Today's Daily Lesson comes from Exodus chapter 7 verses 14 through 16:
14 Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Pharaoh’s heart is hardened; he refuses to let the people go. 15Go to Pharaoh in the morning, as he is going out to the water; stand by at the river bank to meet him, and take in your hand the staff that was turned into a snake. 16Say to him, “The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, sent me to you to say, ‘Let my people go, so that they may worship me in the wilderness.’ But until now you have not listened.
Frederick Douglass once said in an 1857 speech on the philosophy of and history of the human rights movement, "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. . . If there is no struggle there is no progress."
Pharaoh wasn't going to just relent. He wouldn't just accept the demands of the Hebrews without putting up a fight. There had to be a struggle.
We give up too easily. The necessities and inconveniences of change demand more of us than we thought. It is daunting and exhausting, and a lot easier just to give in. That is why a lot of allies fall away, and the only people who are left in the struggle are the ones who really want to be free and will not be so unless they stand in the struggle themselves.
Read Exodus as an history and philosophy of human rights struggle. Pharaoh wasn't going to concede anything.
But, remember, Pharaoh wasn't everything either . . .
Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.
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