The plight of the migrant workers

I edited a newsletter for a missions organization today. The newsletter intends to call for prayers, help and attention as the organization plans a three-day conference to wrestle with an important issue affecting millions of migrant workers in China. Teenage boys and girls are leaving rural China by the tens of thousands everyday to seek work in the richer, coastal regions. When so many young, clueless, and restless teenagers live together in tight quarters away from home and parents, you can imagine the resulting social issues: widespread exploitations, gambling, substance abuses, premarital and extramarital sex, unwanted pregnancies, abortions, homosexual activities, suicides and what not.

The conference intends to first build awareness among Christian counselors and pastors and then educate them to help stem the plight of these vulnerable mass. As I begin to think about the urgency of the need, I can't help feeling despair. The number of young people involved are in the tens of millions but the number of equipped Christian coworkers is so few and far between. Even if I were to cry out to God like Isaiah and said "I will go, send me," sadly I am not qualified to help. I don't even know how to begin to help. A few warm-blooded volunteers or some selected counseling material cannot solve a problem as vast as this one. It is multi-faceted. The visible and discernible issues involved are physical, psychological, educational, social, economical and political. But sin is at the bottom of all these. The sinful nature of men is being exploited to the fullest here.

Satan is going all out to destroy. Satan is enslaving a whole generation of young people by enlisting an immensely powerful yet extremely effective tool: greed. All you need to start this human disaster is the greed of one person. He sees the material riches that he doesn't have. So he leaves home to seek his fortune. When he succeeds, he will return to show off. Now the seed of greed is multiplied. More and more young people will traverse the same path. Only no one is waiting to help them grow and watch out for their welfare. They will arrive in a world where everyone just watches out for himself and his benefit. It is a trap of no exit. Young mothers would rather give up their babies to be raised by grannies in the village than to return to the rural "dump" of a home. How can they escape this trap when they believe they are escaping the trap of poverty in the first place? From the beginning of time, human beings have been migrating to escape hardship. Satan is simply using the same trick he used back in the Garden. Eve saw the fruit and ... she ate. He tempted Eve to sin, didn't he? And he shall tempt all humankind away from God.

If God is not love, then we truly should give up in despair. Sin wins and that will be the end of the story. But praise be to God, there is hope. Satan's celebration shall prove to be premature. Years ago I left home to come overseas doing very much the same thing these migrants are doing today. Even though I didn't know it at the time, my life was in peril all the same. Except God wouldn't let me fall to the pit. He caught me and pulled me into His fold. He wouldn't let me out of His sight even as I rebelled again and again against Him. By the blood of my Lord Jesus, the Heavenly Father gave me hope for a bright future. It is a future with the presence of the loving God instead of a future of torment in the eternal furnace. He did it then and He shall do it now because of the promise of saving grace.

God shall rescue these little ones from the hand of Satan. He shall do it not so much with the strength of men, but with the power of the Cross and the life born of the Spirit. Long ago, He had spoken through Jesus: the harvest is ripe in need of laborers. But not so fast, Jesus was not calling men to use their ways and methods. Jesus called: "pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send laborers." Will you pray together with me? May the power of the Gospel overcome what is impossible to men. Amen.