Never Again

Today is Rwanda's Genocide Memorial Day. It is 20 years since one of the world's most awful atrocities. I'm old enough to remember the news reports of the time; the horror and the not quite understanding what exactly was happening in a small country so far away. Little did I know that one day that small country would win my heart. I had no idea then that I would even go there, let alone serve God there, have friends and 'family' there and grow to love the country and its people so much.

Today I think of all the people whose stories have touched and broken my heart. I think of a mother forced to watch as her children were killed before her eyes and then left to remember. I think of a boy found beneath his mother's body - too young to really understand, but left with the trauma nonetheless. And I think of a young girl with a baby strapped to her back - a grenade killing the baby and leaving her with the lasting memory, and shrapnel still lodged in her head. And so so many more.

However, as many of my Rwandan friends would remind me, that is not all today is about. It is about 'celebrating hope' as one of them said earlier. It is

about the courage to forgive and rebuild. It is about 'a hope and a future' as the Bible would say. Rwanda has moved on from 1994 in ways no one could have foreseen - not the perfect country; not without its challenges and no doubt faults - but the healing and restoration in my beloved Rwanda is amazing.

So we celebrate and look to the future, and we say with Rwandans today 'never again'. But today is the day you will hear about 'kwibuka' - remembering. To forgive does not mean to forget and all those who died, those orphaned, widowed and left childless, and those left with unimaginable physical, emotional and mental scars deserve to be remembered today. Forgive might not mean forget, but Rwanda has reminded me that forgiveness changes how we remember - and that changes everything.