By: Sarah Underwood, Blog Editor Photo by: Stampede Archive
I wake up to my alarm ringing at 2:30 am.
“Get up. Get up, Sarah. If you don’t go stand, no one else will,” I tell myself.
I drag myself out of bed. As I’m walking to Milligan’s Stand for Freedom event, I just know that I will be the only one there. No one is crazy enough to stand at 3:00 in the morning for something that can never change. It all depends on me.
How stupid and arrogant I have been. As I stand watching over forty other people standing beside me, I am amazed to find that I am not alone.
27 million- that’s a huge number. That’s the number of people living in this world, today, that are stuck in slavery. This morning, Milligan was able to show them that they are not alone.
God help me if I ever believe that it all depends on me again. May God forgive me for thinking that I am important enough for anything to ever depend solely on me.
God has given us all a task. We are no longer ignorant to the 27 million human beings who have names, dreams, desires. There is no excuse for us now. Ignorance is bliss but education brings change. May we rise to the call of a world without chains.
I don’t know what that call looks like for everyone. For Milligan, it looks like a bunch of sleepy-eyed college kids standing together at 3 am. What I do know beyond a shadow of a doubt is that everyone is called. 27 million people is everyone’s problem. We are all in this together now. No one is alone. And together, we all depend on Christ.
Singing the words, “It is for freedom that I am free” with a bunch of college kids at 3 am, I am changed and I find hope. For the first time, I catch a glimpse of what hope looks like in the shadow of a daunting task. 27 million up against 40. The odds are not in our favor. But God is on our side. No one is alone.
milliganstampede
