CQOD: 09/06/06 -- Ramsay: Christianity & servitude

Christian Quotation of the Day

September 6, 2006

Commemoration of Allen Gardiner, founder of the South American Missionary Society, 1851
Commemoration of Albert Schweitzer, Teacher, Physician, Missionary, 1965

Meditation:
    I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment. (Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me.) I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart. I would have been glad to keep him with me, in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel...
    -- Philemon 1:10-13 (ESV)

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Quotation:
    Undoubtedly, messengers had often to be sent with letters round the congregations of the province. In the earlier stages of Church development, probably, these messengers were volunteers, discharging a duty which among the pagans was almost entirely performed by slaves: just as Luke and Aristarchus, when they travelled with St. Paul to Rome, must have voluntarily passed as his servants—i.e., as slaves—in order to be admitted to the convoy. In such cases, it is apparent how much this sense of duty ennobled labor and raised the social standing of the laborer, who was now a volunteer, taking himself like a slave in the service of the Church. In this there is already involved the germ of a general emancipation of slaves and the substitution of free for slave labor.
    ... Sir William M. Ramsay (1851-1939)

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Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, accept me into the service of Your church.

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See Believer's Desktop Companion 2004
    http://www.cqod.com/cqoddtcb.html

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