The Intervention

I recently finished reading the heart-wrenching book "A Thousand Hills" by Stephen Kinzer...

And all I can say is "Wow."

Before I begin, I highly recommend the few of you that actually read these little blog things to go and purchase a copy of this book. Fair warning, though, it is not an easy book to get through.

And do not worry, my words here are not just a synopsis of the book as I will be attempting a semi-amazing analogy at some point, as I usually do...

In "A Thousand Hills," Kinzer follows the amazing story of Paul Kagame, whose rebel army single-handedly invaded Rwanda to end the 100-day genocide that claimed nearly one million lives in 1994.

The book begins with Paul Kagame fleeing Rwanda as Hutu extremists attempt to slaughter his Tutsi family in the early years of his life. Growing up as a refugee in Uganda, he quickly rose to fame among his exiled brothers as he created the most audacious covert operation of modern clandestine warfare. Building a rebel army within the Ugandan army, the exiled Tutsis became poised to take back Rwanda, since the government would not allow them to return to their homeland...

As the clock ticked down to the impending, unforseen atrocities that would be more barbaric than Hitler's Holocaust, Kagame was sent to the United States for extensive military training. Still being a high ranking member of the Ugandan Army, he departed for America so no one would suspect his true intentions. The rebel force was left in the hands of his close friend Fred Rwigyema...

Halfway through his training, and after nightly phone calls to Uganda, a date was set for the rebel's invasion of their homeland that had kicked them out. October 1, 1990 would be a date to go down in history.

On October 1, 1990 in the wee hours of the morning, thousands of well-trained Rwandan exiles-turned-soldiers marched across the border into their homeland that some had not seen decades. The Rwandan Army, unsuspecting and unprepared, fled from their posts.

Over the next few days, Paul Kagame stopped receiving information about the invasion. Concerned, he finally discovered that Fred, his life-long friend and commander of the RPF rebels, had been killed in battle.

Kagame, knowing that without a strong leader the rebels would lose, prepared to return to take the reins of what would become one of the most desperate, vile, and devastating war/genocides the world would ever witness.

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This is where things get really interesting.

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Leaving the United States top military academy drew international attention to Paul Kagame. It soon became known that he was going back to Rwanda to a devastating war that no human being could possibly imagine...

As he departed the U.S., Kagame realizied he was being followed. Over the next several days, he would be playing a cat-and-mouse game with CIA agents, Belgian secret service officers, and central African assassins. The world was determined to not let Kagame return to Rwanda to continue the war for his people's freedom...

After eluding police, customs officials, and government agents at airports in London, Brussels, Addis Ababa, and Nairobi, Paul Kagame ended up in an airport terminal in central Africa, tired, exhausted, and pursued by a near invisible enemy. Sitting in a chair in the terminal, trying to figure out how to get to Uganda, the soon to be rebel leader broke down.

Knowing that every second he wasn't in Rwanda meant his men were dying, Paul Kagame bowed his head...
To this day, Kagame admits he has no idea what came over him at this moment. All he recalls is that a firm resolve entered his willpower to get to Rwanda, regardless the cost.

It was from that moment onward, that the hand of God came upon one of the few heros that survived the Rwandan genocide. And as pure evil, hatred, and inhumanity began to rear it's hideous head in Rwanda, Paul Kagame marched within a foot of a Rwandan government assassin and onto a plane. The next day, he was reaching the front lines of one of the most desperate wars Africa had ever witnessed.

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I'll tell you how his story ends later...

It's time for that semi-amazing analogy...

I've always wondered why God allows awful things like genocide to happen. Perhaps it is to remind us of how much we really need Him or perhaps it is Him giving humanity a chance to stare evil in the face and defeat it...
If the latter is so, at least partially, then God has his own intervention plan...

Intervention is really an amazing concept. My Mac dictionary defines "intervention" as: "the action or process of intervening."
I guess intervention can only be defined by what it is: that is, an outside force entering into a scenario or item that is in some form of conflict, many times with no gain for the outside force.

Looking back 14 years after the last machete stroke ended a Tutsi life, God's intervention plan in Rwanda was clear: and Paul Kagame was the central character in a story of blood, toil, genocide, war, and now onward to redemption.
But the story of Paul Kagame is only a small part of the history of supernatural intervention on our behalf. It culminated approxametly two thousand years ago on a hillside outside of Jerusalem...the most Glorious Intervention we have ever witnessed. It is an Intervention that happens everyday all around the world.

That's the analogy...
Now back to our Rwandan hero...

Over the coming years, Paul Kagame would lead the RPF rebels into battle against a government that intended to execute every Tutsi in Rwanda. By 1994, what Kagame most feared came true as government troops and the Interhammwe militia set up road blocks across the country. Every Tutsi that was stopped at these roadblocks was dragged to the side of the road, sometimes molested, and then hacked to death with machetes...

