Confronting the Loan Sharks and resolving conflicts

This week Carole reads Neh ch 5 ver 1-19.  People often pull together in a crisis but there’ll always be some who seek to exploit it to their own advantage. This was the case in Nehemiah’s day. People had to face a famine, increased imperial taxes and unscrupulous money-lenders. Nehemiah was angry with these loan sharks. He thought and prayed about it, then confronted them in private: he appealed to their conscience, told them that what they were doing was contrary to God’s law and challenged them to walk in the fear of the Lord and return everything that had been seized. Finally he appealed to his own example of practising what you preach. To make sure that this would be an on-going commitment, a public oath-taking ceremony took place. What an example of how to resolve conflicts in our churches and relationships!