When they said....

"After the holocaust when they said never again, was that meant for some people and not for others?"
As I was walking through the Kigali Memorial Center recently I was struck by this quote. It was written on a wall that separated myself from a room full of skulls and bone fragments extracted from poorly built mass graves dug during the 1994 Genocide.
It was both sobering and slightly embarrassing to walk through this museum which depicted the events leading up to the genocide, the atrocity which was the massacre as well as the state the country of Rwanda now finds itself in. Although it is heartbreaking to read these facts on a wall and to hear videotaped interviews with survivors nothing has been more difficult than to hear stories of the genocide coming from the mouth of the woman or man sitting directly in front of me.
One man we met during our first few days here shared with us the story of how he survived the hellish 1994 attempted ethnic cleansing of the Tutsi tribe. When the killings began he fled into the forest and began hiding. After a few days in the bush, knowing that the killers were nearing his location he heard God tell him to climb into a tree. That tree became his home for one month. He described to us how he wrapped himself in leaves and ate leaves to keep himself full. He heard and saw the killing of dozens of innocent people executed directly below his perch. After one month in the branches of the tree he was no longer sure his legs were working, so chancing there would be no killers nearby he climbed down to walk on solid ground. Although thankfully he was able to walk he soon had to climb back up the tree in order to save his life.
This is one account of how God specifically directed him to act and that action saved his life. What struck me most about this man was not the way he had survived five attempts on his life or how he was the only remaining member of his family, but the joy I saw in his eyes.
We spent two weeks around this man and every time I was greeted with a smile and a handshake. Although I could not speak his language his eyes and his demeanor told me that he had found forgiveness and joy in Christ. Jesus is the only one capable of mending the wounds inflicted on millions of Rwandans. That has become abundantly clear to me. So please pray for this nation. Pray for its thousands of orphans, widows, amputees, and survivors who are constantly plagued by the memories of those months. There is much anger, resentment, and brokenness here. But I am confident of this. That He who is in us is greater than he who authored this genocide and he who continues to hold millions captive to the injustices of the past.