Held Hostage

Held Hostage
September 5, 2004

I have just finished reading an article from the Canadian Press reporting on how a shaken Russian President is crying out against terrorism, after 2 planes were downed and over 300 children and adults were killed in a horrific hostage taking at a school.

Taken hostage. Held against their will by armed men and woman who know only violence as the way to get their views across. Sounds like the Sudan or many other parts of Africa. Sounds like events that happen regularly in Central and South America, or the Middle East.

We are given the body count of how many hostages are taken, how many receive freedom or how many are brutally killed.

After a while we stop listening when it is heard too many times.

I recently read a book called The Natasha’s about another kind of hostage taking. This hostage taking doesn’t happen at gunpoint, initially. Usually it is with offers of jobs and good income and seems like the dream answer to poverty and oppression. Nevertheless it is a brutal hostage taking with lies, with brutality to the body, mind and soul and almost irreparable scars. These are the young girls in Eastern Europe who are offered jobs when they must leave the orphanages at age 16 or 17. In reality they are quickly taken from Eastern European orphanages and put into the prostitution trade all over Europe, the Middle East and into North America. Their release is almost impossible to negotiate and most of the time authorities turn a blind eye or somehow lose the documentation that comes to their attention on these matters. The United Nations speaks out strongly against it and yet they are the ones who will hush up truth when it is revealed. My recent visit to eastside Vancouver showed me many held hostage to addictions.

What about when the mind and body are held hostage to abuse and violence within the four walls of home? Being taken hostage, in my opinion, is when someone holds power over you and takes away your ability to make choices in daily life. Just how many hostage takings are there around us? A gun or a bomb is not the only weapon used in “hostage taking”.

The Liar has taken captive so many of us with His lies about our worth, our beauty, and our lovability to Jesus Christ and to each other. This is the most brutal hostage taking of all because it can last forever. Jesus Christ was taken hostage but it was His choice. It will be a lifetime of negotiation Jesus does for my heart, because this freedom doesn’t come easily. God will never give up on these negotiations though!

Held hostage – far beyond what we read or see in the news. Mind and soul hostage takings surround us. How can I be part of the negotiating for freedom process? How can you? How many people will I talk to today who are held hostage somehow? This is a scary thought!