A Whistleblower

This past summer I read A Long Way gone about the life of a child soldier who wrote his story. It is an amazing yet heart wrenching account of what children 4-18 are experiencing all across central Africa.  I have been hearing about the child soldier issue for 7 years now, and it has always stirred something in me so deep.  This stirring is what led us to war-stricken Congo to adopt.

So my sweet friend Sharon shared this with me and it just tore me up. After reading this story today, I was just so burdened.  Today the worst thing that happened to me was my bank card got cancelled due to a detected fraud risk and I had to go sort it out.  The worst thing that happened to my 4 year old son was he had to stay in his room quietly for 1 hour during rest time.

Yet there are little boys his age in Congo forced to fight, and since they are too small to hold a gun, they give them whistles and send them to the front lines of battle, hoping to at best scare the enemy, at worst be a warning for the rest of the troops that battle is imminent. Then these little boys die, armed with a whistle, torn from their families, forced to sleep in a hole in their own excrement. 
I guess a lot of people shake their fists at God when they hear things like this. They wonder why God lets this stuff go on when we sleep comfortably in our soft beds and air conditioned homes, send our kids to good schools, have an excess of food and clothes. But sometimes I wonder if we are shaking our fists at the wrong person.  What are we doing to get involved, how are we living differently because of this. What kind of prayers are we praying at night with our children asking God big things and interceding for the oppressed, the unjustice, and the fatherless.
I was checking a waiting list of children in Congo the other day (through another agency, not ours) and there was a 4 year old boy on the list.  He had a bright smile and dark, dark skin.  He was 4 years old and had been raped. That is Wheeler's age... Heavy....

Please God. Open my eyes to how I can pray, what I can do, what you are asking of me. Don't let me just look at the information and just feel pity, let it move me to action. Let me become a whistleblower for you, a whistleblower for the children who have no voice.

(*Pictures courtesy of fallingwhistles.com, you can purchase a whistle necklace and proceeds go to peace coalition in Congo)