To the soul filled with the Holy Spirit, 

and freed with an eternal love, 

the Christian hope gives peace and power by 

restoring the broken proportions of the mind; 

and tranquillizes the restlessness of a spirit 

that unconsciously feels, "cabined, cribbed, confined," 

It is this faithfulness to our deepest nature — 

the power we receive from it, 

the quiet we find in it, 

in a waking conscience, 

a self-forgetful heart, 

an ungrudging hand, 

that gives to the Christian view of life 

its most irresistible persuasion upon the heart.

Thoughts ever earnest for the truth; in a perpetual outlook of hope from our lowliness toward an infinite glory.  

For myself, I confess it is the only evidence that seems to give me true, serene, steadfast faith. 

Yet when, in darker moods of thought, 

I search for some narrower, intellectual ground of trust

and try to believe by argument alone, I sometimes doubt whether I do more than imagine I believe."

Abridged James Martineau.

“Beyond the company of the great and good 

stands a vast and varied crowd: 

no line must forbid their passage; 

some span of sympathy must embrace them too. 

No proud mysteries or secret rites guard the Christian brotherhood; 

even wandering guilt must be sought and brought home, 

and penitence lingering on the steps must be invited within. 

Christ will not remain head of the “whole family” 

if its forlorn members are cast off in selfish shame, 

and no gentle care is given to smooth their path of return."

Here is the beauty of the original – 

"Beyond the company of the great and good, a vast and various crowd is scattered round: 

no line must be drawn which they are forbid to pass: some span of sympathy must embrace them too. 

No proud mysteries, no secret initiation, 

guards the entrance to the Christian brotherhood; 

even wandering guilt must be sought for and brought home; and penitence that sits upon the steps must be asked to come within the door. 

Christ will not remain at the head of the " whole family," 

if its forlorn and outcast members are simply put away in selfish shame, and no gentle care is spent to smooth the pathway of return." James Martineau. 

This story has been circulating and it’s definitely worth a share—whether it’s true or not.

Biker Bought Teenage Girl At Gas Station Human Trafficking Auction For $10,000

My name is William "Hammer" Davidson. I'm sixty-nine years old. Vietnam vet. Been riding for forty-four years.

I've seen evil. Real evil. The kind that wakes you up screaming fifty years later.

But nothing prepared me for what I heard through a bathroom wall at a gas station outside Kansas City at 3 AM.

I'd been riding for twelve hours straight. Coming back from my brother's funeral in Colorado. Cancer took him at sixty-five. Too young. I was running from grief, needed coffee and a bathroom break.

The men's room shared a thin wall with the women's room. That's why I heard them so clearly.

"Fifteen hundred. She's damaged goods. Tracks on her arms."

I froze.

"Two grand. She's young. Fourteen, maybe fifteen. Still profitable."

My blood turned to ice.

Then I heard her voice. Young. Terrified. "Please. My mom's looking for me. Just let me call her."

They laughed. One slapped her. The sound echoed through the wall.

"Five thousand. Final offer. I'll have her working in Denver by sunrise."

I stood at that sink with my hands shaking. This was human trafficking. Right here. Right now.

The door opened. Three men walked out. Behind them, a teenage girl. Thin. Bruised face. Dirty clothes. Her hands were zip-tied.

She looked right at me. Mouthed two words: "Help me."

They were heading to a white van in the parking lot. I had maybe ten seconds before they'd be gone forever.

I pulled out my wallet and stepped in front of them.

"How much for the girl?"

They turned. Hands moving toward weapons. Sizing me up. Six-foot-two biker in leather.

"Ten grand," one said. "Cash. Right now."

I showed them the money. Fifteen thousand I'd withdrawn for my brother's burial expenses. "I've got it. She's mine."

The girl's face crumbled. She thought I was another monster. Another buyer.

They took the cash. Walked away. Got in their van and drove off.

I turned to her. She backed away.

"Don't touch me."

"I won't. I'm calling the police."

"No!" She lunged for my phone. "They'll send me back! To the group home where this started!"

I lowered the phone. "Tell me."

Her name was Macy Rodriguez. Sixteen. Foster kid since age eight. The woman running her group home had been selling the girls for years. The ones nobody cared about. The runaways. The addicts.

"She got me hooked," Macy said, showing me the track marks. "Said it would make it easier. I've been clean three days. Since I ran. But they caught me in Topeka. Been passing me around since."

Three days. This child had been trafficked across state lines for three days and nobody noticed.

"Your mom—"

"Dead. OD'd when I was seven. I don't have anyone."

Of course. That's how they chose victims.

