Deep in the mountains of Northern Mexico a small group of carpenters have their own savings plan. These Native men decided to create a greater return for their small earnings by each contributing a certain amount to the “joint” account. Each month one of the coworkers is awarded the pot. What would literally take years to accumulate can now be used by the men in whatever ways they choose—to buy more tools, put a new roof on their house—or even redeem their wife.
It was no secret that one of the men had been saving for several years but was still woefully short of his goal. Earlier, the man’s wife had left the mountains for border-town employment as a housemaid. It was decent money and she had an employer who took care of her, even loaning her money when her paycheck ran out at the end of the month. Tennessee Ernie Ford sang a song in the 50s with the line “I owe my soul to the company store.” In this instance there was no company store, just a debt that couldn’t be paid. Her wages were never enough to clear the debt and make it through the month without needing to borrow again. This clever system of debt bondage was designed to hold her hostage.
The men in the village knew all of this and decided unanimously that the woman’s husband should become the first to receive their money. With this money and what he had saved over the years, he left his well-known mountains, rode a noisy, crowded bus into an unfamiliar area and after much searching, finally located his wife. He cleared her debt and she made the return trip with this man who loved her enough to redeem her for himself. The woman belonged to her husband as his wife, but he had to leave the mountains and pay a high price to clear her debt and secure her freedom. In the end, he was able to take her home where she belonged all along. Whew! Is that a love story or what?
I’ve left out some of the specifics, but this is a true story of being “bought back”, of present-day redemption. There is another love story that is very specific—are you beginning to see the parallels? I was bound by a system of debt bondage, one that I couldn’t free myself from. In fact, everyone is in the same situation—we all owe a debt that we can’t pay. Until that debt is taken care of, we are under the control of the one we serve. The Bible tells us that not just some, but “all have sinned” and that the “wages of sin is death”, eternal separation from God. (Romans 3:23 and 6:23) The One who came to clear my debt arrived not on a Mexican bus, but with the lusty cry of a newborn in a Bethlehem stable.
Some realize the dilemma they’re in, but others aren’t aware of the system that holds them in its grip. The woman in my story was happy and thought everything was going well with her job. She had no idea she was caught in a trap that kept her from being with the one who loved her. Eventually she knew she had no way to fix the problem.
Ephesians 1:7 explains that in Jesus we have redemption, “the forgiveness of our trespasses,” and Revelation 1:4 says it is Jesus, “who loves us, and released us from our sins by His blood”. Whew! Is that a love story or what?