Encountering God in Rough Waters

While traveling to and from an out of town meeting today I listened to a book on CD - LEFT TO TELL by Immaculee Ilibagiza and Steve Erwin. It's the grisly and amazing story of how a young woman survived the genocidal holocaust in Rwanda in 1994. Immaculee's entire family was slaughtered in sweeping ethnic brutality, which largely was ignored by the international community until the damage was done. In the midst of an horrific three month journey through hell, Immaculee encountered a very real and very powerful God, and plumbed the unfathomable depths of God's forgiveness in and through Jesus. It's a stunning and difficult story to hear, and I commend it to you. (See www.lefttotell.com.)

Sometime I think we in North American churches have been guilty of presenting Jesus as a sort of "Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free" card for the rough edges of life. Maybe without consciously admitting it, we presume that Jesus owes us freedom from the worst that life can offer. I wonder how many times I've presumed that, if the outward circumstances of my life are good, then Jesus must be happy with me. Too bad for the Rwandas, the Darfurs, and all the other places where the demons of destruction seem to run wild.

Immaculee Ilibagiza introduces us to a different view of God, made known to us in Jesus. She encounters a God who is present, powerful, and transformative in the very midst of the worst that humans can inflict on one another. When she has nothing in reserve, not even enough energy to muster faith itself, Jesus stays dramatically present and active.

I wondered a couple of things as I listened to her story; unrelated things, or maybe not so unrelated. I wondered what I was doing in 1994 at the moment Immaculee was cowering from machete wielding thugs, flinging her fate completely into the nailed pierced hands of the crucified and risen one. Was I preaching, fishing, attending a Finance Committee meeting, sleeping soundly in a safe bed, coaching a peewee soccer team, or what? Not that it matters, and not that I feel guilt or anything. I just wonder how connected to Jesus I let myself be at that same moment. Also, I wondered about the fact that faith in Jesus continues to flourish and grow on the African continent, even in the midst of unspeakable violence and poverty, while Christian worship and discipleship wavers so much in our comparatively comfortable continent.

What do you think? I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

Geoff