*Deuteronomy 31:19-22
**Joshua 24: 19-22
Dear God,
As your people all over Rwanda, maybe the world are morning the anniversary of a massacre, I see your dark cloud come in like a storm. It comes in with a powerful wind. I don’t know if it comes in to show your sadness, frustration, anger or if it is to blow your holiness, comfort or peace over your land.
God I honestly don’t know what to pray? And I don’t think a prayer from me would solve anything! No, for I have just newly become aware and educated to this Rwandan Genocide. I am simply coming to you, LORD of all creation, with today. Because I don’t know what to do as I sit in a city that only 28 years ago was rampaged by a plague of hate. I hear Rwandan children playing in the sprinkles of the rain on this physically and spiritually dark day. God how do I pray peace and comfort over your people after reading your word of how you commanded Joshua and the Israelites to “purge evil from the land,” their promise land? They were the hands of multiple genocide’s in the name of giving the Israelites the promised land that you promised them. But the promise came with numerous lives. Is that a promise worth keeping?
Now I hear a baby cry as the wind reeks havoc against this borrowed house I’m worshiping in. I wonder how many cries were heard throughout this day 28 years ago in this city? I wonder, but I do not desire to witness it personally. I wonder what the people of the Lord prayed? What did they think? What did they do? I wonder, but I do not desire to personally witness it. I in complete honesty do not desire of faith tempered and refined in the fires of a hate fueled genocide. Is that my weakness or wisdom cultivated in the knowledge of the complete depravity of this world? But Father, was there hope? Was there faith? Was there peace?
God…my hardest question, where were you in this? Were you with your people? Immanuel, hearing your people cry as you did in Egypt when the Israelites were enslaved? Or…were you on the side of the machete and slaughter as in Habakkuk when you brought Assyria to discipline Israel? Is it possible for you to be in both and everywhere in between? Were they warned as much as they were warned in the desert before entering the promised land*? Or again when they were warned after conquering the promise land**?At every stage after you brought the Israelites out of Egypt you would remind them of your faithfulness through an account of your acts, call them to recommit their hearts, then warn them what will happen when they fail. So is this a tragic reminder that you are not just the God of love but one who is jealous and should be feared?
Maybe you didn’t condone it. But you didn’t stop it from happening. Is this a product of the human condition and freewill? Or is this the “…after you have suffered a little while he will restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast”(1 Peter 5:10) and give you the “crown of glory,”(v4)? Is the crown of glory, gift enough after suffering a “little while,”? Is the death of over 1 million supposed to constitute as a little? When the crown of glory is a lot? This “little time“ feels long and the suffering feels like the most. And I’m only here 28 years later asking you questions that I can ask and walk away from. But those who were here 28 years earlier this was their reality. Do they ask why?
I’m not so sure I have the ears or heart to hear the answers of the numerous questions I wrote and haven’t written. And I don’t need to know as it doesn’t affect me. And isn’t that a privilege in itself? I just feel the dark cloud over this city with the winds blowing through this country. I hear the pounding drops of rain and shouts of thunder all throughout Rwanda. On this day 28 years ago… On this day 28 years ago my heart breaks. God thank you for allowing your daughter to experience this. I don’t fully and will probably never know why. Why this happened? Why I’m here now? And why it continues to happen? But I see you are great and most of all I see you weeping in the atmosphere of remembering this day 28 years ago.
“Jesus wept.”
John 11:35
Thank you so much for reading! And yes there is a lot of wrestling.
This is beautiful, Morgan. God’s people have been crying “how long?” and lamenting the world’s injustice and evil for thousands of years. Wrestling with God like this is a form of deep intimacy. Thanks so much for sharing.
My heart is lamenting and warring with you in prayer. Thank you for this. We are all the better because of it.
The questions you pose are some of the same I felt there in Rwanda. It felt so heavy to arrive on the 1st day of the 28th anniversary…It has prompted me to pray more than ever and almost every day, “Dear Lord, please bring your Kingdom!” That’s the only answer to a world so lost and broken. I take comfort in the fact that “God is not willing that any should perish 2 Peter 3:9 and we pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. I’m glad we have that hope!