When I woke up this morning and logged onto twitter and facebook, my newsfeeds and timelines were completely flooded with links to the stop Kony videos. I ignored it at first, not really knowing what it was. But being the curious person I am, eventually I couldn’t take it anymore and clicked on one of the links to find out what it was all about.
I was immediately interested and touched just 30 seconds into the video. After the 29 minutes and 59 seconds was over, I realized what all the “hype” was about.
If you have 30 minutes of free time to sit down and watch (and actually pay attention) to this video, then I highly suggest you do it because there is honestly no way for me to try and summarize it or tell you what it’s about. You have to see it to find out for yourself.
I’ve always been someone who is very interested in helping good causes and helping “change the world,” to put it in a cliché way. The man, who made this video, as well as the whole cause itself, reminded me of “Clothe Your Neighbor As Yourself” which is another organization I’m very passionate about. But in reality, these two causes are polar opposites. The reason they resemble each other in my eyes is for the main premise: Changing the world, starting with you.
In Uganda, a man named Joseph Kony abducts children. He takes them from their families, makes them apart of his army, and then trains and forces them to kill. A lot of times, he forces them to kill their own parents. He doesn’t just do this with a few kids. The video will tell you, he’s created an army of 30,000 children and he’s reaching to other countries. This seems like the kind of thing that only happens in movies. But it’s real.
All of these children go to bed in fear every night that they might be abducted. One young boy in the video saw his brother get his neck slit and be killed. He tells the camera that he would rather be dead. He would rather die right now than live another day in fear.
The goal of 2012 is to get Kony arrested and save all of the kids whose lives he has robbed. Lots of action has already been taken and this video was released to continue to spread the word and make it happen.
At the beginning of this video, one of the men says, “Because we couldn’t wait for the institutions and government to step in, we did it ourselves.”
One of the most amazing and powerful things about the Kony project is that ordinary people started it. Those ordinary people made other ordinary people aware and now it is spread over the whole world. 1.1 million people were part of the facebook group when I checked this morning. This made me realize how often we underestimate our own power. We think we’ll never be able to change the world, but the truth it, it all starts with one person. It was one man’s dream to change the world so his son could grow up and be proud of the earth he lived on. That dream became a reality when he visited Africa and started a project to save these kids and stop Kony. He started a movement that will go down in history if we join him.
A lot of this video really broke my heart. Knowing that kids live in fear every day of being abducted just kills me. I feel like it’s easy to say, “Well, it can happen to anyone” and that’s true. But I can go to bed at night and feel safe. There are days when I’m scared of what could happen, but not all the time. If a child gets abducted in Florida, it’s on every newspaper the next morning. Everyone talks about it, it’s on all the news channels, and police/detectives will do anything they can to find that child. It’s not normal to us. It’s not something we expect.
But in Africa, it is normal. The children aren’t going to sleep thinking there’s a chance they could get abducted that night. They’re going to bed wondering which day they’re going to be abducted. It’s not a matter of “if” for them. It’s a matter of “when.” It’s like they know it’s coming. Try to imagine living in this kind of fear every day of your life.
I sat around all day and thought about this. And I’ve decided that I personally don’t think God created the world to be this way. I don’t think that when God made our earth 2000 years ago, He made it to be a destructive and dangerous place. God never intended for the planet to be this violent and this terrifying. God would never want his children to go to bed at night, in fear of being taken away before they wake up in the morning. I don’t think that when God made our earth, He wanted to make it in a way that was harmful to us.
I think it’s natural for us to sit here and ask God “Why?” Why would you let this happen to innocent children? Why won’t You stop this kind of evil? Why are You allowing this to continue happening to Your people?
I don’t think those questions will ever be answered.
But today I realized, that those questions shouldn’t be directed at God. Maybe instead of questioning God, we should be asking ourselves these same questions. Why are WE letting this happen? Why do we watch the video, see the pictures, hear the news, but continue to sit on our couches? Why aren’t WE doing anything to stop it?
The men that started this movement and made this video knew it was time to take action. They knew that the only way to stop Kony was to start trying. It only takes one person, with one idea, and one goal, to change the world. It doesn’t take SWAT teams, institutions, armies, bombs, and guns to stop this kind of evil. It takes one person. That one person can open the eyes of one more person and as the pattern continues, we build a community of people ready to change the world.
We can sit around all day and ask God why He isn’t intervening and stepping in to stop these horrible things that are happening, but at the same time, maybe God is looking at us and saying “what about you?”
When God made Adam & Eve, He created them to take care of His planet. He put them in charge of the world he created for them. God put it in our hands to take care of the earth that He gave us.
We all want to see change in the world. We all want things to be different. It’s time to be that change that you want to see. It only takes one person.
I encourage you to not only watch the video, but also visit kony2012.com and join the movement. You can save the life of one invisible child. And that one life you saved can change the world forever.
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