Speaking out for the Vulnerable

The call of Christ for the oppressed

Feb 14, 2025

I am not a news fanatic. We do not have the television on all day. We listen to music or are content with the quiet. Sometimes local news in the evening, but even that is rare. I subscribe to a couple of news outlets to keep me informed. I check the Top Stories on my phone when I wake up. When I see something alarming I drill down on it. The Substack community is also a place I look for current events and what is happening politically. I have told myself to stop paying attention to news. But I think it is important to stay informed without obsessing over doom and gloom.

However, I am struggling not to doom scroll these days. It comes from my deep passion for the vulnerable and the oppressed. It comes from my concern for the care of my special needs brother. How will these changes affect his care?

Today I am sharing how God began to wreck my mind about caring for the vulnerable and oppressed.

INDIA

In 2010, I went to India on a mission trip. I was 49 and had never been out of the country before. Our trip centered around volunteering in Mother Theresa’s homes in Kolkata. It was a life-altering experience. I have never witnessed the poverty, the begging, the makeshift houses like I witnessed in Kolkata. We stayed at a mission house and just outside the gates was a family of four. Each night they rolled out their pallets and slept on the sidewalk. Each morning they would roll them up and leave to go beg on the streets. The family consisted of a mother and three young children. They bathed from the water hydrants and the little boy would just drop his pants and do what he needed to do. It is a scene I will never get out of my head. It was not uncommon to drive down the street and see others bathing from water hydrants and men turning their backs to the street to urinate.

While we were in Kolkata we also had an opportunity to meet with International Justice Mission (IJM), which works globally to rescue people from human trafficking. The office in Kolkata rescues and restores victims from this horrific form of abuse and oppression. We learned how undercover agents infiltrate bars, restaurants, brick kilns, and other forced labor businesses to “befriend” owners to discover labor and sex abuse. They risk their lives and change their behaviors to fit in. I have utmost respect for these people. Once they are “in” they can observe the activities and seek out victims. When victims are rescued they help survivors thrive in freedom and the IJM lawyers assist the survivors to fight cases in court. The living conditions that victims are found in are horrendous. My heart, mind and eyes were opened to horrors that I had only heard about in movies. This was real. These were real people. It changed me.

Cambodia

For 11 years I would travel to Cambodia to serve alongside a local ministry. We walked in the villages made of sheet metal and tarp and chatted with the villagers. We held Woman’s Retreats teaching about the sanctity of life for the born and unborn. We taught about the love of Jesus and his love for the vulnerable and oppressed. We developed sweet friendships. We held bible schools for children. At an orphanage, we discovered children found tied to trees in the jungles because the parents had died and no one else wanted to take care of them. We learned of the atrocities of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge who had come to power to create a “new race”. All inhabitants of Cambodian cities were expelled to work in agricultural communes. Money, private property and religion were abolished. We walked the killing fields learning of the torture. To this day as rains and floods come, the clothes of the men, women, children beneath are rising to the surface. Each of us wept as we walked and learned. Our contact in Cambodia is married to a woman who lost most of her family. She was “imprisoned” in a Khmer Rouge Camp working in rice fields. When freedom came she walked 100 miles to get back to her home. We met a woman who fled the Khmer Rouge down a steep embankment into a bordering country, stepping on and over dead people. These are stories that I cannot get out of my mind. At our women’s conferences, we provided them with booklets we created and had translated. Included in the booklets were the scriptures and a graphic design to color in. These women would sit for hours listening and coloring. Most had never had coloring books growing up. At the end of the conference, we held a Foot Washing service. The majority of these women grew up with no sense of value. Many came from oppressive situations, so when we sat them in a chair and took towels and water and began to rub their feet with our hands and pray over them, they would sob and pray in their own language. We did not need to know what they were saying. Nor did they need to know what we were saying. Because they knew they were experiencing Love. As I washed the feet of the older ladies, feet that have endured genocide, barefoot escape, the oppression of abuse and poverty, I was struck that we are sisters through Jesus. As Paul has said, there is neither Greek nor Jew, male nor female, slave nor free. We are equal in the eyes of God

My heart is focused on the vulnerable. Once I had seen the things I saw, I could no longer ignore Jesus’ call to help the oppressed, the orphan and the widow, the refugee, the immigrant.

Houston

Along with my international trips I volunteered with three organizations in the Houston area working to combat atrocities of human trafficking and childhood trauma. Each week I spent one day at a shelter for teen girls rescued from sex trafficking. I heard stories of abuse that would rock your world. I would spend one or two days a month at a small school in the Third Ward of Houston, Generation One. (Click the link and learn more). The Third Ward of Houston is one of the highest crime districts in the Houston area. Mike and Kenzie, the founders of Generation One, want to empower the families of these vulnerable areas to be successful. This ministry continues to grow and now their focus has turned to early childhood education. With a separate group, once a month I accompanied a team of ladies who visited “massage parlors” in the Houston area. Little places in small commercial centers that offer walk-in massages but are actually brothels. We would take small decorative bags of lotion and note cards with a scripture verse. One place we visited often, finally let us through the bolted door to visit with a few of the ladies. Most of them were in their sleepwear covered in a robe, their beds lined up against a wall where they would rest between clients. On the mirrors in that room we saw the scripture cards we had given them over the months. Some told us they have no other way to provide for their children. They are told they have no value except what a man will show them. Some of them talked about their husbands, who were just actually their pimps. I often wonder now where some of these ladies are today, but I think I know.

