Consider Half the Sky

I’ve been putting off writing this post because I don’t even know what to say.

Or perhaps I know exactly what to say and am scared to say it.

The same way I was scared to read the book that I knew would say what I was scared to hear.

That every year 2 million girls disappear.

That in our current population there are 60-100 million girls unaccounted for. Aborted because they are girls, discriminated to death between the ages of 1-5 by not receiving medical care, sold into sex-trafficking, dying from obstructed labor and fistulas, victims of honor-killings and mass rapes. Consider:

More girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the battles of the twentieth century. More girls are killed in this routine ‘gendercide’ in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the twentieth century.

All told, girls in India from one to five are 50 percent more likely to die than boys the same age. The best estimate is that a little Indian girl dies from discrimination every four minutes.

There are one million to two million women currently enslaved as prostitutes in India alone — women who are raped for hours on end, living in cells, for no pay.

Women aged fifteen to forty-four worldwide are more likely to be maimed or die from male violence than from cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined.

I don’t know– I think God loves girls.

I think He created them in His image. I think He made them as the crowning achievement of His creation. I think He made them co-heirs of the grace of life. I think in Christ, in essence, there is neither male nor female.

We get so caught up in gender roles within the church (a few thoughts on that here), women fighting and clawing for platforms and men anxious and insecure or overbearing and reactive in their roles …

The real battle has less to do with who can preach and more to do with who can live.

We’re concerned that a man earns $100,000 while a woman only earns $70,000. And in the time it takes to debate that, ten more Indian girls have died because they are girls.

Please hear my heart, I’m trying not to rant. But we desperately need some perspective. 

Consider looking down on this globe from heaven. Consider the various regions, problems, needs. Consider that the the Cambodian girl sprawled out in the brothel is just as much as daughter of the King as my own precious blue-eyed angel asleep in her bed.

Consider.

That’s all we need. Consider. Would you consider reading this book? Consider learning. Consider looking at hard things. Being bothered. Getting disturbed. There are a million ways to help. Gospel for Asia, World Vision, Compassion, India Partners.

Just consider doing something. Ask Him what. He knows.

He’s the only one who holds all the sky. 

{Thanks, friends, for considering, and reading.}

*Can’t squeeze in time to read the whole book? This 18-minute video covers the main points, I watched it while brushing my teeth and getting ready one morning in the bathroom. Note, you probably won’t agree with everything said here, but worth considering. Check it out!