The Daily: Friday July 4th, 2025

Read Galatians 3:23-28 (NRSV, The Message)


Remember the Ladies (and theSlaves!)

In Christ’s family there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. Among us you are all equal. Galatians 3:28 (The Message)

We often hear, and say to ourselves, that the reason slavery continued to exist well into  the timeline of our nation, or that women and others weren't afforded the same rights as whie males, was ignorance. "They didn't know any better." That is simply not true.

249 years ago, while John Adams was participating in the Second Continental Congress, which governed the 13 original colonies, supported them in the Revolutionary War efforts, and would produce the Declaration of Independence, his wife Abigail wrote him a letter. In that letter she admonished her husband around two issues, slavery and the rights of women.

"I have sometimes been ready to think that the passion for Liberty cannot be Eaquelly Strong in the Breasts of those who have been accustomed to deprive their fellow Creatures of theirs. Of this I am certain that it is not founded upon that generous and christian principal of doing to others as we would that others should do unto us."

"I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation."

Some 1700 years earlier, the letter writer to the Galatians wrote that, in Christ, there is no longer a distinction between Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or free.

After all this time, why do we insist on highlighting what divides us? Is it time to focus on our interdependence more than our interdependence?

Prayer
God, help us see ourselves as citizens of kin-dom first. May our priority be caring for one another as coinhabitants. Amen