On Giving Up Your Son

On Giving Up Your Son
1 Samuel 1: 25- 2: 10

As I write, two anniversaries have recently passed. Just over thirty years ago the Shah of Iran was ousted and the Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile to become the “Leader” of Iran, a more powerful position than that of the president. A few months later, Nelson Mandela was released from prison in South Africa on his way to becoming president of that country. Ayatollah Khomeini’s return to Iran to assume his position under the new Iranian constitution was greeted by Christians as well as Muslims as a liberative event for the Iranian people; Time magazine named him man of the year. Thirty years later, the attitude of Westerners is rather different from what it was when it happened. The freeing of Nelson Mandela similarly seemed a profoundly liberative event for the people of South Africa, and still does so, notwithstanding the problems the country continues to face...