Why Have you forsaken Me?

I shall not soon forget walking the streets in the Philippines with a couple of my experienced Soldiers.   They knew the neighborhood quite well and began to teach me much about what I was seeing.  Each bar along this particular strip was a bonafide brothel.  They would point out how the operations worked.  The outside girls were there to entice and bring in anyone who was willing to come in for a simple drink.  Once inside there were opportunities for patrons to pay a certain price and anyone of the workers would comply to his demands.

For someone who has grown up in small town America, this was beyond disturbing. You could see it on their faces, that question the Psalmist so honestly puts forth, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  : and are so far from my cry and from the words of my distress?  O my God, I cry in the daytime, but you do not answer : by night as well, but I find no rest." (Psalm 22:1-2)

This by the way is the same prayer our Lord put forth on the Cross just before his death.  This is a season where my context of being a privileged white male, requires I hear the prayers of brokenness and the cries of oppression especially from my place of comfort.  This month I must claim how far we still have yet to go to make sure women all over the globe are invited to the table as equals.

Lord thank you for this reminder...
In Christ,
Jeremy