Big bad world
March 11, 2013
The big news here in the county is the young girl gone missing. The picture I’ve seen in the paper shows her smiling, happy, her head cocked a bit to the side so her long hair spills. She disappeared a little over a week ago. Police traced her cell phone to northern Virginia until it was turned off. Her Facebook account was deactivated a bit later. The county sheriff says she’s likely been lured away by someone she met over the internet. Facts are few and closely guarded, but as I write this the signs point to human traffickers. Authorities believe she is still in the state. I hope that’s true. I hope she comes home. And yet every day she doesn’t increases her danger. In another week’s time, she could be anywhere in the world.
It took me a bit to write that first paragraph. I kept going back over it, looking at the words. Not editing or revising or anything else that people who call themselves writers like to say they do, but because I have a daughter myself. Because such a thing could happen even in my quiet corner of America. But such is our world now. It has claws, and their reach is long.
When I sat down to write a post, it wasn’t going to be about this story. I planned to do the usual and find some tiny facet of my life that held some greater meaning. That’s what I do. I put on my hat and play the blogosphere’s version of some spiritualized Duck Dynasty. I tell you there’s hope even when there seems to be none, that god is watching and His angels are guarding and that no matter who you are and what you wish to become, you are more and made for greater. All those things are true. I believe them with everything that’s in me.
But above all I am also honest with you, dear reader, and so I will honestly say right now life feels a little dimmer. Perhaps it was the story of the missing girl. But maybe it was more than that. Maybe it was all the other stories I’ve read and seen in the last week, tales of hurt and want and greed, accounts that prove we as a nation have forgotten ourselves.
It’s been said that the good times we all long for never really happened, that things have always been as bad as they are right now. I think there’s truth in that. I also think the utopia some try to build through government will never happen. We can cure cancer and talk to someone on the other side of the world and reach other planets, but in the end we can’t fix our own sin, we can’t talk to our own neighbors, and we’re strangers to the ground beneath us.
We are all broken, in need of grace. That’s what I’ve learned this week. And I’ve learned that if there is any hope for this world at all, it will come not only through Christ, but through Christ in us. The bad things in the world happen in large part because the good people in the world allow it.
Maybe that’s my point. Maybe. But maybe the greater point is that at this moment there is a frightened little girl somewhere in the world who screwed up and just wants to come home. I’m sure she would appreciate your prayers.
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6 Responses to “Big bad world”
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I’m a writer of two novels, Snow Day (2010) and Paper Angels (2011), with two more on the way by Thomas Nelson. That may make me sound smart and/or wise. Neither is particularly applicable. I count that as a blessing, because the great thing about wandering around in the fog is you never know what you might run into.. 
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oh, just oh.
praying for this lost one
for all the lost ones
As a mom, and as a grandma of an almost teen. I worry and I pray a hedge of protection around the children. Years ago one could be a run away and live through it, most of the time. My own sister was gone many years on the street. Now time, it is truly a serious thing to be missing. One can be gone in an instant. I am praying for this ‘teen’ and for all the teens who don’t realize the dangers of the internet and the world out there who wants to do harm.
I did a post a short while ago about human trafficking and specifically what the city of Austen. Texas, is doing to counter it. Texas has one of the highest human trafficking rates anywhere. We think this is something that only happens abroad or to immigrants or to people not like ourselves. As I learned while doing research for the post, women and children, especially runaways (for obvious reasons), are particularly vulnerable. Human trafficking has both slave labor and sexual degradation among its dimensions. It is one of the cruelest of experiences.
I hope the young woman is found and alive and in good health, that she doesn’t become another statistic, and that Augusta informs itself about human trafficking dangers and works to help youths like her. If she is found or escapes and has been trafficked, she will need so much help to heal.
I pray that she will discover a way to escape. No doubt she has been drugged and abused already, May God strike terror in the hearts of those evil men who do things such as this.
Educate your children is all you can do to protect them, AND cover them with your prayers.
Another great post, Billy. I’ve logged a few decades more than you. Can’t remember who said it, but it’s true. No experience is ever wasted with God. Every one of them will be useful in some way, some time. The “empty” times help make us who we are and widen our perspective on truth and people and life as much as–and sometimes more than–what we label the “good” times. We write from a perspective that includes all those days. Besides, how can we speak to the hurting if we’ve only observed that pain from a distance? Or for that matter, how can we convey His faithfulness in every circumstance if we haven’t known it ourselves?
Oops! Sorry, I meant that comment to apply to your earlier blog on turning 40. Like your other readers, I pray that girls will be home soon, safe and sound.