We are a bunch of selfish fools!
Living in North America makes me one of the worst too.

I am here at the computer doing my regular computer routine...check the email, go on facebook and begin the blog rounds. Then I get to my mates blog. He has a post up right now suggesting we write letters to Mars and join in StopTheTraffik.org's March on Mars campaign. Check it out, it's a campaign encouraging Mars Chocolate to go Fair Trade like their competitor Cadbury UK. It's as simple as copy and pasting a template into an email. I also suggest printing off a bunch and distributing it through your community, corps, workplace or school to increase the impact.

I have now spent the past while (2+ hours that is) reading heart breaking stories of human traffiking and enslaved children. Reading stories about young girls moving with plans of making money to send back home only to find out they have been sold and have a $40,000 debt to pay off through sexual exploitation. Reading stats like every three seconds a child dies. 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi - dead. 4 Mississippi, 5 Mississippi, 6 Mississippi - dead.

I am heartbroken.

As I read I feel both helpless and selfish.
Helpless as there isn't a whole lot I can do,
and selfish as there is a whole lot I can do. Sponsor a kid for one.

I often go through these justice phases - yet through the selfishness of my sinful nature (and quite frankly the majority of the Western World) these justice phases often fade as I focus on work, friends and family, and get wrapped up in 'my own world' and 'my own stresses'. Have you ever gotten fired up with the thought of stomping upon injustice but before you know it you're not so pumped. Or even had the desire to sponsor a child, only to months later realise you haven't yet. That's our selfishness at it's best (or really it's worst), we don't even realise our heart for justice is growing cold! I find that global justice quickly fades into local pleasures - but the Lord requires something different of us.

I end this blog now but won't be ending what the Lord requires.

I am convicted in how selfish I (we) am (are) and I am hopeful in God.
I am hopeful because he is God. He reigns. He is just. And He is here.

ps- 29 children died as you read my blog.