Continuing in our series on "Our God of Wonders", this week we looked at what many are now calling the fastest growing crime in the world, the modern day slave trade and human trafficking. There are currently about 27 million people held captive around the world as slaves. That is more than at any other time in history. 80% of those people are women and half of them are children. This issue involves slavery of all different kinds. Many are laborers in an endless variety of industries. Some, mostly children in Africa, are abducted and forced to serve as soldiers under barbaric regimes. Some, actually the vast majority of slaves around the world today are held in the sex-trade. This is a huge business said to be around $32 billion a year. That was $32 billion...with a "b". To put that in perspective, it is more than the yearly profits of Google, Nike and Starbucks combined!
Even more significant in this issue than just the shear vastness of it...is the fact that each of these 27 million slaves are precious, individual lives...most of which are helpless to improve their own situation. They are in dire need of help. Can we just ignore this issue? Can we just ignore these women and children? For how long? But how can we help? We discussed three organizations that are trying to inform people about this issue and help some of these people get out of these situations and start new lives. Chack them out if you can: 1) Takenoglory.com 2) wellspringliving.org 3) Olivia's Song (info on Facebook and Vimeo)
As with each week of this series we have looked at another issue that is so big, we could never impact it on our own. We would have to have a big God intervene on our behalf. Do we really believe that our God is that big? The even bigger question though, that I asked our students is..."Are you willing to surrender your life and ask God to use you as His vessel to greatly impact this issue?"
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