On A Lighter Note

One of the many ministries of the University of the Nations in Kona is a vision God gave to Paul and Susi Childers called “a voice for the voiceless.”  Susi is an excellent photographer and she uses her passion and gift to bring home many of the injustices faced around the globe.  Paul and Susi particularly focus on issues of gender injustice, and, to help educate the Church they have produced a thirty day prayer booklet for the voiceless. Their website can be found here and pictures, calendars, and prayer booklets can be ordered here and here. 

Tara has been praying and studying faithfully through the prayer booklet, amazed by its facts and stories, so I thought I would put some excerpts here and encourage others to support the Childers’ amazing ministry by visiting their website and purchasing and/or giving.  Each of the thirty days of prayer focus on issues such as AIDS, abortion, rape, Afghanistan, Iran, pornography, etc.

In the day discussing “Female Laborers” the book notes that the majority of women earn about 75% of what males earn for the same work.  In Africa, the laboring oor will work 16 hour days, fetching wood, water, farming, and cooking and caring for her family.  As a result, they have no time to educate their children and the next generation remains in poverty.  In some cultures a man will work about half as many hours as a woman.  It is estimated that of the 550 million laborers in the world, 60% are women. 

After interviewing several women in a particular village, the Childers wrote this:

The women of the village would laugh about it, look up from their work as they cooked around the fire, and push their tongues through spaces once filled by teeth and smile.  They tried to perpare me for the day when the village midwife would put a knife between my legs and cut me. 

You’ll scream until you fade into dark dreams, then wake up growing in pain.  The most pain you will ever know.

You’ll pray to God that you could die.  It is one of the times in your life you’ll wish you were born a man.

But, you won’t have to do any work for a week!  And then they would all laugh.  Around the circule they would go, energized by each other’s playfulness after another tiring day, each new comment like another stick thrown on the fire, until they felt warmed and comforted by laughter. 

A week of rest, of sleeping, of nothing.

You’ll feel restless with so little to do.

But oh, you’ll remember that week, daughter.  when you’re out in the field planting seeds with your own hands, bent over the dry earth.

When you’re walking all that way from the river with a jug of water on your head, the sun beating down on you.

When you’re fetching firewood, or watering the goats. 

When your husband chooses to lie with you at night.  Or in the morning or in the afternoon!

When you bury another baby in the ground, you’ll remember that week of rest.  …

You’ll wish there was more skin left to cut, daughter.  There will be days when you will wish you were thirteen again and that you could feel that cold flint knife against your thigh (describing female genital circumcision/mutliation).  You’ll wish you could bite that stick between your teeth and welcome the pain, if only to have a few days of rest. 

At the end of the story, the book encourages us to pray for the end to such exploitation.  It suggests the development of business in such areas by godly business owners, whether there might be profit or not, to bring the gospel to such areas.  And, of course, those who go with the gospel of Jesus to such areas of the world can not only teach about Jesus but also can teach about biblically based family structures and godly concepts of work and rest.