It is a desperation we cannot comprehend.

A state of despair which drives a mother to sell her two week old baby to known sex traffickers, just to feed the other children she has at home.

A sense of hopelessness known by the bar girls of Thailand, selling themselves night after night – because their own families have ordered them to go there, or perhaps have taken them there against their will, to “get a job.”

A plea for help, heard only by God, from a small girl tied to a bed in the backroom of a brothel in Asia.

A gripping fear felt in the heart of a deceived girl from the United States, promised a singing career in Japan, who wakes from a drugged state to find herself as a sexual slave.

I cannot imagine the questions in the minds of these women and girls.

Think about this…

* Each year, around 1.2 million children are exploited in the global sex trade

* It is believed that there are between 12.3 million and 27 million children, women, and men in slavery today – more people are enslaved today than during the whole of the trans-Atlantic African slave trade

*According to the FBI, human trafficking is the fastest growing segment of organized crime.

*Babies are sold into slavery globally for as little as $100.

Tomorrow I will share more about our women’s ministry event this weekend highlighting this crisis… there are things we can do to help. To provide true help to the suffering a world away from us.

In the meantime, please take a few minutes to watch this… and pray.

God, open our eyes to see the silent suffering, open our ears to hear their cries. You are El Roi – you are the God who sees. Show us how to act with mercy and justice on behalf of these precious people you love, people who bear your image, people who have been used, broken, and forgotten by the world.  You never forgot them – may we never forget, either.