JUSTICE BOOK
JUSTICE
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. In the process if gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds ("Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred."
-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.)
“Heal my heart and make it clean. Open up my eyes to the things unseen. Show me how to love like you have loved me. Break my heart for what breaks yours. Everything I am for your Kingdom’s cause. As I walk from earth into eternity.” ~Brooke Fraser
“Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders. Let me walk upon the waters wherever you would call me. Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander, and my faith will be made stronger in the presence of my Savior.” ~Hillsong United
The lyrics of these 2 songs were prayers and anthems of mine for several years as God lead me on the mission field. They still play a role in my prayer and worship life. But let me just say this “Be careful what you ask for” in prayer because God might just answer you and it probably will not look at all how you expected. I never imagined where these prayers and God would actually lead me.
As I flew over Thailand and into Bangkok, I noticed these flickers of light out my window. The closer we moved toward the airport I began to realize the many glimmers of light I was seeing were the sun’s light reflecting off the golden rooftops of the many temples. I began to pray, “As I live in Thailand, may my life be like the gold on the roofs of these Thai temples. May I, being a temple of the living God, reflect the Son with every encounter and situation before me. In the darkness that surrounds me, may I be a glimmer of light that attracts others to Christ so that the True King might reign in the hearts of those I meet.”
It is hard to see in the dark. Of course, you can find your way, but you will more than likely end up stumbling, falling, stubbing your toe or something else; unless you are familiar with the space, or you have a light. One who has a light shines it in the darkness to guide the way to the destination. But one who is familiar with the space in the dark first learned how to walk through it in the light.
And so began a journey through the darkness of injustice where it was just me, God, and a few unlikely strangers. Injustice I would not only experience from the hands of evil in the world but also from the hands of the Bride of Christ. Those 21 months in Thailand were some of the most dramatic months of my life. I was with a team but hardly felt included once the “honeymoon phase” wore off. It was like my team kept trying to take away my light, forcing me to walk in the darkness.
My 2 years in South Korea before Thailand, prepared me for what I would experience at the hands of the world’s most evil so conquering that darkness was not so difficult. In fact, I had quite a bit of success in that darkness, and it frustrated my team even more with each success, pushing us further apart.
However, my familiarity with offense kept me stumbling at the hands of the Bride and that stumbling undid practically all the success I had against the darkness of the world. It was that darkness from offense that haunted me in a repetitive cycle. A cycle that ended up repeating itself for the last time during the quarantine of 2020, where I was forced to face haunting thoughts and memories from a tremendous amount of life offense caused at the hands of the Bride.
And so it is from this healing and because of my experiences that I write this book. Edmund Burke said, “All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing.” Well, Justice is being perverted, and I cannot sit and watch anymore.
Since 2010 I have been fighting against and witnessing many different types of injustice all around the world. I have seen quite a bit. From Himalayan villages with no running water and electricity where parents are deceived into selling their kids for a “good job in the big city”, to street kids aimlessly wandering in a Brazilian Favela, to drugged up Zombie like Eastern European girls working at a brothel in South Thailand, to run-away Korean girls desiring to be fully known but caught up in the wrong crowd, to young Haitian kids with the look of death in their eyes, to Honduran women keeping silent about the abusive treatment of their boss in America due to their illegal immigrant status because it is still better than what they ran away from, to the sound of wailing I heard as I hugged a woman with AIDS that hadn’t been touched by another human being in years, to watching young Cambodian girls be taken off the playground and used for some perverts pleasure, to hearing about the torture that really goes on in North Korea from someone who actually successfully made it out alive, to seeing Stateless people floating on boats in the middle of the Indian Ocean, praying for help, only to end up trafficked by Thai fishermen, and the number of orphans I’ve loved……I could keep going on but remembering all these faces hurts. I cannot sit quietly and watch anymore. It is time for me to say something. And so I will from this book.
I will warn you. This book will make absolutely zero sense to anyone with a closed mind. I do not really care what your religious or political affiliation is, if your mind is closed you will not get anything from this book and might as well call me a crazy lady now. And for those whose mind is open to understanding and willing to listen to the stories and experiences of others like I have, I believe and pray this book will bless you when I explain Justice the way God has taught me.
