SIX.
At six, I had a birthday party at McDonald's. I picked honeysuckle from the fence on the playground at school. I married Michael Thomas on the see-saw and then tattled on him when he left me to play with the boys. (I know, I hadn't watched How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days yet. Sorry, Michael.) I loved My Little Pony. I danced to "Beat It" over and over again as it played from my very own Strawberry Shortcake record player. I made a construction paper crown for my baby brother and dubbed him Prince Ryan. I had a crown too. Because I was a princess.
Every six-year-old girl is a princess.
How then, can anyone kidnap these precious little ones from their homes and sell them in a brothel in a foreign land? How can they hold them in cages and deny them food? How can they subject them to savage abuse at the hands of up to 40 men a day? Men who believe that stealing the purity of these little girls will cure their own HIV. How can they toss them onto the street when they show signs of the diseases that have been given to them by their many abusers?
How can we stand by in our comfortable lives and turn a deaf ear to their cries?
I am guilty.
“Shout it aloud, do not hold back. Raise your voice like a trumpet. Declare to my people their rebellion and to the descendants of Jacob their sins. For day after day they seek me out; they seem eager to know my ways, as if they were a nation that does what is right and has not forsaken the commands of its God. They ask me for just decisions and seem eager for God to come near them. ‘Why have we fasted,’ they say, ‘and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?’...“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail." ~Isaiah 58: 1-3 and 6-11
"Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed." ~Psalm 82:3
"Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy." ~Proverbs 31:9
Will you defend her?
Picture taken from THI
