Statue of Martin Luther King
Jr Photo: iStock
“FREE at last, free at last! Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last!”
So said Martin Luther King Jr ending his extraordinary “I have a dream” speech. His speech has often been echoed in the thoughts of students finishing school or university, people leaving jobs or retiring from work, and by those who find themselves freed from a threatening illness. His inspiring words have rung across the decades, quoted over and over, and yet we remember that the freedom he spoke of was still a future hope. It was a dream of a better tomorrow, and very far from the reality of his time or indeed of ours. That freedom was on the horizon, but not yet fully won. However, there is no freedom so valued, no freedom so cherished, as that which comes to those who have formerly been enslaved. For Joseph, his time as a slave and his false imprisonment must have made his freedom all the sweeter, although the writer of Genesis doesn’t let us into much of Joseph’s internal life.