She is leading the way...

Tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic: Does this sound familiar to you?

It does to me every Sunday night at 7:00 p.m. Oh, the sound of 60 Minutes. When I was younger, my father used to watch 60 Minutes and it drove me absolutely crazy. It was so boring, I couldn't stand to watch it. Now that I have grown taller, I appreciate this news cast for their informative journalism. Plus, Andy Rooney is always funny. Kelly has begun to appreciate the stories which 60 Minutes portrays to us every Sunday night also. This past Sunday there was a story about an African woman caught in the genocide of Rwanda. She and six other women were hidden for 91 days inside a small bathroom in a pastor's house. She and the other women were Tutsi, but the pastor who hid them was Hutu, yet considered what was happening to be atrocious. In case you did not know, the Hutu viciously attacked the Tutsi, because the Tutsi held the power with the Belgian colonization of Rwanda. When the Belgians left, the Hutu wanted to regain some power by completely eliminating the Tutsi. This is similar in scope to the British colonization of China in the 18th and 19th centuries, resulting in China's development of a Nationalistic state. The Tutsi were favored by Catholic Missionaries over the Hutu, giving rise to Hutu resentment.
Although this story contained vivid images about the mass murder of approx. 800,000 innocent people, I was absolutely struck and convicted about how forgiving this woman was.
Her entire family: father, mother, two brothers, cousins were slaughtered and her father's dead body was used at a roadblock. Remember that this only happened 13 years ago. This woman's name was Immaculee and as correspondent Bob Simon was asking her questions, the question of forgiveness came up.
He asked her, "Don't you want to smash their (the Hutu's) heads against a brick wall for what they did?" With sadness in her eyes, she looked at Bob Simon and stated, "I know that Rwandans can never forget, but they MUST forgive." "And I don’t want it. I don’t want them after killing my family to give me this luggage in my heart, in my belly, you know, to hold this anger," she says. Bob Simon then said to her, "But it might feel good to retaliate," where she calmly responded, "No, I know it won't." Immaculee also has embraced a Hutu, who served 11 years for killing Tutsis, and confessed that he had killed members of Immaculee's family.
Many times on these blogs I speak of the victims of oppression, because in many ways I too have been a victim, so I identify with oppression. Forgiveness and repentance is something which Jesus preached, not because he did not care about oppression, but because he thought that the victims of oppression would be enslaved all over again by anger and hatred. (Miroslav Volf)
Only after we have forgiven can I then confront the oppression, confront what it was that attempted to kill me, and be reconciled.
Immaculee has written a book entitled, "Left to Tell: Discovering God amidst the Rwandan Holocaust", which at some point I am looking forward to reading. Violence strips another of innocence to the violence, remaking the victim into the image of the violent, but forgiveness can soften the heart of the victim, allowing them to be remade into the image of God instead. To those who do not have the ability to forgive, we as Christians walk beside and lead to the path of healing. I know it sounds fluffy, but good God it is true.