Marvel

When people ask me about my trip to Rwanda, I have a hard time knowing what to say. 
Here's my attempt.

There were people we spoke to, people we ate meals with and spent our days with, that had survived the fastest occurring genocide recorded in history. Close to a million people were killed in 100 days. And we met these survivors and heard their stories.

Upon return, my mind has wondered and questioned and pondered the age old question of the sovereignty of God. Those thoughts will get me nowhere because that's just what sovereignty is and what His is supposed to be - mysterious, never understanding, His plan over mine. But, to be vulnerable and honest, I look into the faces of the survivors of genocide and I wonder well why? but really, why? Will I ever get to know? Will it all just make sense one day? Will I get to ask God when I get to heaven or will these things on earth not matter anymore?

But that's not ultimately what this post is about. 
This post is about faith. Which I guess ties into the sovereignty of God more than I realize. 

My dear friend Kristin reminded me once, back in the summer on a Charleston trip, that in suffering is fullness of joy. And I've tossed that around in the ensuing months and it seems like my mind always softly hears that way back in its crevices. I am confident (I am learning to be confident) in understanding this to be true. 

One of the most incredible pieces of the Good news of Jesus Christ is the reality that in the very darkness, in the darkest moment of the crucifixion, in that moment, was life. From His sacrificial death, the veil was torn and we were given new life. And when his disciples thought everything was going wrong and their king had been slain and there was so much pain, He rose again and they saw the empty tomb and realized the plan and Peter 'went away marveling at what had happened.' 

In death, there is life. 
I couldn't even begin to claim to know the fullness of how amazing that is. How many dimensions and levels that truth holds. I was talking to my friend Gentry just the other day about this very thing and he said and we talked about how the Gospel is physical. And I keep adding pieces to the enigma of the puzzle that the new covenant of Jesus is.  

In death, there is life - even in the horrors of genocide. Especially in the horrors of genocide. Survivors of death looked me right in the eye and said "God is so good." And I struggle to say that when things don't work out the way I want it?

I heard survivors say they were called back to participate in the restoration of Rwanda to preach the message of forgiveness. They said, "we can relate to the poor because we were poor. We can relate to the desolate because we were desolate. We can relate to the traumatized because we were traumatized." I heard them say, "I rose out of the ashes of the genocide." I met people who had experienced Jesus and saw the face of God in the very grim realities of the brokenness of sin. 

Out of the ashes, we rise.
In the very context of death, there is the purest form of life. 
Can suffering be one of the truest ways to see the work of Jesus? Can death, in the end, set us free?

On the cross, Jesus absorbed all the pain and rescued us.
In suffering, there is fullness of joy. Joy is Jesus. Fullness of Jesus. It's true.

And this Gospel? It doesn't come wrapped in twinkling lights and satin bows; it comes straight into our pitchest black. The Gospel of Christ, it's a messy, bloody thing and this is how God was born, bloody and bruised, and that's how God chose to die, bloody and beaten. And our God, He knows the comings and goings of our blackest bloody battles, and this is exactly where He meets us. The Gospel is good news in the eye of the worst news. - Ann Voskamp