Why It Matters

The other day, I got really mad at myself. I mean, come on. I've come to Rwanda to help and I'm going to a school every day. I could be going to orphanages, hospitals, helping genocide orphans. But I'm going to this school. What am I really doing to help? 

The same day I started having these thoughts, one of the teachers from work named Claudine invited me to go to her house to visit her mom on Saturday. To be honest, I really didn't want to go. Saturday was a busy day and by the time she came to pick me up, I was pretty tired. I just didn't want to go. But I had already promised her I would go, so I went. We walked to her house, which is about 15 minutes away. 

As soon as I got there, I felt so happy I had gone. Her mom was the nicest person I've ever met. She told me I was beautiful.... but not the normal kind of beautiful. She said I was beautiful because Jesus lived in my heart. It was the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. I'm tearing up now just thinking of how much I needed to hear that and how glad I am that she said that. 

Claudine went to her room, got money and sent her mom to buy me a Fanta. While her mom was gone, Claudine showed me her picture albums. She told me "This is my Daddy. He was killed in 1994. I love him." No one here has ever shared with me anything about the genocide... Louise told me they have to trust you very much to share that. She and her mom told me about 20 different times that they were SO happy I had come to visit. They made me promise to come back, bring a picture of my family, send them e-mails when I leave and remember the way to their house so I could visit whenever I wanted to. 

When I got home and was talking to Louise about all this, she reminded me of this Sara Groves song. It is called Why It Matters. Here is why she wrote the song...

Sara continued to introduce the song with the story of Vedran Smailovic, a cellist with the Sarajevo String Quartet. In 1992, in the middle of the war in that country, Smailovic witnessed a bomb attack that took the lives of 22 of his neighbors standing in a breadline at a bakery. In protest of the chaos, hatred, killing, and stupidity of war, the cellist immediately brought out his cello, sat in a chair in the middle of the crater, and filled the air with beautiful music for 22 days (one day for each person killed on that spot).

As Sara told this story every night, she emphasized the importance of BEAUTY as a protest in the face of all that is wrong in the world. While bombs were still exploding and sniper fire rang through the street, a lone cellist risked his own life, and protested the ugliness by holding up beauty in its face.

This is so important to me. To realize that all we have to do is be beauty. Just show we are different. It doesn't matter if all I do in Rwanda is go visit this one lady. I will have made a difference in her life, just like she made one in mine. That's it. Just show beauty.