Today is National “Human Trafficking Awareness Day.” 

I am teaching American History this semester and have the awareness we are in the middle of the commemoration of 150 years since the Civil War. This year would be the pivotal year of Gettysburg.

While the Civil War was fought to end slavery in America, the cold awareness needs to grip us again that human slavery has not stopped. There is the human trafficking side we think of when it comes to sexual exploitation. I live in Minnesota, which is one of the highest trafficked states, ironically.

But there is also the labor trafficking side. It is the sweatshops and slave factories in other parts of the world producing the products we love and buy all the time. Some would estimate human trafficking has higher numbers today than in the days of the Civil War.

We don’t need another war. Dear God, we don’t need another war of ANY kind…

But we need awareness. We need ethics. We need to apply pressure. We need to open our eyes to the issues that are still there and see what God may have us do in this time.