Love: Our Salvation

PBS recently broadcast a program, created by Wayne Dyer, on how to love unconditionally.

One of Dr. Dyer's guests was Immaculee Ilibagiza. Immaculee is a Tutsi who survived the 90 days it took her country's Hutu's to kill nearly a million people: 90% of Rwanda's Tutsis.

Immaculee survived the Rwandan genocide in a 3 foot by 4 foot secret room in which she remained for 91 days with several other women. Hidden by a clergyman whose family didn't know they were there, the women had a toilet but could not bathe and had very little food.

Searches of the house were conducted frequently so absolute silence had to be maintained. People who knew her - including her math teacher who was a Hutu - searched for her in order to kill her. She said she heard him through the thin wall saying: "I know Immaculee's here and I will find her and kill her."

But Immaculee survived. She subsequently wrote her moving account Left To Tell: Discovering God Amidst The Rwandan Holocaust.

What she learned is that only forgiveness and love can save us.

Yes, we must call evil for what it is. We cannot bury our heads in the sand. That is what allowed the genocide to claim so many lives: people looked the other way.

We can't look the other way. When we do, we are complicit in wrongdoing. Yet, neither can we fight injustice or wrongdoing with hate. Instead we must learn from Immaculee and do as she did.

Immaculee survived because she was able to go deep within, touch God and find the ability to send forgiveness and love to her would-be murderers. And she survived because another man - a Hutu - listened to that same Voice within himself, risked his life and hid her.

Immaculee weighed 69 pounds when she emerged on the 91st day.

Now she is an inspiration for all. With tremendous grace she gives us God's message:

Killing others destroys our souls. Love is our only real option and our only possibility for salvation.

We must all seek to follow Immaculee's example and allow God's love to transform our lives and our world.

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God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. John 4:24

God is love. 1 John 4:8

Nevertheless I am continually with thee. Psalms 73:23

God hath not give us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. 2 Timothy 1:7

He will swallow up death in victory. Isaiah 25:8

Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times; but, Until seventy times seven. Matthew 18:12,22