Sometimes I think that people forget that every plow we put our hands to, every issue in the world that we work towards to abolish, and every tear we shed isn’t because of an event, it isn’t because of a particular statistic. It’s because these problems for us are more than problems. They’re more than numbers. They’re more than trivial causes to jump on a bandwagon and fight.
Here at the World Race, we have relationships with slave labor.
We have relationships with trafficked victims.
We have friendships with prostitutes.
We have brother-sister relationships with orphans.
And we have held those with full-blown AIDS, those on their deathbed.
It’s more than just another fact and more than just another fad to attach our names to. This stuff is real for us and we’re doing tangible things to abolish the death from this world and bring Life and Light to hopeless and despairing situations. The message we offer the world is much different than your typical NGO. We have a message of reconciliation and life-change connected with what we’re doing. Not only do we leave a mark in the physical, we also leave a mark in the spiritual.
And so I was reading the news this morning online. I dedicate about half an hour every day to just catching up on the news. I know it’s usually discouraging and disheartening stuff that the media puts out there, but it’s the kind of stuff that the world we’re living in faces on a daily basis. On CNN I read a report put out by the UN saying that 79% of trafficked victims are used for sexual exploitation.
Somewhere in the world right now there are 27.1 million people being held against their will in forced slavery, roughly 24 million of those are used for sex, well, rape. What the heck, Church? And we’re okay with just going through the motions silently ignoring what’s going on out there?
I can’t ignore it today. My heart is ready to fight. I can feel the passion and anger towards injustice welling up within me. I want to do more than prophesy freedom for the captives; I want to actually go free them this morning.
Why? Because I’ve stared the captives in the face. I’ve seen the fifteen-year-old girl be walked away by a 45-year-old married American male so he could go have a ‘good time’ with her.
She’s a face – and we have thousands of them in our memories here at the World Race.
