Examining the back of the moped and the bags in my hands, I knew I had an interesting balancing act to perform. While my coworker was a well-seasoned moped driver, I had hardly ever ridden on a moped. But time was running short and we had an important errand to run; we knew the french fries and hamburgers would only stay hot for so long.

As we made our way through the unwieldy traffic patterns of Cambodia’s capital city, I began to relax despite the lack of any hand-holds. The bags of fast food and drinks I was balancing in each hand easily shifted with my weight as the moped carved back and forth through the busy streets and into a neighborhood.

The house itself was not visible from the road – it was well protected with high trees and shrubs and a secure gate. Behind this gate and inside of this house I would meet two little girls. Their story had already left a mark on my heart. Now, to meet them…to see their smiles, to hear their laughter, to share a few fries and a burger with them…Whether I spent five minutes or five years with them, these moments would be a gift, an offering of pure grace to me.

It did not take long for them to warm up to us. They knew my colleague well, and seemed to decide they would quickly befriend me too. Kunthy and Chanda took me into their bedrooms and proudly showed me drawings they had taped by their bunk beds. They giggled and stared me down and clung to my arms as they tried to ask me questions through our language barrier. (One key piece of information that made it through the language barrier was that the fries, unfortunately, were indeed cold, despite our valiant efforts to deliver them fresh. The girls let us know this as they happily giggled and gobbled them down.)

Kunthy and Chanda insisted on giving me drawings that they had made themselves, carefully writing their names at the top. I gave them the best equivalent I could find in my sparse belongings - a photo of my husband and me.

I count those drawings among my most prized possessions today. They are an indelible reminder to me of the restoring work God desires to bring to all of creation. They are a visible symbol of the intangible mark that meeting those girls left on my life. The drawings depict more than just lines of ink fashioned into a few flowers or a village scene – the drawings illuminate childhood, even human life itself, as it is meant to be. The drawings insist that children – that all humans – are meant to live free.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…to set free those who are oppressed,” Jesus tells us.

When I met Kunthy and Chanda, these 11 and 12 year-old girls were living as children should live. They were being loved and cared for. They could go to school. They could laugh and play. They were free. But only months earlier, these little girls were living as slaves to those who glibly peddled the sale of their bodies. Only months earlier, they were living as chattel for those who would daily profit from their rape.

To meet Kunthy and Chanda is to learn that you needn’t crack the history books in order to imagine what slavery is like. Slavery is in many ways more alive today than it has ever been in history. There are, in fact, more people locked in literal slavery in our world today than were extracted from Africa during the 400 years of the transatlantic slave trade combined.

The fact that there are at least 27 million slaves in the world today is not merely a matter of population increase. Slavery is a thriving economic industry that nets billions of dollars annually. Slavery is a shadow economy that breeds the buying and selling of human beings by other human beings – not just a one-time transaction as in the case of a drug or a gun, but over and over again until slaves’ bodies expire from the toil. Kunthy and Chanda are just two out of millions of little girls, boys, and women whose lives have been forcefully and fraudulently converted into multi-sale commodities made available to whoever desires to purchase them.

Selling their daughters into the slavery of forced prostitution, Kunthy and Chanda’s mothers participated in a one-time exchange of dollars. They were paid by the brothel owners and gave their daughters over to the industry. But for the brothel owners, the possibilities for selling and using these girls’ bodies over and over again were virtually without limit.

Kunthy and Chanda were beaten if they tried to go outside of the brothel in which they were held. They were beaten if they cried while men were having their way with them. To help the customers feel they were getting the most out of the cash they had forked over, the brothel owners would even inject these little girls with narcotics, sedating their resistance and stymieing their tears.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…to set free those who are oppressed,” Jesus tells us.

What would it mean for us, as Jesus’ followers, to proclaim these words to someone who lives under the violent dominion of another human being? To proclaim these words to a slave?

On the one hand, these words could be delivered as a powerful statement of truth. They could be received as a promise of cool water to a parched tongue. On the other hand, these words could bitingly mock a soul that is thirsting for freedom. Depending upon the context, these words could be spoken as a veritable heresy.

Justice is a biblical, theological and eternal matter. It is not merely a temporary ethical matter. Justice is central to God’s character and therefore central to the character of mission and discipleship. When these become deeply rooted convictions, Christians will be able to lastingly sustain their engagement in justice ministry.

HE HAS SHOWED YOU, O MORTAL WHAT IS GOOD

Scripture makes it clear that the pursuit of justice for the oppressed is to be the pursuit of every person who would claim to follow Christ. Justice is a matter of discipleship. It is a matter of mission. It is a matter of worship.

Proverbs 14:31 is just one of many scriptures illuminating the inextricable connection between the way we regard oppression and the way God regards our worship of Him. “He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.” In Isaiah, God denies and even condemns more common expressions of worship that have come to mask his people’s inaction on behalf of the oppressed. In his anger against what he considers to be false worship, God not only commands that his people worship him in truth through bringing rescue to the oppressed, but he also gives staggering promises of reward for obedience. Commanding us to seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow, God in turn promises, “though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow”(Isaiah 1:17-18). Insisting that true fasting in worship of God has little to do with self-flagellation but everything to do with setting the oppressed free and breaking every yoke of bondage, God promises, “then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail” (Isaiah 58:6, 10-11).

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