I looked at this broken sixteen-year-old with dead eyes and track marks and bruises. The system had failed her at every single turn.

"Macy, I'm going to help you. But you have to trust me."

She laughed bitterly. "Trust the biker who just bought me?"

I pulled out my knife. She flinched hard.

"I'm cutting the zip ties." I did. Then handed her my phone. "Call whoever you want. Run if you want. I won't stop you."

She stared at the phone. "I don't have anyone to call."

"Then let me call someone who can actually help."

I called Luther, our club's lawyer. Woke him at 3 AM. "I need help. Trafficking situation. Sixteen-year-old victim. Need safe placement."

Thirty minutes later, two cars arrived. A woman from a trafficking victim's advocacy group. A social worker Luther trusted personally.

Macy panicked. "You said you'd help!"

"I am. These people specialize in this. They know what you've been through."

Jennifer, the advocacy director, approached slowly. Rolled up her own sleeve. Track marks, faded but visible. "Fifteen years ago, I was you. Someone helped me. Now I help others."

Macy broke down sobbing. Jennifer held her.

The social worker pulled me aside. "You know you committed a felony tonight? Participating in a trafficking transaction?"

"Yeah."

"The police will have questions."

"Let them ask."

I gave my statement. Described everything. The men. The van. My bike's dashcam had captured footage. Partial VIN visible.

"This might crack open a case we've been working for six months," the detective said. "What about you? You paid ten thousand dollars."

"I don't want it back. Use it for her. Whatever she needs."

Macy went to the safe house that night. Started the long road of detox and healing.

I visited three days later. She was in withdrawal. Shaking. Sick. But alive.

"Why'd you help me?" she asked.

"Because you asked me to."

"That's it?"

"That's everything."

"Other men saw me that night. At different truck stops. They looked away. Or they—" She couldn't finish.

"I know."

"Why didn't you?"

I thought about Vietnam. About times I'd looked away. Times I'd known something was wrong and chosen silence. It had haunted me for fifty years.

"Because I've looked away before. Different war. Different evil. I wasn't doing it again."

The police arrested Mrs. Patterson and two other group home staff members. Seventeen girls testified. Seventeen children she'd sold.

The trafficking ring fell apart. Five men arrested, including the three from the gas station. My dashcam footage helped identify them. They're all serving twenty-plus years.

Macy's recovery was slow. Painful. Detox. Therapy. Learning to trust again.

I visited once a month. Brought books. Helped with homework. Just showed up.

On her seventeenth birthday, she asked, "Why do you ride?"

"Freedom. You're in control. You decide where to go. Nobody owns you."

She understood that immediately. "Can you teach me?"

"When you're ready."

On her nineteenth birthday, she called. "I'm ready."

I taught her on a small Honda. She was terrified, then determined, then joyful.

"I'm flying," she said after her first solo ride, tears streaming down her face. "I'm actually flying."

She got her license. Bought her own bike. Started riding everywhere. To campus. To therapy. To the safe house where she now volunteered.

"I'm going to be a social worker," she told me. "The right kind. The kind who actually protects kids."

"You'll be great at it."

"Because I know what it's like to need saving?"

"Because you know what it's like to be saved by someone who didn't look away."

Macy's twenty-three now. Has her social work degree. Works with trafficking victims full-time. Testifies at trials. Saves girls who were her six years ago.

She still rides. Purple Harley Sportster covered in trafficking awareness stickers.

Last month we organized "Macy's Run for Freedom." Two hundred bikers. Raised fifty thousand dollars.

At the end, Macy gave a speech.

"Seven years ago, I was sold in a gas station bathroom. Three men bidding on me like livestock. I'd given up. Accepted I'd die young in some hotel room and nobody would care."

She looked at me. Her eyes full.

"Then a biker overheard. He could have walked away. Called police and let them handle it. Instead, he stepped in. Put himself at risk. Bought me so he could set me free."

"People ask why I trust bikers. Why I call them family. It's because when everyone else—the system, the police, regular people at truck stops—when everyone looked away, a biker didn't."

"He saw a sixteen-year-old mouth 'help me' and he helped."

Two hundred bikers were crying.

"So when people tell me bikers are dangerous, I tell them they're right. Dangerous to traffickers. Dangerous to abusers. Dangerous to anyone who hurts the innocent. Because bikers don't look away."

She's right. We don't.

That night changed me. Changed our whole club. We started training. Learning signs of trafficking. How to spot victims. Who to call.

We've helped four more girls since Macy. Four more times we noticed something wrong and acted.

Each one is alive. Free. Healing.

The ten thousand dollars? I never wanted it back. Used it for Macy's first apartment. Security deposit. Books. Whatever she needed.

