More special events this January
What do you do when you are at the threshold of a new era, when you find yourself unsure about what tomorrow will bring? What do you do when your prayers are answered in ways different from what you expected?
We are transported once again to the time in the recent past when we bade goodbye to 2016 and welcomed 2017, the new year, with much anticipation. In 2016, we lifted prayers for our country to God but He appears to have kept and continued to be silent about our prayers.
Our response: We are keeping still. With faith and trust, we proceed to let go and let God take over. We are meeting God in His silent place and carrying on a continuing daily dialogue of hope and prayer.
Today, as we write this article, we feel we are again transported into another chapter of our biography and history, together with all others in our present global community. President Barack Obama ends his term and Donald Trump assumes office Friday, January 20 (US time). What kind of political order will result with a Trump leadership? What will happen to national and global security and peace, global economy, to migrants, to refugees, to Mother Nature?
The answers to these questions are very important not only for Americans but for all people of the world, given the superpower status of this country. Will the next American leadership be as unpredictable as weather or as frightening as disasters? Or will the new era usher in more hope, more peace, more security for all?
Today, we do not know. Today, we are anxious but unafraid. Today, we choose to proceed as always with hope and faith. Surely, God has wonderful plans for us all, plans to prosper us all, in His time, in His way.
Aside from religious fiestas and presidential farewell and inauguration, January 2017 is also Human Trafficking Prevention Month. We look forward to more united, collaborative efforts to stem the abusive network locally and globally. We pray that the human trafficking victims will be rescued and restored to their more protective social and economic environment.
We pray there will be less or no more Filipino migrants who will cry during Christmas and New Year because of the pain of separation from their families and the added pain of having been swindled and cheated by kababayans and their local/global trafficking partners. We hope we see happy faces, instead, of well-protected overseas Filipinos. Or better yet, we hope we see happier faces of families who are not forced to be separated by migration but instead kept intact and together within their homes and communities throughout the Philippines.
We also hope the abusive agents and brokers involved in human trafficking will be apprehended and duly punished. These abusive people are often relatives, neighbors, community leaders known and trusted by the victims.
Global and local statistics show a low level of prosecution and convictions. We hope more creative, collaborative partnerships and initiatives can be undertaken locally and globally to strike the abusive peddlers of human labor. We are still just in the first month of this new year. Will we all see soon this year a decisive movement and victory against human traffickers and less or no more victims? Again, let us proceed and pray and act together, with hope, faith, and unity to overcome human trafficking.
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