I’ve had the song 27 Million by LZ7 and Matt Redman on loop in my head for the past many days. For those of you who haven’t heard it, don’t be surprised. It doesn’t come out until Monday (Update: it’s out on Amazon and iTunes). I had the fortune of being at Passion 2012, where the song was premiered and the music video was filmed. For those of you who haven’t heard it, I’ve embedded the video below.
The main point is this: there are 27 million people enslaved today in 2012. Read that again. 27 million.
Put that into perspective. If we were to look at that in terms of New York City, we’d have to enslave New York three times over, and we still wouldn’t meet our goal. We could also look at it in terms of the population of the United States. If we took 1 out of every 10 residents of the United States between the ages of 15 and 65, we’d still fall short by about 6.5 million. Go to your Facebook. Look at your list of friends. Now imagine that 10% of those people would be in forced labor. Most of them would likely be in an unfamiliar place, surrounded by unfamiliar people probably speaking an unfamiliar language. Can you imagine how that would feel? From your cushioned seat looking at my blog on your computer, I’d wager that you can’t. I know I can’t. I can feel a sorrow for them. I feel pain for them. But I cannot even begin to imagine what kind of toll their daily lives take on them. Yet somehow, despite the vast number of enslaved people the likes of which our world has never seen, society has managed to either forget or ignore the festering problem right in front of them. And because I have been made aware of the problem, I am responsible to rise up, be a voice, and stand up. God has put a passion in the hearts of me and many of my friends to do something about this. Many of them already have ideas and plans and schemes going into action. A few of my friends are having dinners at their house. They charge for a plate, and all proceeds go towards freeing people from human trafficking, and the night is filled with discussion about the issue and ways to get involved. I have yet to figure out how God has planned for me to get involved. But I do know this: I am starting here.