Seeing that the United Nations peacekeeping force would not intervene to stop the slaughter, Paul Kagame realized what had to be done. God was about to use the man He had saved from the merciless international agents that had hunted him four years before to a point of hopelessness, and end what mankind did not have the guts to face...

In mid-April, only days after the Rwandan government started massacring civilians, Paul Kagame and his rebel force exploded from northern Rwandan in a last-ditch, desperate invasion to end the killing. A few weeks later, RPF rebels captured the capital city, Kigali, and were appalled at what they found. Tens of thousands of human carcasses filled the city, and that was only the beginning....
The dead bodies were so numerous that RPF soldiers saw enormous rats that were the as large as medium sized dogs, weighing up to fifty pounds.
They had been feasting on the dead bodies....

The official death count eventually reached one million lives. Nearly ten percent of the Rwandan population was hacked to death with machetes in only 100 days...

God gave humanity a chance to save Rwanda, and we failed. Luckily for us, God rose a man up to do what no one else was willing too.

While the story of Rwanda is a sad part of our history, it is also full of miracles. The fact that Paul Kagame was even involved is a mercy of God. The world abandoned Rwanda...so God used a Rwandan to end what is perhaps the worst atrocity ever committed in the modern world.

But Paul Kagame's story is only one of millions worldwide. God didn't just intervene in the bloodshed at Golgotha or in the vileness of the Rwandan genocide, He intervenes on a daily basis, whether it is using men to end evil or just simply comforting the hurt.

Certainly, Paul Kagame's story is incredible, and it doesn't end there! Today, he is now president of Rwanda...and reconciliation between murders, rapists, and the victimized is already underway. Forgiveness in Rwanda is a very real thing....just as it is in our daily lives...something I've had to learn a great deal about lately.

Paul Kagame is certainly one of my heros. His intervention was nothing less than incredible. But it points to something far greater, well, two things far greater:

1. Our desperate need for salvation from ourselves.
2. God is in the middle of The Ultimate Glorious Intervention in each and every follower of Christ.

The story of Paul Kagame, as grim and as beautiful as it is, is a firm reminder that we cannot save ourselves. Something that is essentially above us is the only hope we have, and it does not take a Christian to realize that something is seriously wrong with this world. The secular world, whether they know it or not, is screaming for salvation...just turn the news or a radio on sometime.

So, to application and beyond...
What I took away from "A Thousand Hills" is that even in the midst of genocide, God was working miracles. If God can orchestrate events and people to end such atrocities, then hell, our problems are a walk in the park for God...

So why then do we worry about them so much?

God, I feel like a complete jackass when I put my problems in that light...I am blessed beyond belief and all I see is the problems I face. But in reality, those problems are very superficial...

After all, I don't carry the weight of responsibility of leading a rebel army to end genocide. Even more so, I do not carry the responsibility of God...

Looking back over 20 years I can see, just like Paul Kagame, that God has intervened to save me more than once...I'm guessing He has great plans for me...

Maybe we should all take a look back and see His faithfulness even when we failed...cause, let's be honest, we failed pretty big in Rwanda, and we are failing again in Darfur.

Yet, the miracles keep falling from God by the millions, and we have blinded ourselves so much with our own petty crap that we do not even see them...

Truly, we are wretched creatures....

In Christ,
Hackett

The Life of a Pawn

Having the ability to multi-task is a great thing, or at least I always thought it was. My job position and many other things in life call for a multi-tasker, one of the few things I am consistently good with, as it is a gift. But sometimes too much of a gift can be not so good or even harmful to situations, people, or oneself.

On a honest note, putting aside the fact that I am in the top 10% of the wealthiest people in the world just because I live in America and don’t have to worry about the government I submit to trying to harm me for power’s sake, life has not exactly been as peachy as I’d like it to be…
Stress, over-reaching, and too much running on an empty tank finally caught up with me recently. An overloaded mind and body that is already stressed can only go on for so long, and unfortunately it took me almost being hospitalized to realize that….


Being forced to take a break for me was definitely a mind-boggling experience. It gave me time to think about stuff that was really going on in my life and what priorities needed to actually be priorities. I guess it is a universal trait of multi-taskers to not stop thinking; hopefully this particular one can use it for good…

Anyways, part of my thought processes were finding analogies or different scenarios that could help me better understand my own current state of affairs. In a nutshell, at this point there was no need for split-second decision-making, thank God, because it would take me quite some time to find anything to relate too.

And, oddly enough, the thing I could most relate my present situations too was a simple chessboard. Well, not just the board, the pieces are perhaps more important, at least they are as important…
Whatever measure of importance is not really what I want to speak of, although I am sure it would make for a rich topic once you see how it is to be applied:

My proposal is that all of us, regardless of social, economic, religious, racial, or even physical locale status, live on a chessboard of sorts.

