Beauty in the Lowly

This past week I had the opportunity to visit Vancouver. Youth leaders from my church and I took eleven middle school students on a short term 'mission' trip. One of my colleagues refers to it more as an 'awareness raising' trip, though we did serve some ministries. We teamed up with YWAM (Youth With A Mission) Vancouver. The week was very powerful and I want to focus on a specific aspect of it.

We had an evening where one of the YWAM staff members, an awesome servant of the Lord named Ryan, shared with us about Human Trafficking and the Sex Trade Industry. I've worked some with this issue in my past when I myself was on staff with YWAM in Seattle, and traveled to work with YWAM in Thailand. This is a major issue for Thailand itself and has become something quite close to my heart. So when Ryan began discussion of this topic, I found myself getting very emotional. In fact, I wept quite a bit. I'm sure some of the students were confused about my reaction, but I doubt they were concerned.

Such an issue causes us to face the reality that a lot of women, men and children are made victims of a violent industry. They are forced into it usually with violence, threats, and rape. Children in not only foreign countries but even our own are sold into a modern day form of slavery by their parents or recruiting under false pretenses (with the promise of a good job in another city) only to be throw into the violent world of prostitution. And yet a blind eye is turned because people 'cannot handle such an ugly truth'.

We look down on prostitutes as the scum of the earth or as twisted women who are willing to sink low enough to subject themselves to a degrading profession. And yet we fail to see that they themselves are victims. They are victims of kidnapping, poverty, addiction, violence and rape. We see ugly. And God sees beauty. That's right. He sees beauty.

He sees His children, His beautiful children being used and used and used. And His heart breaks. Jesus reached out to prostitutes with love and grace and mercy, even in a time and culture that found this highly unacceptable. Jesus saw women and men who felt no worth and no beauty. And all He saw was the beautiful and loved children of God.

In Vancouver there are many things we might consider ugly. It became apparent to me by the cities division between 'ghetto' and 'high end'. The line is almost as clear as day and night - when walking the streets one would notice an immediate change from poverty to wealth within one block. The poor, the homeless, the drug addicts, the prostitutes, the desperate are being pushed and forced into one corner of the city so that they don't have to be seen; so that we can turn a blind eye to the 'ugly'. Yet God sees beauty in these people; His children.

I want to challenge you, like God has challenged me, to see the beauty in the places society considers ugly. To see beauty in the faces of men and women who are covered in dirt and grime and oil and shame. To see beauty in children of God who are made victims to addiction and violence and rape and poverty and the sins of others and the sins of themselves. And look yourself in the mirror today. Ask yourself what difference there is between you and lowest of the lowelys. Though your lifestyle me look different, are you really better than them? In the eyes of God, are you more important, more valuable, more beautiful? Or are you the same? Are we all, each and every one of us, poor and wealthy, dirty and clean, really just the same?

Yes. Yes, we are. And praise God for it.

(View blog on it's website www.ruggedbeauty.blogspot.com)