Sanctuary Trauma

When I was a teenager growing up in the church, I befriended a girl who had no voice.  It had been stolen by her oppressor...her own father.  It took about a year of friendship before she gained her voice and her cries became unmuted.   When she finally poured out her heart to me, I was forever changed by the impact of her story. 

You see, she had been systematically raped by her own father from 5 years old until she was seventeen.  Nowadays, we like to say molested instead of raped, as if somehow it shields our ears from absorbing the full impact of the assault that our children are forced to endure.

What makes the story even more horrific, is that her father was an elder in the church, and so he had unfettered access to what should have been a sanctuary to my friend.  This was his favorite place to bring her, into God's own house, to subject her body, mind and soul to the insidious lust of childhood sexual abuse, when no one else was around (or so he thought).

To compound the horror, when my friend reached out to a teacher in high school to tell her about the abuse,  a firestorm erupted in the community and the case eventually went to trial.   But instead of the father being put on trial, the tables turned, and the victim was put on trial.  The parents of my friend offered her up in the courtroom, as a lamb to the slaughter.  The case was eventually dismissed and the father got a mild slap on the hand.

The abuse that my friend suffered was difficult for me to comprehend, but the complicity of the family, the church and the community, is what I find to be the most astonishing thing of all.  It was an outrage then, and it is an outrage today!  At that time in my life I had no idea how to step into her world and make a difference.   But God did, and He has set my feet on a pathway of advocacy to rescue those who have been oppressed and cast off by society.

God himself was astonished at the absence of justice, and that there was no one to stand in the gap and fight against the oppressors:

The Lord has seen this, and he is displeased that there is no justice. He is astonished to see that there is no one to help the oppressed. So he will use his own power to rescue them and to win the victory. He will wear justice like a coat of armour and saving power like a helmet. He will clothe himself with the strong desire to set things right and to punish and avenge the wrongs that people suffer.(Is 59:15-17 GNT)

God is not silent about the unspeakable harm that has been inflicted on our children through sexual abuse and human trafficking, and Freedom's Cry is part of a movement that is poised to rid the earth of this kind of oppression. We hear their cries for justice, and we will not be silent or timid in the face of their oppressors. 

How astonished are you, and will you allow your astonishment to mingle with God's astonishment, so that this kind of suffering can be obliterated from the earth?