Sackcloth and Ashes

Sound the alarm in Jerusalem!

Raise the battle cry on my holy mountain!

Let everyone tremble in fear because the day of the Lord is upon us.

It is a day of darkness and gloom,

a day of thick clouds and deep blackness. (Joel 2:1,2)

Darkness and gloom. Thick clouds and deep blackness. Those words describe part of what I'm left with after attending Unbound 2013 - an anti-human trafficking conference. I knew I would be confronted with uncomfortable information. I suspected the subject matter would not be easy to take in. But I had no idea just how much I was going to be shaken. I had no idea just how horrific the situation is in our world - not just in Cambodia and Thailand and Moldova but also right here, in Calgary and across North America.

I recently read 2 Kings 6:24-30. The people are being besieged, and there is great famine.

26One day as the king of Israel was walking along the wall of the city, a woman called to him, "Please help me, my lord the king!"

27He answered, "If the Lord doesn't help you, what can I do? I have neither food from the threshing floor nor wine from the press to give you." 28But then the king asked, "What is the matter?"

She replied, "This woman said to me: 'Come on, let's eat your son today, then we will eat my son tomorrow.' 29So we cooked my son and ate him. Then the next day I said to her, 'Kill your son so we can eat him,' but she has hidden her son."

30When the king heard this, he tore his clothes in despair. And as the king walked along the wall, the people could see that he was wearing burlap under his robe next to his skin.

As I read this story, I remember being horrified, but thinking that I was grateful we don't live in such a savage time. Such actions are incomprehensible, and I tried to forget what I had read. It made me too uncomfortable. But then I was confronted with information this past weekend that did more than make me uncomfortable. In our world today, TODAY, parents - mothers and fathers - are selling their children in to slavery. These children are being abused, exploited, suffering unimaginable horrors. It is happening today.

I came home last night and I cried. I thought about all I had learned and I felt like putting on sackcloth and ashes and running out in to the street, wailing. I prayed, desperate, like the people of Judah in 2 Chronicles 20:12, when they cried out to God in the face of imminent defeat, "We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you." I don't know what to do with everything I've learned. It's too much to comprehend. But I do know this: what is happening in our world is not right, and something must be done.

And I believe the first step for me is to repent. I have allowed myself to become comfortable and complacent. I have been complicit in the exploitation of others through my silence and willing ignorance. Like the king and Haman in Esther 3:15, or Joseph's brothers in Genesis 37:25, I have been content to eat and drink while others suffer. In contrast, we read of the actions of Nehemiah when he returns to Jerusalem to rebuild the wall and is confronted with the suffering of his people at the hands of their flesh and blood. Hear their complaint in Nehemiah 5:5 - "We belong to the same family as those who are wealthy, and our children are just like theirs. Yet we must sell our children into slavery just to get enough money to live. We have already sold some of our daughters, and we are helpless to do anything about it, for our fields and vineyards are already mortgaged to others." Nehemiah is angry upon hearing this and speaks out against the wealthy ones, saying, "What you are doing is not right!" (v. 9) Jesus makes it clear in Luke 10 that if we are to love the way God wants us to love, we must not turn away from the suffering that exists in our world. It does not matter who is laying bleeding on the side of the road - we have an obligation to stop and do what we can to relieve their suffering. We are all neighbours. We are all kin. So what do I do now that I have been confronted with my ignorance and inaction?

"Even now," declares the Lord, "return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning."

Rend your heart and not your garments.

Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity. 

(Joel 2:12,13)

So I mourn. I lay all my guilt and grief and gut-wrenching sadness at the feet of the King and ask for His forgiveness. I focus my eyes on Him, knowing that without Him, I do not have the strength to bear the burden of what I now know. I cling to Jesus, knowing that He alone is able to save us from the evil of our world, knowing that I have never felt closer to Him than when I have acknowledged my brokenness and surrendered myself to the only one who is able to restore me and make me whole.

And I claim the promise of Joel 2:25-27, which has rung out over my own life in the past, and which I believe we can claim for the devastated landscapes in our world:

"I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten...

...and you will praise the name of the Lord your God, who has worked wonders for you; never again will my people be shamed.

Then you will know...that I am the Lord your God, and that there is no other"

Weep.
Wait.
Be filled.
Then be ready to stand and move with our great God as He works through us to redeem the broken, the enslaved, and the oppressed.
Amen.