Friday, September 26, 2014

Living what we believe

Ann Voskamp writes that
The opposite of really living isn’t really dying — but not really caring. The opposite of really believing isn’t really believing nothing — but not really caring. The opposite of really being human isn’t really when you stop breathing — but when you stop caring.

Ann and her girls are in Amsterdam on a layover to Rwanda. They take time to visit Anne Frank's house. Ann's daughter asks,
“Nothing like this would ever happen now, right, Mom?”

Our little girl’s standing in the room of another little girl who was hunted down like an animal.

I want to tell Shalom, No —- no, the world would never close their eyes again, we would never let anything like this happen again. The lie of it burns like an ember up my throat.

All I can do is cup her face.

ISIS is going house to house in northern Iraq. Rebekah reads the text word for word from missionaries who saw it, who testify. How ISIS is calling out children. Yelling at them to recant Jesus. And if they don’t recant Jesus, their parents are forced to witness the sharp edge of a blade lift their child’s thin neck from their quaking shoulders.

Ann and girls then arrive in Rwanda, where 800,000 people were slaughtered in six weeks. Tthat means the daily killing rate during the Rwandan Genocide was at least 5 times that of the Nazi death camps.

Ann writes:
Whenever we demonize and dehumanize anybody, we can legitimize anything.

And whenever we want to break the bonds of prejudice and injustice and indifference, we begin by breaking a loaf of bread together.

“So the Hutus saw the Tutsis as these snakes, these cockroaches, as less than, as inferior, and the Tutsis all over the country, they ran to the churches.” He points to the pulpit we’re standing in front of.

“They thought the churches were safe places. They thought the people of the church would save them, protect them. But the churches called the Hutus to say the Tutsis are here now, come kill them.”
Read more here, and also view some incredible photos.

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