The longer I’m in Africa the more inadequate I feel at explaining what this year has meant for me. Simply, my heart has been broken over and over. With each passing month God Himself has smashed it, violently. I expected to have a harder heart by now, one with emotional scar tissue less prone to feeling so profoundly crushed by the hardships of this world. So far it hasn’t happened.
This month I am doing ministry in Rwanda. In case you are not familiar with this small country, it’s most notably known for one of the biggest genocides in my lifetime. In 1994 a people group called the Hutus struck down over 1 million Tutsis in less than 100 days. It’s a harrowing story of how the Rwandan government over several generations targeted this people group. But the ending to this story is one which is hard fought. Rwanda rebuilt itself on radical forgiveness and a fierce desire to rise again. Many parts of the country are rebuilt and advanced, its hard to imagine the atrocities committed on the very streets I walk on.
To get around Rwanda we’ve been riding on “motos” aka motorcycle taxis. Its fun, but I always pray God will protect my life before we take off. Last week I got on a motorcycle and went across the city to meet up with a friend. It was a little spontaneous, and I was wearing shorts. At some point on the moto ride I got a second degree burn on my right calf from the exhaust pipe. Needless to say I went to hospital and I’ll have scar. I have a lot scars from the race. I fell down a flight of slippery wet stairs in Jamaica. I have dozens of mosquito bite scars from Haiti. I fell bad while trekking in Nepal. Needless to say, the geography of my body is marked indefinitely from the race. It’s embarrassing.
So I have a bundled bandage on my leg. It looks like I have a bulky biker calf under my skinny jeans. I’m considering wrapping a twin bandage on the other side to look evened out.
There are two men who work for my hosts in Rwanda. Their names are Ram and Vincent. I don’t know a lot about their stories. I’ve asked, but the language barrier is pretty intense. But in lieu of solid communication I still get the sense they’ve both been through profound hardship. They both work incredibly hard. They clean, they cook, they grocery shop. They have cared for us well.
I am able to speak very little to them, but our friendship has nonetheless been forged through laughter and a lot of hand gestures. One day I learned Vincent is 21 years old. I encouraged him to learn more English so he could communicate with the other foreigners who will come through. I told him, “Vincent you’re so young, you have so much life left. You should learn English.” Vincent turned to Ram repeating the word ‘life’ over and over, asking him what it meant. Ram explained the meaning. Vincent turns to me, same big smile on his face and glittering eyes saying, “no life, me no life.” In broken english and hand gestures he explains to me his parents are dead. He probably never finished getting an education. I know he struggles to read. Africa is full of young men with similar stories.
Being in Rwanda I’ve been exposured to stories of genocide. I’ve seen kids drinking out of drainage ditches and wandering around without shoes. I’ve seen profound African poverty. But it’s this interaction out of all of it which breaks me, to see a young and vibrant person tell you there is no hope for him.
He looks down during our conversation and points to the bandage on my leg. I explain I got burned by a motorcycle. I take of the bandage and show him. He turns his right calf reveling the same scar. He also was burned by a moto. We share the same scar.
I walked away from this conversation and hid on Preston’s (one of my teammate’s) bed and wept. I think God gave me such a scar to remind me of Vincent and young men like him. I wish I knew what to say to restore his hope, to help Him know God. I think this scar is God’s way of helping me commit to praying regularly for him. I would probably eventually forget. But I am marked now.
What is a scar really? It marks the evidence of how our bodies have healed after being torn apart. Scars do not mark something beautiful, but they often mark something remarkable. The world we live in is undeniably bound towards chaos all the time. I think after Adam and Eve picked some apples in the Garden of Eden, what God had designed as a perfect world got warped into something completely opposite. The fancy pants way to sum this up tendency towards mess is the second law of thermodynamics, a nasty little thing called entropy. Entropy is like a gravitational pull of our universe towards gradual decline and disorder. It’s the reason why our skin gets wrinkly, weeds are constantly overtaking your garden, or if you threw a box of cookies in the air they’d land in crumbs all over the ground instead of neatly in a cookie jar. It’s the tendency of the world to move towards chaos and disorder instead of stasis and order.
But that’s what I find incredible about scars. And even healing from being sick. Or how Rwanda has healed from genocide. Healing is the pull towards restoration. For the most part our bodies heal themselves without much conscious effort. That is simply God. We are unconsciously drawn towards human connection. Rwanda’s restoration is an even more dramatic act by God Himself.
Being on the World Race has exposed me to all sorts of pain, atrocities, and mess. From genocides to starving children, the world I’ve seen this year feels like it’s constantly marching towards its own demise. Earth and it’s people are deeply marked by scars both physical and spiritual. But in spite of entropy, in spite of the gravitational pull towards decline and destruction, God is here. Seeing the process of restoration and healing doesn’t just whisper His Presence, its a dramatic display of it. He marks the earth with scars, not to make it ugly, but to remind us. The scars serve as alters of His acts of merciful healing and deep, deep love. They are our reminders.
Here is Vincent. I miss his laugh, He’s almost always laughing.
