Today, in discipleship, we talked about a lady my mentor knows who is a school nurse in our city. This lady told my mentor that she knows that some of her middle school girls are prostituting themselves in Little Mexico. My heart couldn’t take it. I was overwhelmed by grief and–holy, I think–anger.
HOW IS THIS HAPPENING IN MY BACKYARD AND I’VE DONE NOTHING?
I’m tired (tired in the bone-weary, sick-of-my-own-excuses sense) of sitting idly by while darkness holds onto a neighborhood too close to mine. I’m tired of saying “I’m in a season of rest and healing” and having that mean that I do nothing. The primary book about the church is not, after all, called “Waits“. It’s called “ACTS.”
We listened to a Passion Conference talk by Christine Cain on human trafficking and the A21 Campaign. Basically, it’s an anti-trafficking organization that works specifically in eastern Europe. Christine talks about rescuing a shipping container (yeah) full of girls and getting to share the gospel with them. At the end, as she’s sharing about the grace and love of God, a girl looks at her and says,
“If everything you say about your God is true… why didn’t you come sooner?”
And I sat on a chair, just weeping. This has been the week for broken hearts and tears, for my heart to be wrecked for something more than myself, finally. All I could think of is how I’ve been off the field for six months and have talked myself into complacency. Into thinking that sitting at a desk is the only way to serve the LORD in this season. I’ve stuck myself in this hyper-Christian bubble, refusing to venture out until I’m completely healed.
And I’ve called myself compassionate. But I’m getting hit by the truth that compassion isn’t compassion until it forces you to walk across the street and offer your hands.
Because I wasn’t rescued for complacency. It was for FREEDOM that Christ set me free. And that freedom isn’t only mine.
I can’t do life like this anymore. The US is dark, maybe the darkest place I’ve ever been. And to hide in a bubble because it’s safe doesn’t make me dangerous for the kingdom. It doesn’t make me a threat to the enemy. It doesn’t even put me on his radar. And I desperately need to be the kind of woman that is on the devil’s radar because that means I’m actually DOING something. I can’t be still anymore. I can’t stay like this anymore. I just can’t sit by and know that the only difference between me and a girl on the street is the fact that I’m white and legal, and she’s Mexican or Dominican or Columbian and not.
I’m full of this holy indignation at my own apathy, at the huge waste of time parts of my life are. At the fact that 27 million people are still enslaved and the most I’ve done to “end it” is to put up a Passion Conference sticker at my desk. This is not how Jesus wasted his life. And there is so much to say about wasting our life in worship, but in worship that has action attached to its heels.
This is a rant. I’d apologize, but I’m not sorry. This is me unfiltered. I’m just so over myself it’s ridiculous.
So here it is. Just pray for me. Pray that I act and that I’m too undone by this to stay waiting for the perfect moment to move.
Because this is the perfect moment. I’ll never be more ready than now.