something to believe in

I don't think it's any secret that I've been wrestling with my faith over the last couple of years. Maybe in ten years I'll look back and say, "remember when", but honestly, I hope not. I hope that I will never be continent to take everything at face value and yet, somehow embrace the idea that I believe in a living God who wants the best for us. Even if we think He's a joke, that he's still on our side. Looking out for our best interest and earnestly cares about 'the least of these', those who have been discarded by the church and society. No matter what I end up thinking about religion, I hope that I never ever loose site of loving the forgotten, misled, discarded and damned.

That being said, a few weeks ago I felt 'led' (whatever that means to you) to go to church. I rarely go anymore and I kinda prefer it that way. Anyway, got there and heard a moving, yet factual story of little girls, not that far away, who are forced to perform sex acts on men 15-20x a day. They're part of a very real, very rich, very public industry. From what I understand, the girls (and some little boys) end up there either because their parents sold them so they could have food or because the family was sold a bill of goods about where the girls were really going. Talk about the ultimate sacrifice...

Luckily, there's some decent people still left in the world who think that allowing children to be raped repeatedly isn't in their best interest. So they go out and rescue the little kids (the youngest was 5 yrs old) and then teach them how to actually sustain a real income at a real job and help them with counseling and shelter. And you know what the craziest part is? It's only $1500 to fund a rescue. That is mind blowing to me. It's only around $40 a month to help sustain the girls once they're rescued and like, $5-25 to buy jewelry that the girls make. How much more simple could they have made it?

As much of a distaste of religion that I have, helping fund the rescue of a kid seems like a true worship experience to me.

If you'd like to donate a couple of bucks to fund a rescue, click on this link.

If you'd like to find out more about the folks who do all of this, click here.