Us - “How can we pray with you tonight”
Her – “Oh, I got raped last night, so for protection. Pray that I don’t get raped again tonight”
Jaime continues on to pray with this girl and I just sat there as righteous anger boiled up within me.
She said it so calmly, so lackadaisical, as if it were a frequent prayer request….. as if rape was something that happened so common that she was numb to it.
She was the third woman that night to tell us she was raped.
Women shouldn’t have to live in fear of being raped.
Women shouldn’t have to live in fear of being raped twice in twenty-four hours.
I can’t think of anything more demeaning and demoralizing than rape.
I can’t think of something that makes a woman feel more unworthy.
When God sent Jesus so that we may have life and have it in abundance rape was not a part of that abundance. I just kept asking myself over and over again “God….. what kind of world do we live in?” What kind of world do we live in where men rape women? And worse, what kind of world do we live in where we know that this happens and we do n.o.t.h.i.n.g.? What kind of world do we live in where the City of Detroit Police Department has 11,000 rape kits sitting in their evidence room that havent been tested because they are from prostitutes?
And these are the sort of nights that keep us awake, these are the sort of nights that stir our spirits, these are the kind of nights that turn our stomachs at the disgusting reality of what happens minutes from our front doors.
“If we have hands like God and arms like Christ
we’d reach far we’d take each scar
and we’d never measure the length
we’d never hesitate
we’d never take the time to just think about it and wait
we’d stretch so far we’d have stretch marks of faith
because some people only know the comfort of their chains
some people think God only looks like their abusive fathers face
some people don’t even know there is a possibility to be saved
because they don’t know what we know
that love isn’t something you pay for
lust isn’t something you pay for
sex isn’t something you pay for
sin is something you pay for
and that price has already been paid for
with the blood of a savior
whose arms stretch so far they stretch through time
with limitless relentless restoring grace
who in our world needs to hear that today
who right beside you needs some truth today
who is your neighbor beat up and bleeding
ignored and needing on the side of the way
who is broken in bondage
in that side of the world or on this side of the street
Because they are someone beautiful
they are someone valuable
blood was shed because
they were meant to be someone free”
-Hosanna Wong
