Injustice

Today I was checking out some pictures from International Justice Mission that just totally broke my heart, made me rather angry/sad, and caused my soul to cry out. I saw pictures of beautiful young girls, who had been rescued from trafficking and were now in a safe house. That's great, I'm so glad to see justice and hope being brought into their lives. But the thing that made me so upset was that they even needed to be rescued. The most basic things of life, having a home and someone, like a parent, to love and surround you as you grow up in safety and love, that was taken away from them. It's ridiculous to me that in an age where we walk on the moon, drive one of our several cars down paved roads, that such disgusting injustice lives on the same earth that I do. Those girls in the pictures should never have had to be rescued in the first place, there never should have been such a twisted 'business' to be caught in.



You know what else is totally crazy to me? That I can sit and look at a computer screen and my heart so totally go out to girls I've never seen before. I love that God so breaks my heart for them and that He shows me that there are better ways and that this trafficking thing that got those girls is not right. But that's not all, it's totally crazy to me that I would want to love and help those girls I've never met, because their condition of need is so visible and tangible to me, and yet that I would hesitate or refuse to reach out and love a neighbor because their problems are only of the invisible, non physical need of a soul for Christ' love. In an age where the gospel is so easy to come by and share here in my community, I'm afraid or 'too busy' to share what I know.

For me to love someone here is to step out against the normal ways of this society and truly care not just about how someone looks or what they do or don't have, but to care about what they'll have in the next life, weather or not they have any true hope for this life and after. If I'm going to love someone here it's not going to be easy, because there are so many other things that the world I live in offers me here and it rarely points me to anyone but myself. I don't pretend the world is not tempting and that very very often I'm not lulled by this race for the American Dream that I've grown up around, but the more I press into God, the more I'm awakened to the injustice right here. To the Father my neighbor is just as important and valued as the girls I saw who were rescued from trafficking, they were created just as uniquely and with beautiful plans and purpose for their lives in the hope of Christ.

Injustice. It's not fair that those precious girls from Cambodia have gone through so much that they had to be rescued and taken to a safe house where their faces have to be blurred from pictures for their protection, and it's not fair that my neighbor is often just a familiar face in the little brown house, that an encounter with them is often thought of as annoying or an interruption to my day. I am saved from my own sins and their eternal consequences only by the sacrifice of Christ for all, so I'm meant to be sharing what I've been given and to be a part of the body of Christ who is alive and working still. To every soul there is a value and an urgency that we can never see until we are willing to choose to set aside what pleases our eyes and self, and allow Love to open our hearts to what his heart sees.