The names and exact details of these stories have been changed to respect the privacy and testimony of the owners. These are not sob stories, these are not tragedies, they are real and true.
Maun, Botswana: Amara
I would sit there across from her. A pleasant face, proud complexion and a wonderful smile. So carefree and so full of joy. Pure joy. And if you would allow yourself to get lost in what was her joy, you would overlook the pain of her story. She laughed and she would begin to tell me a bit of her testimony.
5 Times.
She had been assaulted sexually 5 times. By different men. Just for walking down the road. The last time? She would contemplate ending it all. Saying goodbye to all the pain and all the hurt and all the regret. They didn’t see her as a daughter and a friend and HUMAN. They wanted to use her because THEY were so empty.
Sacramento California, United States: Rebecca
A father, a husband, a boss, a friend. These were the titles that he held throughout his life. He could be seen at church some Sunday’s, sitting next to his wife. Behind his kids who sat with the youth group. And then at some point, something changed. Even the pretense of following the Lord would fall away. All that would be left? Pain and misery would follow him! They are his legacy, they damage he left behind, the wake that washed his family against the shore. That’s what happens when you begin to date your secretary. When your affair tears your family apart, pits family member against family member, pain takes a deeper hold. And through all the lies and the manipulation and the mind games this family too is going to be steeped into a well of loathing and despair. All of them.
Ensenada, Mexico: Casa de Esperanza : H121
In the darkness in the sprawling night, the rumble of engines can be heard screaming across the Baja Desert. Somewhere, between the throat and roar of the trophy trucks tearing across the sands, and the whine and shifting of the bikes careening around sand dunes and water hazards, the rattle and rumble can be heard. Dozens of vehicles, tons of metal rip through the night across the most treacherous terrain in off road racing. And in midst of all this chaos the headlights will peer into the night across the sands. One lone engine, two drivers, almost lost to the world. A 1967 VW Bug. Mostly Stock. On the outside? In contrast to the black paint the bright, almost neon green, blue, and pink hands will raise an open hand to the night air. The two dozen handprints of the children of Case Esperanza will carry the car across the desert. For over 49 hours the race team has kep the car running. Beaten and battered, the car itself seems to carry a life of it’s own. Why? Because those precious hands, the ones painted on the car, they are the hands of the widows, the orphans, the abused women and children that the Lord has led to the ministry of Las Tres Palmas and Case Esperanza. Their sole source of income? Donations. See; the world gave up on them. They left them in the streets to starve and be used. And now, their hopes and dreams for the future ride on the car. Sponsors, donors, publicity. Before the car will leave for the starting line, the kids and women will line up and hug the car, cry over the car, talk to the car. Because for them, that car is a gift from the Father. The One who didn’t abandon them to starve and get sick. That car quite literally, brings them life with every mile is inches across the 1000 mile race. Where are the fathers and the brothers? Where are the Uncles and grandfathers?
Hope Mountain, Dominican Republic:
Jeison Bautisa has grown up without a father. He simply had no male figure in his life growing up, so he made the most of his opportunities. Jeison walks around with a smile that could change a room, his back and arms show the result of thousands of hours of repetition and manual labor. He’s 21, married, loves his wife, works hard…and he is unfaithful to his wife. His father was absent. And he didn’t have a father figure in his life until he was attacked by Oso. The Dominguez’s dog. It wasn’t until he had to be driven to the hospital by the very people who’s property he was trying to sneak on, that male figure who loved the Lord and loved his people entered his life. Currently? Jeison is fighting an internal battle for his identity. He doesn’t know who he is. What he does know? He knows about the endless cycle of Race teams and squads with 40 women, and maybe 10 guys that show up to Hope Mountain every few months. Where are the men?
Leveque, Haiti:
You’ve met her before. The woman in the black dress. The one who’s 10 children were born; and of those 10 only 2 are still with us. And as she puts on her Sunday best, just to pray, just to go before the Lord, some 15 miles away near Tintayane, JB will walk the streets. Walking with the Americans who were there for the month. They would be spreading the gospel door to door, clean water tablets, food, anything that would help. And He would take his $8 a day pay, and he would go back to his home village. Where he feeds over three dozen children a week. They are hungry, and frail, dirty, and naked. But if he doesn’t step up? Who will?
These are not just sob stories. These are not meant to draw your pity or your ire. The truth is we live in a horribly broken world. A world in which there are over 2 billion professing Christians worldwide. And yet there are over 150 million orphans. 500,000 of them are in the united states. We live in a world where sex trafficking is a billion dollar industry. We sell our women and our children online. We leave them on the streets. We leave broken families in our homes, and we leave those most precious to the Lord broken and stripped of their dignity and honor.
In a world that is so broken, that is so clearly shattered and self-destructive, what can be done?
I am imploring you, I am begging you, to open your eyes. To the men that are out there, wherever you are…it’s time to step up. It’s time to follow the example the Jesus set when it came to loving our women and children. It’s time to step up and lead your families in prayer. It’s time to submit ourselves before the throne of the one who gave it all. As men, we take so much of our value from our hands, the work of them, and the results of our labor and what we do. And It will never be enough. We will never be enough until we reach the point where we can submit to what has been done for us. The sad reality is, until we do something to actively fight the pain that has engulfed the world, we are just as guilty as the pain that you read in the stories above. Standing back and watching is no longer an option. By standing back and watching this globe continue to rotate on its’s axis like nothing is wrong is the equivalent of committing the crimes yourself. And in my short time around the sun, it pains me to see.
“For if any man knows what is right, and still does nothing, for him it is a sin”.
The women that are talked about above? They are not the blurbs of their stories that I’ve tried to weave for you. They are strong and healing, they are world conquerors and family healers. They embody love. They’ve brought healing to me and made my heart burn with life. They are fierce and they will not be silent. The children are fighting for themselves, and they yearn for belonging. They long for a home and they understand what it is to be fulfilled in the Lord. The men mentioned above? They are not perfect and they are not anyone’s savior. They are men that have seen their own brokenness, they have looked at the Cross and the price that was paid…and they refused to do nothing.
And the thing missing in this picture? The thing that pains the world? It is starving and parched of love. Of true and authentic love. It is devoid of love that wants nothing but to give of itself. It is devoid of the love that wants her, them, him; not for what they can offer, but for who they are. We have been shown the ultimate form of love on the cross. Where a man, a real man, allowed himself to be beaten, whipped, spit on, a crown of thorns shoved onto his head, mocked, and murdered: all because he loved us. THAT is love. That is love that is authentic, that is love that doesn’t give up. That is strength in humility, that is power in weakness. And if it was good enough for that guy; that Jesus, then it is good enough for me.
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled. When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good. We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us! But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
So; for all of them, love. To the end.
