Death and Life

Tomb, you cannot hold Him longer;
Death is strong, but Life is stronger;
Stronger than the dark, the light;
Stronger than the wrong, the right...
~Phillips Brooks

Sixteen years ago, in the place known as the land of a thousand hills, 6,000 people were literally hacked to pieces every day. At the end of three months more than 800,000 men, women and children laid dead in the streets. Families were completely wiped out, people were burned alive, raped, shot, stabbed and brutalized while the world stood and watched.

The first week in April stands apart from every other week for the people of Rwanda. It is set as a memorial for the mass genocide that devastated the country just 16 years ago. I can’t seem to pull my thoughts away from this all. Rwanda has gripped me. My feet have yet to tread her ground, but I am irrevocably linked to her. She is the beginning of my daughter.

I think about Jubilee and how this all will affect her. I think of the sorrow, shame, anger, the confusion that I feel when I reflect on the genocide and I wonder how much more it will affect her than I. I think about the questions I would ask: Am I Tutsi? Am I Hutu? Was my family killed or were they killers? Who did I come from? What of my grandparents? Aunts? Uncles? How could this happen? Why didn’t America, my home, do anything? Why didn’t God, the most powerful force in the world, just speak a word to stop it?

Tomorrow is Easter. I think of Jesus, who was brutally tortured by people like you and I. He was stripped naked and beat to a pulp. He was stabbed, nailed, stretched and suspended in the air to die in front of everything He loved. In the morning we will worship Him because no amount of hatred or horror or death could hold Him down. He lives. And because of Him our past as murderous, evil, sinful, hate-filled people can’t hold us down. Our history no longer defines us.

In my own life, with my own questions I have often not understood why God lets things happen. When horror happens I have wanted to see Him kick His foot through mountains so I could watch them crumble under the chain of command. Jubilee will have questions. She will have heartache and grief and pain that I can’t explain away or heal. But one thing is certain. Her Jesus lives. And He sets the captives free.