http://www.registerguard.com/web/updates/27803707-41/eugene-trafficking-spriggs-sex-girls.html.csp

It would be easy and relatively cheap to rent an apartment there and “live” in it and get to know the families that live around it. I put “live” in quotes because no one would have to sleep there. Trust me, in that neighborhood, lots of people do night work of various types, and no one will ask questions so long as you don’t drive a car to and from the apartment. It could serve as an office of sorts. A couple of (probably) women could rent the place, furnish it from Goodwill, and then hang out. If the door is open, children will find it.

I don’t feel like I can do this until my own children are grown, which will be another 9-10 years. But folks whose children are already grown (or who don’t have children) might want to pray over it. I think it would be do-able, especially with prayer and financial support from a faith community.

FWIW…

Then I remembered a conversation I had with someone many years ago. I was walking across the parking lot to the grocery store when this complete stranger approached me. She just wanted to tell me how much she admired the colorful jacket I was wearing. I thanked her for the compliment and was ready to move along when she suddenly grabbed my lapels, looked directly into my eyes, and shouted with great urgency, “Pray for the children! Please, pray for the children!”

She held on so tightly that I quickly promised that I certainly would do just that. Finally, she let me go and walked away. I hurried into the store.

Walking through the grocery store aisles, filling my shopping cart, the stranger’s pleas kept ringing in my ears. I thought, “I made a promise so why not begin now?” I shut out the hustle and bustle of the crowd and prayed. When I got home, I wrote a note to myself: Pray for the children. I vowed to keep my promise and that note reminded me for months.

Today, I don’t remember all those long ago prayers but, after reading the newspaper story, I remembered that promise. So, I begin again to pray specifically for the children, for all children, insisting on understanding their spiritual origin and parentage, and their safety in God’s embrace. Sheltered in Love, watched over by divine Truth, not one child can be left out, abandoned, neglected or abused. Each is “graven… upon the palms of [His] hands.” (Isaiah 49:16)

Will you join me in praying for the world’s children today?
“Whosoever shall receive one of such children in my name, receiveth me.”
Christ Jesus (Mark 9:37)

“Children of light, you are not children of darkness.”
Mary Baker Eddy

Dear God,
Let these innocent women know that they have that strong male side already within them–the Christ presence, both tender and mighty, that leads them out of the shadow of death, by God’s shepherding.

God is Love. That is what the Book says.
The drawing power of Love is inescapable;
Patient, persistent, inevitable as dawn.
Yield to this power. Let it draw you ( just LET it)
From compulsive clutch of evil fantasy.
Fear not the withdrawal. Love casts out fear, too.
Love sends its swiftest, smallest angel, HOPE,
And suddenly Hope is there, opening your prison
from within.
Aiding, persuading both heart and head to steadier goals–
Home, honor, warmth, affection fully earned.
But now you must walk out of your prison.
You must walk out yourself.
You must be a man–a woman– the one that God made,
The one you are from all eternity.

First know how much God loves you–
God, who is Love itself.
Feel this Love flowing around and within you,
Stronger than pull of tide.
There’s no withdrawal of this Love from you
Nor you from Love, for Love is everywhere.
Draw near to Love
Now you are loved
There’s such release of love as brings to view
New heaven, new earth, new everyone, new you.

My frustration built when I arrived home and then realized I needed to mail several family gifts today rather than get to some work that had been waiting for me. While trying to decide which shipping option to use (both seemed to involve hassles), I noticed I was becoming crabby and short-tempered.

So as I began the drive to the UPS store, I really reached out to see what was actually true–God’s truth–about this situation. Almost immediately the idea came to me that if God made each of us in His/Her likeness, then we couldn’t be stressed, self-centered and competing. Like the sun’s rays, each of us must express our source radiating outward… but no two rays cross each other’s paths and block or cancel each other out. I had a ‘lightbulb moment’ revelation that the frustration I’d been feeling wasn’t really emanating from me; it was more like a blanket of assumptions that had been laid over me–a script we tend to buy into this time of year. And I realized that this negative script couldn’t be true for anyone else out there shopping or driving.

Things changed immediately. At the place where traffic usually slows to a crawl, I was able to use another lane that sped me on my way. At the shipping site, only two people were ahead of me, and both employees were being extremely patient and pleasant with the customers. I finished my transaction in a surprisingly short time and was even able to get out of my parking spot easily in a location where there’s often a lot of through traffic and backing out tends to be difficult.

It occurred to me later that this realization I’d had applies to issues of community violence as well to as the holiday rush. God didn’t make us to be a bunch of antagonistic, clashing personalities. By considering the harmony of “He saw everything he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1), we begin to see this higher reality manifested in our day-to-day life.

Even as I’m about to end my jury service, I’m dedicating myself to the service of prayer for my city, for my world.

In the Bible, Jesus encounters this common attitude in the man at the pool of Bethesda. When Jesus asks the man, “Will you be made whole?”, the man can only think to reply in terms of the physics of the situation as he understands them (“I have no man, when the waters are troubled, to put me into the pool…”) But Jesus offered–and showed the man–a salvation from his physical condition that overrode the apparent facts of the man’s situation.

In the same way, if we pray, hoping to see God’s hand in healing any of our issues of community violence, but at the same time assume that it will take certain human footsteps to alleviate the problem, then we’re not open to seeing the power of the Divine displayed in our situation. We’ve come to depend on the physical and behavioral sciences as the ultimate arbiters governing how change will happen. But it isn’t until we acknowledge that there are aspects of reality that have power and influence even though they aren’t measurable in physical ways that we open ourselves to see God’s operation in our lives.

I’ve spent years in blogging communities, and it’s interested me that on the several occasions where one of my fellow bloggers (often someone who isn’t at all religious) will encounter an emergency situation in their lives that makes them post asking for people’s prayers and positive energy, in each case that person has reported back within a few days saying that the situation was harmoniously resolved. I have to think that even with the prayers of those who might not have much confidence in the eventual efficacy of their prayers, the mere fact that they were open to the possibility of prayer being helpful nudged the door open enough that results were clearly manifested.