The Things You'd Rather Not Look At

You didn’t log into your Facebook page to be confronted with injustices in the world. You came to post a picture of a neat dessert you made, see the pictures of your newborn nephew, and complain about your bad haircut. You needed to get your two cents in that Facebook fight you’re having. You needed to check on your Farmtown crops.

There are things you’d rather not look at. There are crimes committed against humanity… Against children…

O LORD, Why do you make me look at injustice? (Hab 1:3)

I read a startling statistic today. “An estimated 5.3 million children between the ages of five and eighteen are forced into sex trafficking in India.” http://www.rescueher.org/india-prevention

In one country! Sex trafficking happens all over the world. Even in our own country… but we like to pretend it doesn’t happen any more. We like to think that it is something that happened in societies of yester-year. We watch movies with prostitutes in an old western saloon… jaded women who seem to enjoy the “career” of pleasing men.

BUT what you don’t know.

Prostitutes come from broken homes and have deep emotional scars. They feel they have no other option. Many are FORCED into the sex trade at ages that would turn your stomach. Children are kid-napped and forced into the trade. In some societies, once a woman enters the sex trade (willingly or unwillingly) she can never escape that status. She is an untouchable…

These are the things we don’t want to look at. We would rather watch a slasher movie on the silver screen than to look at actual injustice. AND we find violence ENTERTAINING. We are more offended that our movie club double charged us this month than at the crimes committed against the human race.

I have spent more hours watching movies in my lifetime than I have spent reading about current events in my community… my country… the world. I have read more fiction… play more games… twiddled my thumbs… cuddled my cats… thrown Frisbee with my dog… (for crying out loud) blow-dried my HAIR…

Been concerned with my own emotional well-being and physical health… never to consider the emotional scars and life-threatening disease that claims the lives of millions of CHILDREN each year.

I have fallen asleep… and I am a card-carrying Christian. I have been given the great commission. I have been CALLED to care for widows and orphans.

My heart is broken. My priorities are being questioned. Not by any human being… by the Creator of the Universe.

I cannot sleep on this… night after night, I ask God what I can do. I am willing Lord. Wake me up out of this slumber. Move other hearts to make a difference too.

More on Rubble

How long does it take before the rubble in our lives become familiar?

I drove past the old mill site today. I drive past it every day… several times a day. Today I slowed down and pondered the debris. There is a thought that quickly enters and exits my mind each time:

When will they clear the rubble away?

What are they waiting for? It made sense that they took their time picking through… recycling scrap metal… salvaging one hundred and twenty year old wood... stacking good bricks onto pallets and shuffling pallets into neat rows. Selling off the valuables first… but now… now it’s nothing but piles of concrete and cinder block. . piles of wood chips… piles of asbestos. TRASH… sorted.. separated… but ALL TRASH.

Refuse with no value… littering the landscape… worthless waste from bygone ways. When will they take it away? Where will they take it to? Where CAN it go? A hole in the ground? How is that any better place than where it currently lies?

I am so familiar with the sight and yet this familiarity does not breed fondness. It is like a corn on my heel… a crack in my palm… a pimple on a particularly tender place. Uncomfortable familiarity.

Today my mind is drawn to the debris in my mind… rubble in my relationships. Baggage, we call it. Eleven years I’ve been married and yet it seems like such a short time to have little piles of refuse between us. Habits we have fallen into… buttons that are so easily pushed.

Sometimes we are hot, on fire… raging mad. Sometimes frigid, freezing cold. The cold times never last long but this warm-blooded woman, does not weather them well. I don’t think he does either. Like any good southern girl, I’m ready for spring.

I spent years sorting through my own rubble. Picking through… looking for valuables, all the while trying to rebuild my life, in the strength of the Repairer of Broken Walls. I realize now that he and I spent sometime tearing down the very wall we were trying to build...

Now I stare at this pile of stones. There IS so much debris here! How can we rebuild this section of the wall? This pile of refuse has become uncomfortably familiar. We walk around it… skirt it carefully. We act as if it’s radioactive.

When will we take it away?

Where can we take it?

Where can it go?

Love, I don’t think we can…

Thankfully we know ONE who can. I think just have to be willing to surrender it.