Injustice Slayers

If you read this blog, you know it's always an adventure around here these days. The other day, Junia started drawing faces out of the blue. I never showed her how to do this and apparently she's quite the artist for 3 1/2. Are these the two faces she sees from me most often? I hope not or else I must be shocked or dismayed most of the time! I can find consolation in the fact that she did tell me these were "happy faces".

Lately, I do find myself dismayed - dismayed at the state of this world. What else is new though, right? I recently found the time to finish a book (**minor miracle**). The book, Little Bee by Chris Cleave, is a powerful - albeit very sad - story that deals with issues of corruption in Nigeria. The book revolves around an orphaned girl named Little Bee who flees to the UK as an illegal refugee. When I finished the book, I had that frustrated feeling of insulation-meets-ignorance. I told Davis, "I had no idea this stuff was going on in Nigeria." Sadly, I know I'm not alone and that Nigeria is not alone in Africa as a nation dealing with horrific human rights abuses that affect the lives of good people each and every day. Just today, PRI's The World ran a story about a bus robbery in Nigeria that involved 100 bus passengers - simple traders on their way home from work trying to feed their families in a country where that is very difficult - being made to lie down on the street while the bus driver was forced at gun point to run over them all and kill them. Man's capacity for evil is beyond comprehension to me sometimes and stories like this truly make me wonder what is happening to this world - my world - the world my daughters' will inherit. More than ever, this world needs those who will stand for the marginalized and fight for those who are being abused by those in power whether it be the child forced to work 12 hour days making bricks in India, the 14 year old girl sold by her uncle into the sex trade in the Philippines or the orphan who is simply left on a street to die in any number of countries around the globe. I recently came across a great t-shirt that I want to order for the girls that says "Global Poverty Slayer" on the front. I love that. I think the creators need to make another one that says "Injustice Slayer". I find myself inspired by a quote I read on a coffee mug the other day: "Good Women: May we know them. May we be them. May we raise them." I hope that I can be a woman who fights passionately and tirelessly against injustice and teaches my girls to do the same - battling for their world and the continent of their birth. I hope they grow up angry at the senseless kinds of killings seen this week in Nigeria and I hope that anger moves them - and all of us - to action.

"The Lord looked and was displeased
that there was no justice.
He saw that there was no one,
He was appalled that there was no one to intervene."
Isaiah 59:15-16

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?"
And I said, "Here am I. Send me."
Isaiah 6:8