"I'll pay you back," she said once.

"You already did. By surviving. By helping others."

Macy has a photo in her apartment. Me and my bike outside that gas station. We went back years later so she could take it.

"Why come back?" I asked.

"To remember. This is where I died and got reborn. Where someone saw me as human instead of property."

The caption reads: "My hero. My savior. My dad."

That last word destroys me every time.

I never had kids. Couldn't. Medical reasons. It haunted my marriage. Part of why I rode so much. Running from that emptiness.

Then a sixteen-year-old mouthed "help me" at 3 AM.

And I became a father.

Not through blood. Through choice. Through showing up when it mattered most.

Macy Rodriguez is my daughter. She calls me Dad. I call her my kid. We're family.

It started because I refused to ignore evil. Because I heard trafficking through a bathroom wall and wouldn't look away.

Because sometimes the most important thing you can do is stop at the right gas station at the right moment.

And pay attention.

Macy starts her master's program next fall. Specialized trafficking victim advocacy. She's going to change the system that failed her.

"I'm going to make sure no other girl is sold by the person meant to protect her," she says.

She will. I believe that completely.

Because Macy survived hell. Escaped. Healed. And now she's becoming the person she needed seven years ago.

The person who doesn't look away.

The person who acts.

The person who saves.

Just like a biker at a gas station taught her.

I keep that moment close. The moment she mouthed "help me" and I had to choose.

Look away or act.

Run or stand.

Ignore or intervene.

I chose intervention. And it gave me a daughter. Gave Macy a life. Gave four other girls freedom.

All because I was too stubborn to let evil win in a gas station bathroom at 3 AM.

People ask what makes someone a hero. I don't have a good answer.

I just know that when a child asks for help, you help.

When you hear evil, you fight it.

When someone mouths "help me," you don't look away.

You never look away.

That's not heroism. That's just being human.

But in a gas station at 3 AM, being human was enough to save a life.

To start a family.

To change everything.

Macy's free now. Flying on her purple Harley. Saving others. Living the life those men tried to steal.

And I get to call her my daughter.

Best ten thousand dollars I ever spent.

 Critical advice for young struggling Christians

 

“Emotional and spiritual poverty is what most of us have to dread, and if we wish for spiritual returns, we must make spiritual investments.

Many of us are hampered by the dreariness and dullness of the education and influences we receive.

But this is no excuse for sinking into a kind of melancholy bankruptcy, and moving through the world disheartened and disheartening, 

rich only in the capacity for woe.

A great teacher has an extraordinary power—not only to draw out the finest capacities from the finest minds,

but to give even second-rate minds the conviction that knowledge is interesting and worth attention.

If we have missed the influence of such a teacher,

we must resolutely put ourselves in touch with great minds.

We shall not burst into flame at once;

and the process may feel like rubbing one dry stick against another.

And no one can prescribe the path, for we must advance along the slender line of our own interests and gifts.

 

Yet we can all find one writer who revives and inspires us;

and if we persevere, the narrow path slowly widens into a road, while our whole mental and spiritual landscape takes shape around us.

One thing, fortunately, of which there is abundance in the world is good advice; 

and if we feel at a loss, 

we can turn to someone who has a clearer vision of finer things, 

whose delight is fresh and eager, 

whose mind sparks and ignites ours, 

and whose faith and way of handling life is gracious and generous.

One thing, then, I wish to urge is that we take up the pursuit in an entirely practical way; as Emerson said, with his splendid blend of common sense and idealism,

“Hitch our wagon to a star.”

It’s easy enough to lose ourselves in beautiful feelings that never quite turn into spiritual progress, and to believe that only our cramped conditions have hindered us from developing into something very wonderful.

But with the examples and inspiration from others, we’ll see

a hundred doors will open to us if we only knock at them."

But of course, we prize above all else Paul’s instructions --

“For you may have countless instructors in Christ, but you don’t have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Therefore I urge you to imitate me.”

1 Corinthians 4:15-16

 

This quote is so insightful; and almost every survivor of abuse can relate to this.

Jesus said he casts out demons and performs cures, and His healing will change us if we diligently seek it. But it is a battle that is not easily won....

 

As the years go on, what one begins to perceive about so many people is that somehow or other the mind does not grow, the view does not alter; life ceases to be a pilgrimage, and becomes a journey, like a horse pulling a farm-cart. He is pulling something, because he has to pull it, but he does not care much what it is - turnips, hay, or manure! If he thinks at all, he thinks of the stable and the manger. 

