Numbness or a Display of His Splendor?

I am in the middle of reading "In My Home There Is No More Sorrow: 10 Days in Rwanda" by Rick Bass.  Last night I read this passage from the book and it floored me.  I knew I would need to come back to it and to reflect on its depth.  I glanced at the page number to commit it to memory... 39.  The number of years I've been alive.  Am I as alive as I could be? Should be?

"There is a spirit moving through Rwanda that is profound and surprising.  It is a spirit of what most people would call love.  I'm not saying that's the whole of it. What I suspect is that there is probably not a word for it - the feeling, the spirit, the phenomenon - and none of us on the outside of it, thank God, will ever quite know what it is; not seventeen years later, and not ever.  I wouldn't, on reflection, trade my numbness for what they have.  Even an arm's length distance might be a little too close. It's kind of terrifying to witness such capacity for strength, for spiritual growth; who among us would not prefer, really, to remain flabby, vague, untested?"

The author, Rick Bass, visited Rwanda for 10 days three years ago and this book is the essay he wrote about his brief but profound experience in a country that has suffered through genocide after genocide after genocide.  The most recent slaughter ended after one million Tutsis were killed by their Hutu countrymen within 100 days' time in 1994.  Bass goes to memorial after memorial on his ten day trek taking in the blood-stained walls of churches, piles of bones and stench of decay. He comes in direct contact with both survivors of the massacre and the perpetrators of it.  The Hutus and the Tutsis now miraculously live as neighbors and countrymen once again; unfathomable forgiveness has come and life goes on, powerfully, and Bass is at a loss.  He would rather embrace his numbness than experience the  profound wholeness and depth of a people who have witnessed/perpetrated/been victimized by such evil and yet have overcome through God's mysterious gift of forgiveness.

I am left to ponder my own numbness.  When have I chosen to keep at arms length that which I cannot understand?  That which I do not want to understand or believe possible.  That which I know would require much more of me than I care to give up in order to obtain it?  

Is numbness better than soaring on the indefinable heights of the ultimate expression of forgiveness all while the images of soul-wrenching evil still burn in memory, tethering us to the earth and its ways?  Is it?

It isn't.  Numbness is not better than the display of His splendor.  Just ask Moses, who boldly asked God, "Please, show me Your glory!" Exodus 33:18.  Just like the surviving and thriving Rwandans today, Moses came down from that mountain after experiencing the glory of God only to have others look away in fear and disbelief.  His face was aglow with something they could not comprehend, something they weren't sure they wanted to comprehend.  It looked painful.  It looked other-worldly.  It was easier to look away and remain numb.  Easier, but not better. In Exodus, we read how God hid Moses in a crack in a rock while His glory passed by, knowing that Moses could only take a small portion of the weight of the immeasurable glory of God and still live.  Is that what we are afraid of?  Is that why we remain numb when we could experience the glory of God?  Do we fear that experiencing something so beautiful and powerful might just kill us?  What a way to go! 


May 2014 be a year of shaking off numbness and fear in all its forms.  Of living life fully, even when it hurts, especially when it hurts.  Of living a life "with such capacity for strength and spiritual growth" that no one can witness it without standing in utter awe of the God who is able to bring terrifying beauty from the likes of evil men all for the display of His life-giving splendor.  Glory to God.

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