On Monday night, I watched the most moving movie I have ever seen. Hotel Rwanda is the riveting story of the 1994 genocide that left over one million dead.
The story revolves around hotel manager, Paul Ruseabagina, who uses his five-star hotel as a refugee camp for Tutsis from the oppression unleashed by Hutu rebels. The hotel would become a shelter for some 1200 refugees fleeing the genocide.
The one scene in the movie that really captured my heart was the exchange between Paul and an American cameraman. The cameraman had left the safety of the gated hotel grounds to capture footage of the slaughter. When the video was inadvertenly shown with Paul in the room, the cameraman grew apologetic.
Here's their exchange:
Paul: "I'm glad you captured the atrocities for all the world to see. That is our only hope for intervention."
Cameraman: "Don't count on intervention. When they see the pictures, they'll say, 'Oh my God,' then go right back to eating dinner."
With a look of absolute dismay, Paul hangs his head and walks away.
I can't help but ask myself: why was I so fortunately blessed to be born in America? Why are my children so fortunate to be born in America, rather than Rwanda or Sudan, wracked with genocide just ten years after the atrocities in Rwanda? Why have I and my family been so lucky to be born and raised in a civil society, rather than one based on medieval oppression?
And Paul's statement to UN Peacekeepers: "we must shame them into saving us" convicts my heart.
The blessings we've received from the generosity of God are not our shame. Our willingness, or lack thereof, to see ourselves as conduits through whom God can bless the lives of the less fortunate is our downfall.
Hotel Rwanda is a shock to the middle-class American status quo. It is a convicting reminder of how blessed we are and how oppressed others in this world are. It is a call to mission -- that we are not the end-users of our blessings -- to use the blessings we enjoy to bless the lives of others.
As American Christians, we are stewards of the most incredible grace from the storehouse of God. Those blessings can never be used for our self-serving purposes. Those blessings are our motivation to mission -- to love the least of these in this world God loves so much (see Matthew 25 and John 3).
Just as the Passion of the Christ moved me, Hotel Rwanda moved me. It moved me to see my role as a disciple of Jesus on a grander scale. It moved me to see all the blessings God has poured out on me and my family as a means to bless the lives of others, even if they are an ocean away.
