Salt On A Birds Tail

"If you sprinkle salt on a bird's tail, you can catch it."
Meaning, if a bird sits long enough to put salt on it's tail you can take away it's freedom.

God made us to be free but what does that mean? Freedom can mean very differnt things....

Our Sunday school lesson was on oppression. Salt on the birds tail was the introduction to the lesson.
I thought I may need to try and explain the salt thing. I wasn't all that far into the lesson with my labored explanation, when one of the young ladies said... do you mean it is like when we buy a chicken here in Haiti and we tie a sting around it's leg so it won't leave the yard and after a short period of time even after you take the sting off of it's leg the chicken will not leave the yard even when it has the freedom to leave at any time.

Salt on a bird, sting on a chicken.

Freedom vs oppression. If you have never known freedom would you ever really know or feel bad about your life if you didn't know what it was like to really be free? Would you sit and wonder about life, always wanting something more?
What if you have always lived in an oppressive state would you know it?
Would you know what to do with freedom, power or money? What if you had an addiction to being oppressed? Would you know it? Wouldn't oppression be your "normal"? I dare say it would.

The Lord talks about oppression. The children of Israel lived in oppression for hundreds years, left slavery and wanted to go back. We can't imagine going back. As a matter a fact it sounds crazy. Yet hundreds of young women grow up around the world never really knowing emontional, physical or spiritual freedom. It isn't just Haiti. It isn't just something that happens to women. It isn't just a poor thing. I know women with the ability to buy anything they want, whenever they want and they are not happy or free. Why is that?

I remember being in South Africa and walking in Nelson Mandela's cell being very overwhelmed by the whole experience. Someone sure tried to put salt on his tail and yet he became President of South Africa.

What is the answer? Hope! Hopelessness is no longer seeing yourself as a people created in God's image with creativity, potential and worth.