Rwanda... may we learn from you

Rwanda

I look around this country. Green. Plush. Beautiful. Clean. Growing. Flourishing. You would have never known it was covered with such bloodshed 15 years ago. Around one million people slaughtered in 100 days in the genocide. One Million.

The stories of forgiveness here after the genocide are simply more than human. It is not just forgiveness. It is reconciliation. It is not just reconciliation. It is living in true freedom. Not that the pain isn’t still present under the surface. It is there. But so is the forgiveness. I doubted it was real. In the back of my mind I thought maybe it was a forced forgiveness. A forgiveness dictated by a government. But whether it was or wasn’t….

It is alive. It is real. It is breathtaking. It is lived out in the hearts of it’s people.

Rwanda – may we learn from you.

Sitting across from Pastors, I hear:

‘You would not believe the forgiveness. They came to us with many ways to reconcile and judge. But we said “this is the one that will work for our people”

“There is a women who has taken in the young man who killed her family. She is now not only forgiving him – she has taken him in. She is his mother”

“You would not believe. Even three hundred from the villages would come together. Even small children. And they would come together for Gacacha and decide to forgive”

“We are not Tutsi. We are not Hutu. We are one people now”

May we learn….