On Sunday at Resonate we had a guest speaker named Mike Hogan.  He is the Northwest Regional Director for the International Justice Mission and his job is mobilizing churches to get involved in what God is doing in the world.  His sermon was called “The Unfamiliar Passions of God”. 

Here is what I learned:

There are 27 million people enslaved all around the world.
15 million of those 27 million slaves are children in India.
The amount of people human trafficked today is more than the population of WA, OR, ID, Alaska, Canada, WY, and MT combined.
In India you can hire a child for sex for the price of a latte. ($3.50)
Everyday for an hour the IJM offices shut down and everyone gathers to pray. 

The statistics are overwhelming and paralyzing even, but Mike Hogan used an interesting and beautiful perspective on a story in the gospel that really instilled hope to me. 

The story was from Matthew 14 when Jesus feeds the 5,000.  Mike Hogan told the story from the perspective of the little boy.  He said all that this boy had was a lunch that his mom packed for him. Then the boy finds himself before Jesus and he’s being asked to give over this lunch.  So he does, and Jesus takes it, multiplies it, and feeds 5000 people.

Mike Hogan said Jesus could have feed those people anyway he wanted to, but he chose to do it in such a way that would give that little boy the greatest day of his life. 
I’ve never thought about it that way.

It was not the boys responsibility to feed the masses, but it was his responsibility to give what he had to Jesus.  As the story unfolded I sensed that the room was no longer feeling heavy under the weight of such oppressive worldly truth but rather inspired that there is one on mission to end injustice who cannot be stopped. 

To speak plainly, God hates injustice, he hates that people are taken advantage of, he hates the cycle of poverty and disease and oppression that we live in.  He hates that men and women keep people enslaved and he hates the darkness that surrounds the deeds that slaves are forced to participate in.  God is light.  In him there is no darkness at all.  His people are the light of the world.  Whether they like it or not. 

I’ve heard somewhere that there is no such thing as darkness but only an absence of light.  Whether that is scientifically true or not I’m not sure, but spiritually speaking it certainly feels true.  Darkness did not understand the first light and it will reject future light.  But the good news is: darkness is no match for light. 

Today may we be people who give what we have to Jesus. Today may we push back all forms of darkness in our context and may we pray for those who are pushing it back in the darkest places on earth.  For where there is no gospel we have sent missionaries, where there is no food, we have sent food, where there is no justice we must send justice, and where there is darkness we must send light.