Genocide and Hope

During a horrific 100 days in the Spring of 1994, almost a million Tutsi and Hutu men, women and children were slaughtered and crudely dumped in Rwanda’s Kagera River. The current carried their bodies - shot, hacked, clubbed or burned - over the waterfall down towards the quiet waters of Lake Victoria.

The history of genocide has deep roots in the rivers of Africa.  The first chapter of The Book of Exodus tells how a cultured Pharaoh in the 18th or 19th dynasty, tried to obliterate the surging numbers of Hebrew people living in his land.

The Nile gave Pharaoh a natural vehicle for the extermination and disposal of his enemies – cheaper and cleaner than Hitler’s death camps and equally effective. The life-giving river became a river of death, teeming with crocodiles who are not fussy eaters.

Against the dark violence the story sparkles with human tenderness - parents who defied tyranny, hiding their infant for 3 months, water-proofing a papyrus basket in hopes of beating the crocodiles and Gestapo, a big sister secretly watching her brother, a bathing princess (who my artistic grand-daughter Tessa clearly regards as the prima-donna of the story) and a day-care arrangement so full of dramatic irony even a child can enjoy it.

So God brings good out of the worst human evil, life out of hate, hope out of despair. God turns the perilous river into a river of hope.

But the Exodus text barely even mentions God in this part of the story. As so often in life, God works anonymously and God’s presence is only discernible after the fact. The people in the story simply do what they have to do.

In desperate times people resort to desperate measures. This mother abandons her vulnerable baby, but she abandons him to God – which is what every parent eventually has to do, though some are more aware of it than others.

The future deliverer of Israel, was left bobbing helplessly in a fragile basket on the river. How often God’s salvation hangs in the balance on a very slender thread – like Esther risking all to visit the king . . . and Jesus being birthed in a stable!

And somewhere in the hills of Rwanda, songs of forgiveness are being sung by Rwandan neighbors working side-by-side in the fields, neighbors formerly called Hutu and Tutsi who have learned that forgiveness and grace create a more promising future than the politics of hatred and revenge.

Follow links above for more on the story of reconciliation in Rwanda.
"Reconciliation" Quilt Graphic by Ellen Lindner