no-longer-a-slumdog

Chapter SIX
What Now
A few years ago while speaking at a conference in Los Angeles,
I talked about the plight of the suffering Dalits and the
hopelessness of their children. Some of the statistics shocked my
audience, such as the fact that there are 50 million child laborers
in India alone 2 or that 1.2 million children are trafficked as slaves
and prostitutes every single year. 3
At the end of the session, a man came up and handed me a CD,
saying, “You will want to listen to the song, ‘What Now.’ You’ll like
it.” The CD was by the musician Steven Curtis Chapman. 4
I listened to the song later that day, and his lyrics moved me
to tears.
Through the song, you find yourself face-to-face with an orphaned
little girl on “the other side of world,” destitute, just looking
at you. The Lord steps in and basically says, “I am that girl.”
And His question then hangs in the air: What now
I must warn you, my reader—you can no longer say you didn’t
know. Through this book, you’ve seen their faces. I am sure you
have felt their pain.
The question I need to ask is—and I ask on behalf of these
children and the God who cares for them—what will you do
now
Like me, I believe you want to save them. I think you’ve heard