Monday, August 20, 2012

Holy Discontent

Holy discontent.

    This is a phrase I had never heard until last night, yet it so fully describes what I have been feeling the past few years. At my life group at church last week, Suzy began talking about holy discontent. She describes it as when you are so uncomfortable with something in the world that you have to do something about it because you can no longer stand it being tolerated. Holy discontent does not mean something you simply think is wrong and disagree with; it does not mean an injustice that you are aware of. It means action. It means that you are so utterly uncomfortable with an injustice that you simply have to do something about it. It means a literal ache in your heart an dyour soul and your very being about something that you know is wrong. It means a call to action that you are so willing to take because you know exactly whta is at risk if you don't: a LIFE.

Human trafficking.

   Three years ago, my heart was completely and utterly shattered. And I thank the Lord that it was.

   When I was sixteen, Linda was teaching the high school Sunday School class through the book "Do Hard Things" by Alex and Brett Harris. It is about teenagers being expected to do literally nothing during their teen years because it's their time to have fun before they have to enter "the real world". These brothers defied that stereotype and challenged themselves and other teenagers to do great things for the Kingdom of God during their teenage years. 

   As we read through this book together, Linda challenged us to pray and ask God to break our hearts with what breaks His. I decided to do it and prayed daily for God to show me what He wanted my heart to break over. It turns out that you should be careful what you pray for...God just might do exactly what you ask. He did for me. 

   But it took a while and just when I began to get discouraged because I didn't think that He was listening, He answered. One Sunday morning, Linda read from "Do Hard Things" and it was about a boy named Zach Hunter who had begun a campaign called Loose Change 2 Loosen Chains, which empowers students to raise money and awareness about modern-day slavery. I was shocked. As a history and book lover, I knew about slavery in the 1700's and 1800's and I knew about Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, which supposedly gave all human beings in America freedom. I did not know that there are still over 27 million slaves worldwide today.

   That day, I went home and did extensive research about human trafficking. I ran across story after story of trafficking survivors and I cried as I realized that this was happening in America. Most of all, I was devastated that no one had told me about this before then and, as I began talking to others about human trafficking, I became angry that no one at all seemed to know about it. I knew then that this was something that I was designed to be broken by, that I was designed to do something about. 

   Sometimes, I get so overwhelmed by this injustice that I just want to find the people who are in bondage and free them myself no matter what I may have to do in order to do so. I just want to go looking for them because I so desperately want them to know that someone loves them, that they are worthy, that they were created by Him for a purpose, that everything that they have endured is not their fault. 

   Sometimes, I even want to find the traffickers because I want them to know the love and grace of God as well, as twisted as that sounds. When I say things like that, people get so angry with me because they think that I'm condoning what these people have done, the heinous crimes that they have committed. I'm not. I simply don't think we are anyone to judge them. Maybe we haven't sold a ten-year-old into a brothel where she's raped fifteen times a night. Maybe we haven't tricked a sixteen-year-old into leaving the only home he's ever known for a "good job" only to enslave with a lifetime of debt, which he will pay off making bricks in a crowded factory where the death count grows at a tremendous rate. Maybe we haven't forced a seven-year-old to roll cigarettes for eighteen hours a day while she's chained to the table and given only a cup of water and a few crumbs of bread. Maybe we haven't committed these crimes.

But we have been tolerant of other people committing these crimes.

Do you really think your hands are clean? Mine aren't. 

   But I refuse to allow this kind of atrocity to prevail in this world in which I live any longer. I am sick of it and I will work to end it. People have asked me if I really think that I can make any different in such a big world and such a big problem. My answer is simple: I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me, because He has deemed human trafficking as my holy discontent for a purpose - and I will honor that.

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