If you are not familiar with the game of chess, let me briefly explain the objectives and overarching goals of the game:
The main goal is to force the opponent’s king into a position where it can no longer move…aka “checkmate.”
Minor goals include clearing the board of any opposing piece that blocks you from the checkmate, advancing across the board in a strategic way that limits the other player’s options, and being skilled enough to have a flexible plan that will allow you to win.

It sounds simple enough, but in all honesty it is not. Chess is a very complex, complicated game…

But regardless of complications, the analogy I pulled from the game and compared into my life, or perhaps even God-inspired, was that we are like pawns on a chessboard…and when reality hits the ground running, life becomes uncontrollable. Unfortunatly for the pawn, this can be an every play scenario; or, in our lives, a possible every day scenario.

Perhaps the main problem is that I, like so many others, consider myself the king on the chessboard. Sure, all the other players are important, but they all should be looking out for “number 1.” (me) Right?
Apparently not…

Romans 9 speaks of God’s enduring and uncompromising power. Flipping idly through the Scriptures in my down time led me to verse 18:

“Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.”

Wow…talk about hitting home. If the High King of Heaven can control our hearts, then am I really the King on chessboard? Not at all! Living the life of a pawn seems to be much more appropriate for a fallen being such as I and the rest of humanity.
I’ve always known the Gospel to be offensive to many, and in all honesty it can be. No one, especially in our society that puts so much emphasis on independence, likes to hear that they are not the king on there own chessboards…. even some of us professing believers…like me….

I’ve seen, read, and studied the historical, archeological, and other secular accounts of the Scriptures to believe that it is THE inspired Word of God, a love letter to a fallen world. So, when I come to stuff like this…sometimes it can be a little bit of a slap in the face. I guess, in a way, the Bible is like a best friend: Soothing when it needs to be, challenging when confrontation arrives, and still there to pick you up when rock bottom is more than just a reality…way to go Evan, you are kinda like the Bible!

But back to the chess analogy…

Most of us know how to live in the illusion that we are in charge (yes, it is an illusion). But I dare say we know very little about being the pawn. In all honesty, it sounds kind of lame: pawns have the appearance of being the weakest player and are very limited in movement. Our illusionary “kingship” sounds much more exciting. But is it really?

Is submission, please don’t wince at the word, really such a bad thing? Is being a pawn really that bad? Do we even understand what the pawn’s (our) position is?

The pawn is really an amazing part of the game of chess. When combined with other pawns, whole sections of the board can be secured, opposing pieces can be defeated, and, when joined by more powerful pieces, the game can be won.
We look around our world and we see that it is small groups of people that are making the biggest difference. A pawn, or person, going solo quickly burns out and is defeated. A group of pawns holds their ground and may even gain some….
But a pawn/person who is with a group of pawns with the support of the King and other stronger players…comes close to being unstoppable.

I guess the greatest fear of stepping down to the position of the pawn is thinking that the King taking our place will be like any other human, and we could be sacrificed to get what he wants…
But what we forget, what we forget, is that Christ, the King, sacrificed Himself for the pawns.

So, in this light, is being a pawn really degrading? On the chessboard of the world, the King sacrificed Himself for the pawns…. apparently we are worth something…and we haven’t even considered that the chessboard was also created by God…
And not only do I know that I am worth something from my King’s sacrifice, but I also know that I am worth something by the fact that if I do not take my proper place on the board, no one will replace it…in essence keeping my individuality while submitting to something higher than me.

This is what makes Christianity more than a religion: it is a lifestyle choice that involves submission everyday. It is personal. It is taking your place on the chessboard and sticking with it.
Of course, being a pawn does not mean things will always be easy. There are some major opponents in this world as well. There are things such as violence, genocide, and even oppressive governments that sit on the other side of the board, things that are much larger than us. Thankfully, we are not the only pawn the board. And even more so, we have a King who not only never loses, but also created the playing field.

Perhaps being a pawn isn’t such a bad thing…
It means submitting yourself to Christ as independent being. Submission doesn’t make you any less of a person…but perhaps the thing we forget about independence is that to be independent in Christ we must be dependent on Him…a paradox, I know. Freedom in Christ is being dependent on Him, and from that one dependence being independent in all else. Submission may not be such a bitch after all…a lesson we could all learn from…

Maybe multi-tasking isn’t such a bad thing after all either…

Anyways, I’m going to go be a pawn now…you are welcome to join me if you like. I’ve been assigned a pretty scary place on the chessboard, and my submissive independence is needed there.

I sincerely hope you find your place on the chessboard as well, and the sooner the better.

In Christ,
Hackett