For I, the LORD, love justice; I hate robbery and wrongdoing.
ISAIAH 61:8
It is easy to look at an issue like human trafficking and become overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem. After all, the reality of the situation is of epic proportions. There are an estimated twenty-seven million people who are enslaved on the earth today. This is a huge, extraordinary, and almost incomprehensible number. Could we really make a difference? Would anything we do actually matter?
Numbers have a way of numbing us. They are dehumanizing and desensitizing. It is easy to ignore suffering when it does not have a name or a face, but in my situation I could no longer walk by in ignorance. I had seen the posters; I had heard the stories; and it wasn’t long before I met the victims. These numbers were no longer nameless faces; they were real people who were caught in a living nightmare. I could not ignore their suffering. They began to fill my mind, my thoughts, and were the topic of my conversations.
In my dreams I heard their screams and cries, and one night I even woke up, dripping with sweat, and yelling, “We are coming to get you!” This was not about twenty-seven million, but it was about every single one of those girls who have been trafficked. Every one of those twenty-seven million victims has a name and a face. Behind every number is a person. It is just as someone once said, “A million is just a statistic until you meet the one.”
I have met the one, and another one and still another one.
There are so many more ones out there waiting for you and me.
MOMENT OF REFLECTION
When have you been so moved by an individual human story that you felt called to tackle a very large injustice?