"He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you?To do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."
~Micah 6:8
How can we really relate to someone who lives in extreme poverty? How can we really know what it's like to be hungry if we've never experience hunger?
Here at YWAM Tijuana we are learning about what it means to "DO justice." There are hundreds of injustices in this world: slave labor, hunger, poverty, unclean water, lack of education, child prostitution, etc. We believe that God wants us to do something about these injustices. Although we don't live in these situations on a daily basis, there are definitely things we can do to feel more compassion and empathy for the people suffering for injustices worldwide.
So every Monday at our base, we have a time of prayer and intercession for people in the world that are experience injustice in our world. This way we get God's heart for those who are suffering. Then on Tuesdays, we take Steps of Justice - we take action.
Week 1 we talked about hunger. We prayed on behalf of the child who dies every 5 seconds because of a hunger-related illness. This is something that can be prevented, and is completely unjust. Besides that, there are over 1 billion people in the world that live in hunger - that includes an estimated 49 million people in the United States. That's 1 in 7 households that struggle to put food on the table. Wow, I guess the problem of injustice isn't that far from home after all.
Week 2 we focused on water. Unclean drinking water causes several different illnesses, including diarrhea and dysentery, and children are especially at-risk because there bodies are not strong enough to fight off these sicknesses. On that Monday, we arrived at the base and there were water bottles full of dirty water - brown, cloudy, things floating and the top and dirt sitting at the bottom. We were faced with the reality that for some people in the world, that's all they have access too.
For those two issues, we went fasted for a day to empathize with those who go hungry, and went without water for understand better what it's like to be without access to clean water. This week was Week 3 and we went without shoes for a day. This topic was very real to me because I see homeless people walking the streets without shoes or children running around barefoot in the colonia almost every day. But how is this an injustice? Well, although it can be fun to run barefoot in the grass in the summer time, here it's not a choice - it's the lifestyle of those living in poverty and have to choose between putting food on the table or buying shoes for their kids. Not an easy choice to make, considering going barefoot in the dirt leads to all kinds of soil-related diseases that can penetrate the skin, not to mention the danger of stepping on broken glass or a rusty nail. Not having shoes also keeps kids from being able to go to school here in Mexico, as its a required part of the uniform even in public schools. So yesterday I went without shoes. It was cold, and my feet hurt walking on the rocks and dirt, but that's nothing compared to what those living in poverty experience every day. As a community here at YWAM Tijuana, we took off our shoes and decided to donate them to the people living on the streets that don't have any. That was our way of "doing justice" this week.
It has been said that "Justice is what Love looks like in public." That's what we're trying to do, just as God requires of us.
Get more info about how you can take "Steps of Justice" with us at http://www.stepsofjustice.org
