If you can't tell, I wasn't feeling the best yesterday morning. It was probably around 1 or 2 that I finally got dressed. Since I slept in my yoga pants, I wore them yesterday morning while I was up and about around campus to see the nurse and get my absences excused. Being sick really stinks! I was pretty convinced I was dying (thanks to my face being pink, pink, pink). But, our wonderful on-campus nurse assured me that the side-effect was completely normal and I wasn't going to die. That's always a good thing. This morning, I woke up feeling super wonderful. My 11 am was canceled for the day, so I didn't have to be anywhere until 12:30. That felt amazing. I got wonderful amounts of sleep last night and am a really happy girl! Then, I walked outside and learned it was grass cutting day. Apparently, it's spring again, so that means grass cutting is starting back up. Grass and pollen flying everywhere. Yay for allergies. Drinking lots and lots of water helps. I just hope I don't drown. (I read once that if you drink too much water, you can drown. Is that true? Any science majors want to help me out here?)
Well, Saturday, I shared that I want to share some words of wisdom from the Scriptures this week. I mean, so often I feel like we think that the bible doesn't say anything about the issue of human trafficking. Like, this issue is a new problem and God doesn't "really" have anything to say about it. Haha. Excuses, excuses. But, if you actually open up that book and read it, you'd see that God has a lot to say about justice. He's a just God that desperately loves his people.
Psalm 82: 3-4 says, "Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked." Defending the cause of the weak and the vulnerable is not optional. It's a command. We are called to rescue them and deliver them.
Proverbs 14:31 says, "Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God." Oppression of the poor is a bad thing- it isn't loving God. But, being kind to people who are in need- that's something that honors God. As I tell my kids in Sunday School- love God, love people, nothing else matters.
This next one always gets me. Proverbs 21:13 reads, "Whoever shuts their ears to the cry of the poor will also cry out and not be answered." We can try and ignore their cries. We can try and pretend this horrific problem is not occurring. We can stick our fingers in our ears and scream "I can't hear you!" like a small child. But, stubbornness does not lead to happiness. We like the whole "ask God and it will be given unto you" part of the Bible. But, this proverb says that if we ignore the poor...so will God ignore us. That's a scary thing 'yall!
One more for today. Proverbs 24: 11-12 says, "Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, 'But we knew nothing about this,' does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay everyone according to what they have done?" This is a scary thing. You know about the issue now. You cannot be ignorant any longer. Indifference is NOT an option. These two verses make me think of a story I heard about the Holocaust once. People in Germany (and other parts of England) would see the trains with the Jewish people that were being taken to concentration camps. They ignored it, because they didn't think it was as bad of an issue as it was. They ignored the issue and did not rescue those that were being led away to death. Are you going to do the same thing? Are you going to ignore the issue and not rescue these people from the hands of injustice that will eventually lead to their demise? I was watching a documentary the other night on human trafficking in Detroit (on MSNBC, I'll try and find it online later!). One woman interviewed said that she was told that she could never escape. The traffickers either drug you, they overdose you, or they beat/kill you. Human trafficking victims are literally being "led away to death" and are "staggering toward slaughter". What are YOU going to do about it?
Maybe we can't march into the brothels tonight and rescue these girls. Maybe not every rice plantation slave will be freed by tomorrow morning. But, there are things you can do. You can pray. You can write letters to congress and let them know that you want them to write up harsher legislation against traffickers. That you want it to be exceedingly hard for them to do what they do- we don't need to make it easy! You can sign petitions. You can get the word out. You can give money (See that little link on the sidebar? It's a donation link for As Our Own!). There are tons of things you CAN do. Don't focus on what you can't. If we all do a little and do our part...who knows what might happen!
um, HEY. are you trying to say something about michigan here with that detroit jab?!
ReplyDeletejust kidding. slavery is a pretty big problem in and around detroit. i remember the time i found out there had been a slave found in the city i grew up in - just ten, fifteen minutes northwest of detroit - and i was like, "whoa..." you never really think of these things as concrete until they happen within ten minutes of you. and even then, they can still be abstract; i never met this girl, never saw a picture of her, didn't know or had heard of her captor.
but it's still real. & it was deathly concrete to her, even if it wasn't and isn't to me.
i like your point at the end: we should focus on what we can do instead of what we can't. signing my name to a petition and donating money doesn't sound like much, but only God knows the changes my small name and humble cents are making.
Nothing about Michigan, Annie. It was just a documentary (a really great one in fact, I need to find it so you can see it). Slavery is a much bigger problem than I first thought it was. I mean, I come from Alabama, so when I think slavery, I think Civil War. I mean, surely it's all over now, right? I think the best thing we can do is get educated so that we can do something!
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