Now

In 2022, my husband and I took over full-time care for my intellectually disabled 65 year-old brother. I wrote about this in three separate posts that you can access here and here. My brother’s care is dependent on Medicaid, Medicare and his monthly Social Security check. We do not receive any other financial assistance from family members. We are fortunate to have financial resources to provide for him. However, not everyone is afforded that privilege. I spent hours on the phone with government agencies learning about the benefits available to my brother. We were blessed to find a local community of special needs adults. Many in that group depend solely on government assistance for their daily needs. Check out the ways that STARC is meeting the needs of these special adults. STARC of Louisiana

The Vulnerable at risk

I have seen with my own eyes the abuse of the most vulnerable at home and around the world. So, when I read about the current administration’s cuts to federal aid and the freezing of funds to USAID, I know personally how decisions like this affect the most vulnerable. Thankfully, people rallied and called to have the Federal Aid memo reversed for now. But USAID funds are still frozen and the agency may be dismantled.

As we read or listen to the news these days, we learn of many innocent victims of the war in Gaza that are now being told to relocate to other countries. The news media tell us that the US government has plans to rebuild a new community in its place. The Palestinians are being promised a better place that includes better housing. Just trust America. But it all comes back to the rich and powerful moving the poor and the oppressed out of sight and out of mind.

We forget that Jesus entered the world during the reign of the Roman Empire. It was a period of civil war and unrest. Yet Jesus rejected Roman politics.

You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles(the Romans) lord it over them, and those in high positions act as tyrants over them. But it is not so among you. On the contrary, whoever wants to become great among you will be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you will be a slave to all. for even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. Mark 10:42-45

Here’s a conversation starter. Is helping the less fortunate just a personal responsibility or the responsibility of a nation as a whole. Isn’t a nation made up of a collection of individuals? I commented on a Instagram post from my Senator. I was responding to a statement he had made about Medicaid. My brother depends on Medicaid and Medicare for his health concerns. As things continue to change day to day, I am concerned about his future health care. Most people had thought provoking comments. However, one person rudely referenced this very topic. “Why should the government take care of your brother and the millions like him. Why don’t you take some personal responsibility?”

I suspect she is only one of thousands of others who feel the same. It goes back to the rich using their power to preserve their privileges regardless of how it affects the poor. I have seen the poor on the streets and witnessed the oppression of the vulnerable in Louisiana, in Texas, in Cambodia, in India. I have looked into their eyes and held their hands and wrapped my arms around them. The story always tells the same way.

Throughout Christian scripture Jesus calls us to speak up for those who have no voice, for the justice of all who are dispossessed. Our churches and Christianity as a whole may not be speaking out but the voice of Jesus is clear—

Speak up for those who have no voice, for the justice of all who are dispossessed. Speak up, judge righteously and defend the cause of the oppressed and needy. Proverbs 31:8-9
Learn to do what is good. Pursue justice. Correct the oppressor. Defend the rights of the fatherless. Plead the widow’s case. Isaiah 1:17
Provide justice for the needy and the fatherless; uphold the rights of the oppressed and the destitute. Psalm 82:3
Speak up for those who have no voice, for the justice of all who are dispossessed. Proverbs 31:8

So, I write. I pray. I contact my legislators. I tell my story and the stories of others I meet along the way. We live with the uncertainties of what lies ahead but also with the certainty that Jesus is still among us as we seek to live out His words. As followers of Christ and as the Church we can put forth our resources to help those who are vulnerable and have no one else to speak up for them.

I am grateful for the opportunities that I have had to travel. Mother Theresa’s book Something Beautiful for God sits on my book shelf reminding me that God sees the down trodden, the oppressed, the forgotten. Mother Theresa’s heart was that everyone would die with dignity. People on the brink of death will be brought to the doors of her homes to die with people loving them as they breathed their last breath. The most destitute people felt respect and love even in their poverty.

Jesus calls us all to this challenge. Jesus taught about the Upside down Kingdom of God where the Last shall be first. He taught and challenged us to bring Heaven to Earth(The Lords Prayer) but it seems that almost always we are more concerned about flipping it right back around. Instead of pursuing Jesus’ teaching of the last will be first, we want to push and trample over others so we can be first and have our own rights, no matter the harm to the disadvantaged.

I want to be better, my prayer is that you do too.