Thy Kingdom Come

The Weak and Despised

We recently came across a piece highlighting some of the evidences of God's grace, mercy, and power in Rwanda. That country, you recall, has been ravaged by tribal genocide. Well beneath the radar screen of the secular media, it seems that there is a day of visitation taking place in Rwanda--a visitation from Him, Who invites all who weak and heavy laden to come to Him, that He might give them rest.

The article was an interview with one Catherine Claire Larson who has written a book entitled, As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation from Rwanda. She reports on the reconciliation that it taking place in that nation as Hutu and Tutsi hear about and believe upon Him who breaks down every dividing wall and creates one new mankind.

In the first place, the number of orphans now approaching adulthood in that country is large (as one would expect.) Many of these orphans are coming to experience the grace of God's adoption into His family. Larson says:

Imagine for a moment the loneliness that a thirteen year-old would feel having lost every member of his extended family, except his sister. Claude (an orphan she got to know) had been walking around for years with this incredible sense of loneliness. I think in part, the desire for vengeance, was a coping mechanism to keep him from feeling the depths of this profound sadness.

When he learned that he was adopted by God—and when he had that spiritual reality really re-enforced through the real tangible expression of the embrace of what he describes as “the family” Solace (a Christian ministry) became for him, I think it enabled him to begin the journey of healing.

She goes on to explain how Claude first got involved with a non-Christian "Survivor's Club" where people sought strength and consolation in their common bond of suffering. It was destructive:

Well, according to Claude, the Survivors Club was a place where people simply went to vent their grief and their pain. And the experience seemed to only foment his rage as he heard other people’s experiences of horror. But the group called Solace, a Christ-centered group of widows and orphans, took it a step beyond simply sharing their grief. This group taught Claude how to pray and told him about Christ. Becoming involved with Solace, a group that became like a second family to him, was really the turning point for this young man who had been so full of vengeance.

But does the Gospel of Christ really make a difference? Larson writes about a school established for orphans by one Bishop John. Hutu and Tutsi orphaned youngsters lived together in harmony, evidencing the "one new mankind" being created by Christ, our Lord. But at times this has been put to the ultimate test.

I think in certain places, Rwandans have definitely made that connection (of being reconciled into one new mankind). In one of the stories I tell about a school that was attacked by rebels three years after the genocide; many of the students inside had really latched onto this sense of higher identity in Christ.

When these rebels demand that the students separate into Hutu and Tutsi, all of them, without exception refused. When asked if they were Hutu or Tutsi, they replied, “We are just Rwandan.” The rebels finally threw grenades into their classroom and many of them were killed. But the more significant wall that came down that day was a living picture of that dividing wall of hostility among the students. The wall was gone because so many of them understood their higher identity in Christ. They were willing to face death rather than betray their classmates. And many of them did.

Now, that is a power not of this world.