The middle-aged do not try experiments, they lose all sense of adventure. They make the usual kind of fortifications for themselves, they pile up a shelter out of their prejudices and stony opinions. It is securely out of the wind and rain, and new questions and ideas are safely excluded. The landscape is so familiar that the entrenched spirit does not even think about it, or care what lies behind the hill or across the river. 

Now of course I do not mean that people can or should play fast and loose with life, I am speaking here solely of the possible adventures of mind and soul.

We ought to ask ourselves why we believe what we take for granted, and even if we do really believe it at all. We ought not to condemn people who do not move along the same lines of thought, we ought to change our minds a good deal, not out of mere novelty, but because of experience. 

We ought not to think too much of the importance of what we are doing, and still less the importance of what we have done. 

We ought to find a common ground on which to meet distasteful people; we ought to labor hard against self-pity as well as against self-applause. 

Above all, we ought to believe that we can do something to change ourselves, if we only try; that we can anchor our conscience to a responsibility and our faith in Christ and understand that the society of certain people, the reading of certain books, does affect us and make our mind grow and germinate, and give us a sense of something fine and significant in life. 

The wonderful thing about prayerful thought is that it's like a captive Hot Air Ballon, which is anchored in one's garden. It is possible to climb into it and to cast adrift; but so many people seem to end by pulling the balloon in, letting out the gas, and packing the whole thing away in a shed. 

What I here suggest has nothing whatever that is unpractical about it; it is only a deeper foresight, a more prudent wisdom. We must say to ourselves that whatever happens, the soul shall not be atrophied; and we should be as anxious about it, if we find that it is losing its zest and freedom, as we should be if we found that the body were losing its appetite. 

It may be that we shall have to build slowly, and we may have to change the design many times; but it will be all built our of our own faith, mind and hope, as the nautilus evolves its shell. In so doing we find our spirit is built out of delight. It is delight that we must follow, everything that brims the channel of life, stimulates, freshens, enlivens, tantalizes and attracts. It must at all costs be beautiful. It must embrace that part of religion that glows for us, the thing which we find beautiful in other souls and the interests we hanker after. 

It is by meeting the larger spirit that lies behind life, recognizing the impulse which meets us in a thousand forms, which forces us not to be content with narrow and petty things, but emerges as the energy, whatever it is, that pushes through the crust of life, as the flower pushes through the mould. How barren life is without it. 

We must aim then at fulness of life; not at managing our resources with meagre economy, but at spending generously and fearlessly, grasping experience firmly, nurturing zest and hope." 

Arthur Benson excerpts from his book "Joyous Gard." 

 

"Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?" Pr. 5:20

“When we are intoxicated by the powers of infatuation with some new love,

our thoughts take flight, our speech changes.

Ordinary talk will not do;

it must rhyme,

It must march,

It must glitter; it must be stuck full of gems;

Accomplishments must be paraded,

Powers must be hinted at.

Every sensitive emotion is awake;

And even the most serene and modest natures,

In the grip of passion,

Can become suspicious and self-absorbed,

Because the passion which consumes them is so fierce

That it shrivels all social restraints,

And leaves the soul naked,

And bent upon the most uncontrolled self-emphasis.

Yet it is as natural as the airs and graces of

the singing canary,

The unfurling of the peacock’s fan,

The held breath and hampered strut of the turkey –

And tendency to assume a greatness and a nobility

That one does not possess,

To seem impressive, tremendous, desirable.”

Arthur C. Benson.

 

This quote could be applicable to Mt. 7:24

"There is a stronghold we can win with our own hands, 

where we may dwell in deep contentment—

so long as we do not linger there in idleness and sloth, 

but remain ready to ride out at another’s call for help. 

This stronghold, which each of us may build, 

is the fortress of peace, beauty and joy. 

We cannot enter it by right; we must win it. 

In an anxious and troubled world, we should seek such a place for rest and renewal, 

yet never for idle or selfish pleasure.

It must be an interlude between toil and the painful deeds life demands, and we must be ready to charge forth the moment duty calls.

Though hard to win, such a fortress is dangerous once gained, 

for it tempts us to seal ourselves in peace and watch life only from a distance—

shutting out not just wind and rain, 

but the cries of the wounded and wronged. 

And if we do that, the day will come when our castle is besieged, and we will be forced to ride out defeated and ashamed to face the duties we neglected.

It is right, natural, and wise to have a stronghold in the mind— where we keep the company of those who have loved beauty wisely and purely.    

lest the world’s daily grind swallow us whole. 

We must not shrink from its work, 

yet remember it is only a mortal discipline, 

and our true life is elsewhere with God. 

If we treat life’s cares as all that matter, we lose its freshness; just as we lose its strength by shunning its toil." Arthur Benson. 

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.
And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”