When We Do Nothing

I read a story this morning capturing interviews with a group called Project GRL. These beautiful hearts go out into red light districts with vans hosting medical professionals who give free care to women who are in a prison of prostitution. One of the ladies speaks of how it took her time to build up the courage to go into a van. She needed help but was fearful of the smiling faces that greeted her with love in their eyes – offering her help that she needed and wanting nothing in return.

Once she said yes to accepting their help, she began to open up to the volunteers about what had happened to her. She spoke about the moment her mother gave her away (selling her to a man who wanted to take her as a wife). This woman was taken into captivity and became a sex slave and a mother. Her son who was equally subjected to the dark took his own life at age nine.

In closing her testimony she said,…

‘Those who do nothing are contributing to the problem.”

I thought about how different our world might be if we all made the choice to act when we see another hurting, entangled in abuse or simply absent with a fear that we recognize as abnormal – one of the many characteristics of one who’s been isolated in darkness. What if silence became the peculiar response to another’s pain and a helping hand was the first-response we make? What if we stopped speaking about what we perceive as wrong in social media posts and gossip circles but instead used our voice to formulate action plans and thereafter went into the trenches to pave the way of freedom for another?

When we do nothing we are in a sense saying we accept, tolerate and agree with what we know is wrong – normalizing in societal views what we ourselves would certainly never wish for our own lives or that of our children to experience. Yet by doing nothing, are we assisting in building the very traps that left unattended grow stronger and therefore increasing the odds that such a tragedy could knock on the door of our own children and grandchildren?

I say “yes” to saying “no” to doing nothing.