We weigh God's power over times and epochs with his concern for the oppressed, and we reconcile our emotional and spiritual angst with our geopolitical realities.
     And we remember that if we, impelled by belief in the love of God, lead people to freedom--in every way--we help them find a freedom that is, as Jesus said so succinctly, "freedom indeed."
     Pray for the oppressed, pray for yourself, pray for God.  Pray that the world understands why God wants us free.