Red Lights to Redemption

As I rounded the corner on my walk this morning, I saw her. She was one of many that I saw this morning. It is spring break this week in our town and my usually quiet, sleepy neighborhood walk has been alive with children riding bikes, boys playing army, and her. She was dressed in a pink fluffy dress and was twirling round and round in her driveway. She leaped and lunged like she was performing a dance for an unknown audience. As I got closer to her, I saw that she had a dazzling tiara on her head; you know the kind with large plastic pink stones and in her hand a scepter, also with matching pink stones. No princess is complete without matching dress, tiara and scepter! She saw me as I finally walked past her house…her stage…her private kingdom. I smiled and waved. Embarrassed that I had been a witness of her play, she shyly cocked her head, smiled and ran for her front door. I giggled and continued on my route. As I traveled, I thought that is how every little girl’s life should be. Secure, safe, so carefree that twirling around in the driveway in your princess attire is the top priority of the day.

Sadly, it is not. Many little girls and women around the world don’t know the freedom of the little girl I saw today. Their lives are anything but free. They are trapped and enslaved by those that know only how to exploit and profit off of the lives of others. In Thailand her name may be Banjit, in India, Daya, in Indonesia, Melati, in China, Jing, in America, Jenny. Their locations and names may be different but their stories are very much the same. Some are promised jobs, some are promised wealth and some are promised provision for their families. Some have no where else to turn because they have no mother or father and have to provide for themselves. They are the girls and women that are trafficked and sold into slavery in the sex trade. There is said to be 12.3 million adults and children in forced labor, bonded labor and forced prostitution around the world today. Human slavery on every level. Forced prostitution,"the sex trade business" generates 32 billion dollars world wide annually. It is so easy for us to read statistics and click off, isn’t it? My mind can’t wrap around such largeness, so it is easy for me to ignore until I see a face or hear a story of one little girl.

It is hard to look at. But aren’t we called to take notice, to consider the helpless, those that are poor, weak and oppressed? In the days that we were walking in Thailand, the reality of this depravity would often hit me square in the face when I was in the market and saw an older man, usually with a white face, holding the hand of a young 12 to 14 year old Thai girl. My stomach would turn and disgust would fill my thoughts. To my shame, I wish I could tell you that I rescued that little girl or that I interjected something into the situation that changed the outcome of what I witnessed…but I did not. God has kept this stirring in my heart. Like only God can do, He has orchestrated details with an upcoming trip, that if He wills, I may interject into the lives of some of the above described. The only thing that I have worth interjecting is Him. Until the time that my eyes see their faces, He has me pleading for their freedom before His throne. The prayer He has laid on my heart is Psalm 82:3-4, Oh God, vindicate the weak and the fatherless, do justice to the afflicted, the tired, the trapped, the sick and the destitute. Rescue the weak, the enslaved and the needy; Deliver them, snatch them out of the hand of the wicked and those that exploit and enslave for personal gain.

These girls and women who live within the shadows of red lights need advocates; People who will stand in the gap and those who will go and take the Truth of Jesus to them. Oh that those who are defined as “Red Light Girls” would no longer be so! That God’s story would be written over their lives and they would only have one defining word attached to their names….REDEEMED!

From red lights to redemption….

A serving of my heart,
Kim

Books I have been reading:
Girls Like Us by Rachel Lloyd
Rid of My Disgrace by Justin and Lindsey Holcomb
God in a Brothel by Daniel Walker
Shanghai Girls by Lisa See