This past weekend Liberation Track attended an Out of Darkness training event. Out of Darkness is a local ministry here in Atlanta. Their sole purpose being to rescue and restore women being trafficked right in our backyard.
If we are being honest I walked into the conference thinking it would be a multitude of hours simply sitting and taking notes. Not truly retaining the information being handed to me. However I walked away with an overflow of new knowledge, information, and training.
The content of the training was messy and exhausting. Hard topics were covered. Ones that truly aren’t talked about. However, even though the content was weighty the facilitators did a fantastic job at balancing it all with the joy of The Father’s promises. The fact that The Lord is not a God of chaos. He waste nothing. No opportunity. This ministry that we are stepping into is hard and dark. But The Lord is sovereign and light. There’s something so reassuring about that.
*I tried to think of an eloquent transition from paragraph to paragraph, however I have no words to make the things I’m about to say easy to read or digest. So here are some of the ugly statistic and facts surrounding this issue.
Commercial sexual exploitation. Three words that should never be strung side by side, but sadly are commonly positioned next to each other. Everyday transactions (it’s an ugly word isn’t it?) take place where there is an exchange of value for sex. Everyday women and children are exploited. At this moment in time there are 27 million human beings. Living, breathing, creations with souls stuck in slavery. Today there are more people stuck in those ugly, unending cycles than any other time in history. 27 million people stuck without a voice, unless we do something about it. There are 7 billion people on the earth at this moment. So if you do the math, there are 259 people living in freedom to every 1 who is stuck in slavery. That’s a number that puts knots in my stomach and makes my hands shake. However, we live in a day and age, we are a part of a generation, that can END this ugly cycle.
So now we know. We have been given the knowledge and the platform to start a movement. To partner with organizations. To start our own. To tell our story. To speak out and proclaim freedom over the captives. So are we going to look away or are we going to run with confidence towards the ugly, dark reality knowing we carry The Light.
“You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.” – William Wilberforce
This blog doesn’t have a resolution. It doesn’t have an end or encouraging words. It’s simply facts. Information. Statistics. To challenge you. To get you thinking. To simply become aware of the dark things happening right next to us.
