This series spotlights several segments of the world that are precious to God but don’t make the news. I call them God’s Other Children. The prototype has been the Musahar people of Nepal. They are eschewed by their neighbors, abandoned by the government, and ignored by the church. Yet in the eyes of God, they, too, are the very ones for whom our Lord was crucified.
Others we have looked at are the persecuted church (North Korea), children (on the streets and in war zones), the hungry (Chad), and the least evangelized (Iran).
Today I turn to a group who are the victims of the deepest depravity of humankind. Though the circumstances of the prior groups are lamentable, what is done to slaves is barbarous, cruel, and savage in the extreme.
Over the next weeks we will learn about slaves in the mines in Pakistan, kilns in India, the fishing industry of Ghana, trafficking in the Philippines, factories in Bangladesh, and the Super Bowl. We open our view on slaves and slavery by seeing into the heart of the Father of these children. We find that the unsearchable riches of God’s love have found the hiding places of the darkest abysses of horror.
Paul gives lofty expression of that love. In the conclusion of Romans 8 he declares all the possible things can separate us from the love of God but don’t. In the list is one piece outside the experience of most: nakedness. Yet that for all who are in slavery, that is precisely the circumstance that holds hope. Whatever the abhorrent treatment of being naked or otherwise abused, that has not removed them from God’s love.
We recoil when we come close to the vivid details of OSEC (Online Sexual Exploitation of Children) or CSECM (Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children Material). Like touching a hot surface, we draw back, satisfied just to know it is hot. These images, these stories we just don’t want to hear or see. Besides, we know they will break our hearts.
God does not recoil; he does not withdraw from them to a safe distance. Rather, he draws close to them. He stays close enough that he hears their muffled cries, he sees the beatings, he knows their despair. He stands beside them when they are working from 6 to 6 with little food, fear of beatings, and unremitting hard work. He feels their fear with darkness comes, the time when women are taken out to be raped. Nothing separates them from their heavenly father, and, yes, it breaks his heart.
With his broken heart he has outrage. For he sees the people who perpetrate these atrocities. He knows each by name and records what they have done to his children. No, he does not sit motionless in response. He will bring a day of justice. They have not seen it yet, but they will know how fearful it is to come before the living God.
The prophet Nahum opens with the co-mingling of God’s mercy and his vengeance. “The Lord is slow to anger, but he is a jealous and avenging God. He rages against his enemies and will by no means clear the guilty” (Nahum 1:1-3). After all, what kind of God and heavenly Father would he be if the plaintive cries of his children went unanswered. He has a day, and the words used for that day of judgment are: wrath, thunder, curse, fury, and anger.
As there is a day of judgment for the evil, so he has a day of redemption for these children.
Ezekiel gives us a picture of what their life will be. He fills the description with these images: living in the wild and sleeping in peace; showers not of rain but of blessings; fruit and vegetation that will feed without giving out; bars of previous yokes broken; a land with no fear, no insults, and no hunger. Ezekiel closes with these welcome words: “You are my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, and I am your God, says the Lord God” (Ezek. 34:31).
Theirs is a special case, however, because of a missing piece of God’s ordinary plan. Paul describes the way the Kingdom expands: “Everyone who calls in the name of the Lord shall be saved. But how can they believe in God unless someone has been sent to proclaim him?”
Someone has come to us and told us of the Savior. But for these children, no one has been sent. With rare exceptions, none of these has been told of the hope of a Savior—none in the brothels, none in the mines or boats or factories, none where trafficked women are held captive.
For them, the day of redemption will be the day of discovery. For the first time they will see the light of God’s love. The unknown love of a mother, the care of a father so barely known in their lives here—all that will be waiting in the embrace of their heavenly Father. He will be their Great Physician who will remove their scars and treat their wounds. He will heal their memories and remove their fear by his perfect love. And out of his broken heart will flow his tears of joy.
Luke tells us of the tears of a woman. She was “from the streets” and had quietly entered the place where a Pharisee had prepared a feast for Jesus Christ. She stood behind him and opened a jar of perfume. Then she bathed his feet and washed them with tears—her tears of joy for the one who loves her and all God’s children like her.
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