Jute bags and Hosea

It’s been a while since I blogged, but today I’d like to share a story I witnessed today.
We visited two projects working with sex workers. The one I want to tell you about is called Freeset – it’s quite well known and you may have seen their jute bags around. They employ 250 women who were trapped, tricked or driven to prostitution (many trafficked from elsewhere). First they train them part-time while they are still ‘working’. Then they give them to option of joining the project full-time. They are not obliged to end their trade but encouraged to do so. They make jute bags, canvas bags and t-shirts. They have access to unlimited drinking water, and a free nursery for their little children; other than that they have to stand on their own feet – in particular, they are not found alternative accommodation, as the hope is that they will then be able to transform society from the inside. Some are still living in the brothel but paying rent to their pimp. I can’t imagine what that must be like. They employ some men within the project (unlike, for example, the 125 project in Bristol) but have a very very low tolerance for these men’s behaviour – any inappropriate attitudes towards the women and they are out. They idea is that part of the women’s rehabilitation is to learn healthy relationships with Indian men – and that there are some decent ones around. The encouraging statistic we heard today is that 96% of the women they work with come out and stay out of prostitution.
As we were looking around the building, we spotted a pin-board with a wedding photograph. There they were, bride and groom, beaming into the camera, as you’d expect. But it turns out this was one of the women who had been helped by the project. And there she was, smiling and happy and starting a new life, dressed in a white dress! What a wonderful picture of salvation! I’m reminded of the story of Hosea (check it out if you haven’t read it lately). God uses the image of a man who marries a prostitute to mirror his faithful love towards his unfaithful people. ‘Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards... there she will sing as in the days of her youth... In that day, declares the LORD, you will call me ‘my husband’: you will no longer call me ‘my master’.’