Have you read anything about the girls being kidnapped in Nigeria? Unless you’ve been walking around with your head in the sand, you’ve at least heard about it. You don’t have to be someone who watches the news or even reads a newspaper to learn about what’s happening. It’s being posted all over Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media. It’s being talked about on virtually every radio station in some form or another.

Nearly three weeks ago, close to 300 girls were kidnapped from their school.Then other stories followed stating,

…new details were emerging about the abduction of at least eight girls between the ages of 12 and 15, who were snatched Sunday night from the village of Warabe.”

President Obama finally reached out to the Nigerian government as indicated in an article release yesterday,

President Barack Obama said Tuesday that the U.S. will do everything it can to help Nigeria find nearly 300 teenage girls missing since they were kidnapped from school three weeks ago by an Islamist extremist group that has threatened to sell them.”

It has been said these young girls will be sold into the sex trade or as purchased brides. Either way, it means a life of torture and rape.

I applaud the nation for rising up with a national outcry over this atrocity, but the thing that continues to astound me is that girls are taken every day in the United States either by force, fraud or coercion. Their plight isn’t much different. The average age of girl taken into the sex trade in our country is between 12 and 14 years of age. Sound familiar? They are sold, over and over, raped repeatedly right here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, yet where is the national public outcry? What is our government doing to fight for them? To demand their release?

Let this catastrophic event be the springboard to action in this nation. Raise your voice, not just for the girls in Nigeria, but also for American children and women being pillaged in the same manner [Proverbs 31:8]. Don’t just demand that the captives in Nigeria be released back into their family, but don’t rest until the same is done for the children in this land who are held against their will [Isaiah 61:1-3].

When friends, family or coworkers alike are discussing the issue in Nigeria, take the opportunity to share with them what is happening right here. If you’re not sure of the statistics or what to share, go here, here, and here to gain information to get the conversation stated. If you have teens or know teens, you can go here for information to share with them about keeping safe.

Take this opportunity to share books like Rescuing Hope, Renting Lacey, and The White Umbrella with your friends or book club. There several great documentaries you can share such as  Very Young Girls, Nefarious, or the more popular Hollywood drama, Taken.

Get the conversation started. Share this blog post. Share a book. Share a handout. Just do something. We cannot sit still and pretend this isn’t happening at home.

Edmund Burke once said,

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

It’s up to you and me. We have to do something!

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You don’t have to do everything I’ve mentioned but do something.