The Pied Piper of Prostitution

The slogan has haunted me since nearly three years ago, I first saw the alcohol advertisement plastered all over the streets of Chiang Mai, Thailand. 

"Give 100% to Live 100%"

Tonight, I went prayer walking once more past the bars of familiar streets. Ladies lined the sidewalks in front of windowless, three-story buildings, neon signs and pulsing music beckoning to the night crowd. Primping themselves and powdering their faces, 

their eyes were heavy with dark mascara. 

It's just another night on the job. 

The black spiked heels, the rich red mini skirts, the sheer, lacy tops. This is the life isn't it? Men, a sensation of power, money, pleasure, iPhones, beautiful clothes ~ what more could a woman want? Yet the emptiness in their eyes is a cynical testament to the reality of where "Giving 100%" has lured them to...

I notice the Girl in the Corner, sitting on a bar stool apart from the others. She is 19, she tells me. She has been in Chiang Mai for a year already, separated from her family. She smiles sweetly, accepts the invitation to English Class that I offer, and politely carries on a conversation with me until we exhaust her English and my feeble Thai. We part ways, and I wonder, "What brought her here? What is her story? How did she first buy into the lie that to literally give everything she is will reward her 

with the life she always dreamed of?" 

It's the Pied Piper of Prostitution, and its luring sound is to the tune of cash. Scripture tells us that "the love of money is the root of all evil." [I Timothy 6:10].  After an evening on the streets, I cannot deny the truth or the power of  that statement. The sex trade has many faces - that of the runaway teenager looking for love, the pimp, the club owner, the child whose innocence was stolen, the customer seeking for a thrill and fleshly pleasure, the girl working "the Track" in your own city, the father who sells his daughter for a flatscreen TV,  the drug addict desperate to buy the next shoot up of cocaine, and the young hill tribe woman who is obligated to make the most money possible to send home to her poor family. 

The stronghold of the love of money holds millions captive. 

Actually, make that billions. 

It is a lie that the Enemy has used to manipulate both victim and perpetrator. It is a lie that drives these ladies to work the bars of Asian cities, even as they tell you that they hate the things they have to do. In reality, the shame is overwhelming and the price tag attached is enormous. "Why don't they leave, why do they do this to themselves?" we wonder as we shake our heads in disbelief or point a judging finger. No, for many of them, there may not be physical chains holding them here, forcing them to do what they don't want to do; but they are bound by the lie that money is the answer and 

they have no better choice. 

You have to do whatever it takes to make the most that you can. 

So tonight they do it all over again. Give what they don't want to give - what they shouldn't have to give -  in order to keep up with the Pied Piper's tune. 

I want to run after her. To tell her that it's all wrong, that the catchy slogan

 is not what it seems to be. 

But what of us? What lies have we blindly followed, what precious things have we sacrificed to the god of money, what voice have we chosen to heed over that of our Savior's ~ and what makes us think that 

in return, we will "Live 100%"?

Cradling Eternity

His skin was wrinkled and dry, almost like a little old man's. But he possessed a pair of lungs and a healthy cry that could be heard even from within the warm, humidified isolette that enclosed him. That cry nearly belied the fact that he was still at the age where he should have been cocooned in the quiet safety of his mother's womb. 

I am just a volunteer in the special care nursery of Mae Sot General hospital. I don't pass medications, I don't start scalp IV's, and I don't do assessments on these preterm infants (as much as I'd like to).  I do what I can without overstepping legal boundaries of practice and comforting a crying baby is one thing that I can do.

I stepped over to the isolette where the little man was making his presence known. The pamper that was the size of the ones they make for little girls to put on their dollies was nice and dry. His blanket roll was smooth, his IV site looked fine, and he had just drank an ounce or two of milk. There was no obvious reason why this infant should be 

crying full throttle. 

I opened up the side chambers of the isolette, just big enough to slip your hands through. Gently, I lifted the baby boy and propped him up into a sitting position supported by my one hand with the other resting on his back. Instantly, the crying ceased and he relaxed completely within my hands. His eyes closed and he became 

the picture of perfect contentment. 

It was one of those sacred moments. When everything else around you fades into oblivion, and your practical sense of earthly reality is touched by the breath of Heaven. 

As I cradled this fragile, premature human being within my hands, skin to skin, I had this awed awareness:

"I am holding a bit of Eternity." 

This child is a life. He is a living soul breathed into a tiny frame of flesh and blood. His is a soul that will exist forever. Wrapped up within the miracle of humanity is the eternity of a soul created by the Giver of life. 

That soul was born to Burmese parents only a few days before in the small border town of Mae Sot, Thailand, and now was living and breathing in a small isolette in a corner of the nursery of a government hospital. I am an American nurse, living in the small border town of Mae Sot, Thailand, for only three months and now spending one day a week in the nursery of a government hospital. At this precise point of my lifetime spanning close to three decades and his little life in the big world barely begun, our paths intersected in the nursery of that government hospital. 

Divine Design. There was no coincidence that I was in that place at the same time as this premature child. As I held him, marveling at how God uses our human hands to touch hallowed reminders of Eternity here on earth, I prayed for that little one and his family. I have never met his parents. For all I know, they are refugees living in a camp, or displaced within their own country of Myanmar and seeking medical care across the border, Buddhist, or animistic, or Muslim. Was this child even wanted or was he abandoned by his mother after birth just like the baby boy found by police under a nearby bridge? I don't know the answer to those questions. But I didn't feel the need to know. 

What I do know is that this child has been given life and his life has a purpose. His purpose is to grow up to glorify the Giver of life, His Heavenly Father. What if he never hears of the One who created him and placed him here in this place, for this time in history? Whose fault is it if he does not have someone to teach him about Jesus? What is my role to play in this child's life? 

One day. A few mere moments. Short, heart-felt prayers breathed over him.

That's all. The curtain is closed and my role is finished. It was not a leading role. It wasn't even a supportive role. If anything at all, it was the part of a backstage hand, one of many nameless workers whom the audience never sees but who can either make or break the production depending on how seriously they take their role. 

Every life is beautiful. 

Every life is beautiful because every life has {Eternity} stamped upon it. 

Every day we constantly encounter opportunities that are so much more than the routine happenings that we think they are. It may be only for a few moments, but you smiled at the young woman behind you at the check out counter, and she sensed a genuinely caring spirit. Or it's the day you had a flat tire and while you were waiting for it to get fixed, God prompted you to pray for the mechanic. Maybe you offered a helping hand to the elderly lady approaching the door and she saw Jesus-in-you. Or you opened up your wallet and used your "coffee money" to buy a sandwich at Subway for the homeless man you pass on your way to work every morning. 

Someday, we will see the rest of the story. Someday, we will hear the Father say, "Well done, my child" as He introduces us to the the person who is in Heaven because of a prayer we said for them that we don't even remember...but the seed was sown. 

Like the precious, fragile infant resting in my hands, we may be cradling Eternity and never even realize it.