Letters from the edge

Posted by admin on Sep 23, 2008 in Community | 0 comments

I found myself walking the hills of Rwanda where genocide uprooted and killed over one million Tutsis and sympathetic Hutus in just 100 days. I am not interested in assigning blame, or attempting to learn some political lesson for the future. For all our enlightenment, the saying “Never again” bears no meaning, for “it” has indeed happened again and again. Yet this story, Rwanda’s story, is far from over, and God has far from abandoned the nation and its people.

I was with a group of 30 students visiting the Genocide Memorial Museum in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. I walked by mass graves and felt sorrow and pain for the hundreds of thousands buried together beneath enormous concrete slabs. I questioned where God was, but as I went through the museum, He grabbed my attention to show me glimpses of light in the darkness. At the end of the display I sat in a room full of bones and skulls. God’s presence in the room was thick and my mind was caught up in images of Ezekiel 37, the dry bones in the valley clanking together as God breathed life back into their flesh. What I had previously thought an obscure Biblical doctrine—the bodily resurrection of the dead—suddenly jumped to life in front of me, and in the least of places I was filled with no small measure of hope. I arose from my seat, and looked one by one at each skull; they were children, women, men, many of their skulls shattered, and I said to each one “You will rise again.” As I spoke I felt this resurrecting power of God touch me, and I imagined the wild scene that was in store for this room on that day of resurrection.

Filled with hope, the next day, I went to a memorial in Butare, where thousands of Tutsis sought refuge in a school, only to be starved and slaughtered by those who welcomed them. Hundreds of bodies were preserved, on display in the rooms where they were killed. Their stench rose to my nose and tears filled my eyes as I felt the weight of pain, sorrow, and death. Everything I saw screamed at me with despair, but here, God’s light shone brightly in the middle of the darkness, and this time, as I walked into the last room, I could not keep from saying, through my tears, “Where, O Death, is thy sting?”

I only stayed a week in Rwanda, but it was more than enough to see that this hope was no illusion. Survivors were reconciled with their families’ killers. Orphans of the genocide found new families. Where death was once so pervasive, forgiveness now ran free through the nation. I was most struck by the love I saw and felt during the few hours I spent at a church. Churchgoers brought things to offer God, but what they really offered were their lives, worshiping together with immeasurable love and sincerity. I felt like I had little faith in comparison; I would never expect God to turn so much around, but He has taught me to expect that He will do more than I can ask or imagine.