When I was
twelve years old our family went to the Holocaust museum in Washington
D.C. Of the three hours we spent there,
the only thing I distinctly remember is when the tour guide talked about the
small living spaces of the ghettos that the Jews were forced to live in before being
carted away to the concentration camps.
While in college I had the opportunity to visit the original ghetto in
Venice, Italy. Besides enlightening me
to a history I was ignorant of, being in that physical place helped me better understand
my memory from ten years before.
Today I had
the opportunity to tour one of “the killing fields” of Phnom Penh, Cambodia,
specifically Choeung Ek. Here 8,895
bodies were exhumed from mass graves after the genocide of the Khmer Rouge that
ended in 1979 but only after killing around 2 million of the total Cambodian
population of 7 million. As I walked
around the property, clothing and bones of those murdered 30 years ago could
still be found escaping from the death laden ground. We saw the killing tree where babies were
smashed against the trunk and then tossed into one of the 86 pits potholing the
field. The site where 100 headless
bodies were found was within yards of a grave that once contained the naked
bodies of only women and children. Executions
here were typically done to a blindfolded prisoner who had their hands bound
behind their back. The instruments of
murder, including axes, bamboo sticks, knives, and
hoes, were often used while
speakers hung from a tree blared music to cover up the screams and moans of the
dwindling number of lives below. Looking
up at the monument filled with 5,000 skulls, which was erected to commemorate
the past and remind the present, the obvious questions came to mind: Who?
Why? How? My emotional outcry can only be described as
a state of being: silent.
Our tour
continued when we visited S21, also known as Security Prison 21 during the Khmer Rouge and now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. S21 was a high school converted to a prison
of torture. All of the brick cells are
accessible where 17,000 people were held before going to the killing field, and
only twelve are known to have survived. Entering into one of the cells, which still have the bars and chains where
the shackles were attached, I realized that this was not a Washington D.C.
Holocaust Museum experience for me. This
was more than Venice, Italy. This was a
morally absent and inhuman place of degradation, fear, and evil. This was history repeating itself.
Is that a
fact or an opinion that history repeats itself?
Here’s a fact: 80% of Cambodia’s
population is under the age of 30 years.
1979 wasn’t that long ago. 1945
wasn’t that long ago. History has
repeated itself, but does it need to again?
As I walk
into becoming more of who God has planned for me-what He has planned for all of
His creation-I’m realizing that covering my teammates and leaders in prayer is
a duty of mine.
Several members on the
squad have been sick this month. Is that
my fault because I didn’t pray more?
Probably not, but there is power in prayer. There’s a time and a place to
be prostrate on
the ground interceding for others BEFORE there’s an overt reason to pray. This doesn’t represent an overwhelming
paranoia but, rather, a much needed dependency on God. We should certainly pray positively, but possibly
even more so we should cry out proactively.
How many car trips have ended with a safe arrival because of a parking
lot prayer? How many marriages have been
doused in favor because of the spiritual warfare fought before the two even
met? It’s not being worrisome; it’s
being wise.
We are
fortunate enough to learn from previous World Race squads in our effort to be
blameless and above reproach. We’re
striving to learn from the past and not repeat what proactive prayer can
repel. History doesn’t have to
repeat. In fact, I pray it doesn’t.
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*Special
thanks for the pictures from Nicole Ricketts and Jessica Johnson.
