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Jesus Lamb of God and Human Trafficking, 10FEB

two complete separate thoughts united in my subaru and in my brain driving this morning in the beautiful sunshine –
when they fly out of my head this fast and into my phone microphone to capture the words it scares me  – it down right scares me…maybe it is because I got 7 1/2 hours sleep last night – the most in a while – I got 2.5 hrs, up for 2 hours, then 4hrs sleep  then 1 hour sleep… hmmm…

I was listening to a praise song that I was calling “Lamb of God, worthy is your name” (I subsequently found out the right name of it – “You are my all in all”)
Its lyrics are:  “Taking my sin, my cross, my shame, rising again I bless your name”…. “when I fall you lift me up – when I am dry you fill my cup….You are my all in all “.

I was thinking of the different Lamb of God” “Lamb of the Ages” song versions out there… but listening to the words today and thinking about my UMW meeting tonight and the human trafficking huddle we are going to do – and remembering that I want to bring up “Shores of Grace” ministry that Pastor showed me…  and thinking about the one child policy in china that my friend told me is causing human trafficking (I had no idea and found out in 2011 that 13,000 abducted children were rescued (and I can’t even imagine the number that weren’t rescued!) – and I was also thinking whether one of my essays or devotionals would be appropriate to read… but instead…”CLICK” – and this social action devotional came out of my head with a few tears that came out of my heart. I had to speak it into my phone while driving in the subaru in the sunshine… I will read it tonight at the umw meeting…

Jesus Lamb of God and Human Trafficking Devotional: 

“We think and we pray and we sing about Jesus being the “Lamb of God” – we acknowledge or yearn to accept how this “Lamb of God” made a sacrifice for us – he was humanly sacrificed to spare the life of a guilty man and we pray to understand that He was sacrificed to allow us sinners to enter the gates of heaven by God’s Grace. So long ago, the lambs were sacrificed – animal sacrifices and even people sacrifices were common – and we can not understand why – and we scoff at those people who sacrificed their own people – shame on them…  Well we are still THOSE people – no we don’t personally do the sacrificing – but we do unthinkingly sacrifice the weak people in the world – we do sacrifice them because we too often ignore all the terrible human trafficking that takes place.  NO, we don’t maliciously do this – we don’t always turn a blind eye – and Lord knows there are so so many who do reach out and try to prevent human trafficking.

One such example is a ministry team which now reaches out to the streets of the far away country of Brazil. This family-based mission team “Shores of Grace” www.shoresofgrace.com is ministering to the children and modeling Jesus’ life to the fellow villagers. They set up street music – attracting young children and their parents – embracing the children and trying to protect them from the human trafficking that is predetermined for them by their cultural circumstances. Yes people are ignoring these children… which mean they are sacrificing them today – in our day and age – similarly to ancient times – by not preventing the wasting of the innocent lives.  In China, the one child policy actually caused a hushed-up problem… people are still having multiple children and often the girls (especially if they are born first) are not documented – they are ignored by the system – they don’t receive health care benefits and sadly, in lieu of accepting them, these girls are often sold   they are then human trafficked like lambs to slaughter.

In America we do it too!  We turn our backs on the forgotten people – on the levels of people forced into prostitution, horrific working conditions and undocumented labor.  We turn our backs on the needs for mental health miracles to help people overcome drugs, alcohol, and all kinds of addictions… If Superbowl Sunday sees an uptick in human trafficking, then we have been too complacent in our acceptance of it.

We really don’t always know how to stop human trafficking.

We really don’t always know how to achieve peace.

We really don’t always know how to take action.

We DO know that we need to raise awareness.

We DO know that above all, we need to PRAY.

JESUS, Lamb of God…HOLY is your name.

We need to PRAY and we need to protect all the LAMBS OF GOD.