Tim Tebow is known for a lot of things. Whether it’s his signature prayer stance from his QB days in the NFL, or his work with kids who have Down syndrome and other disabilities, this guy is always up to something good.
In an op-ed for Fox News on Friday, the former football star is shedding light on modern day slavery, and calling for Christians around the globe to join the fight against human trafficking.
“I’ll never forget the day my dad called me from overseas and told me he had just purchased four young girls,” the 33-year-old writes, admitting that in his mid-twenties, Tebow didn’t even know such a transaction could be made.
“People buy groceries. Shoes. Annual passes to Disney World. They don’t buy other people. But I had heard him correctly. My dad had opened up his wallet and bought as many girls as he could with the cash he had on hand.”
Tebow says his father had no choice. He made a split-second decision that radically changed the trajectory of those girls’ lives, and hundreds of others through the Tim Tebow Foundation.
“There’s a saying that, ‘evil triumphs when good men do nothing’,” Tebow writes. “My dad was not going to be the man who did nothing. Had he just stood there silently, who knows where these girls would have been taken and what would have been done to them.”
With no safe house to bring the girls to, the Tim Tebow Foundation took on the project of building one.
“Honestly, we weren’t prepared. We never saw that moment coming. But over the years, that single moment in time—a moment where one man took a stand for what was right—was the beginning of a ripple effect still in motion today.”
Tebow says that because his father had the courage to act quickly on behalf of those four girls that day, countless other human trafficking victims have been rescued in the years since—some even here in the United States. And meeting some of the survivors in person, Tebow says is not just a privilege, it’s “life-changing.”
Since 2013, the Tim Tebow Foundation has worked tirelessly to help rescue victims and put an end to human trafficking. For the safety of the victims and the rescue organizations, their efforts have been kept relatively private. But this year, that’s all changing.
“I can’t help but feel that we are at a point in history—a point just like the one my dad faced years ago—where we cannot stand silently and passively watch as evil rages on,” Tebow says.
