A 15-year-old girl and her 14-year-old cousin got permission to walk down to a local Wendy’s late one night to get a couple of frosties. While they were walking, a car drove up, and by the end of that night, these two girls had become just a tiny, tiny addition to the thousands of minors trafficked in the United States of the America, the “land of the free and the home of the brave.”
Now those two girls have been rescued and are home again. The older girl tells her story in a video on the website www.truckersagainsttrafficking.com, a video that will hopefully be part of required training for men joining the trucking industry in the future.
Why? Because things will never change unless people care enough to act. I think many of us look at the huge statistics and decide, why bother? It’s a problem too big; one person can never make a dent in it.
That’s true to an extent. Each of us on our own are pretty powerless to change the huge statistics. None of us can expect to do the impossible.
However . . . we can make a difference in one life. It may not seem much, but if that one person was your daughter, or your friend, or yourself, wouldn’t you want someone to “bother”–to put forth the effort to make a difference even if they couldn’t save everybody?
I would. As I place myself in those young girls’ shoes, being forced to sell myself to strangers, staying because of threats against my family or my own life, I know I would desperately want to escape but likely not have the courage. Or the resources.
But if someone came along, someone who didn’t just look through me but really saw me, if they cared enough to ask one or two important questions, then make just one phone call–a call that would deliver me and give me back a future, I would reach out for the freedom offered me. I would grasp hold of the possibility of a future and a hope.
Isn’t that, after all, what Jesus gives us? (Jer. 29:11)
And wouldn’t He just rejoice to see us doing that for others?
In all my life, I never expected that I would know about truck stop trafficking rings and what drivers should do if they spot something suspicious. I certainly never expected that by writing a fiction novel on trafficking, I would become so engaged in the real-life fight against it.
But through all of this, I’m learning. I’ve stopped asking, “Why bother?” Instead I’m trying to be ready, ready to make the one difference that will make all the difference in the world to one.
Helen Keller once said,
“I am only one, but still I am one.
I cannot do everything, but I can do something.
I will not refuse to do the something I can do.”
If this can be said and lived by a woman who could not hear or see, shouldn’t I be inspired that I can do my part, too?
I’m not saying everybody should be out there rescuing trafficked girls. But I am saying that God has given you something to do. Whatever it is, it matters. You matter. Don’t look at the massive need, the big statistics, or your own limitations. Look instead at the one your work matters to. And then look up, because what you do matters to the ultimate One as well.
Go with God,
go for God,
go because God goes with you.
For of Him, and to Him, and through Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen.
Romans 11:36
