The Wallflower

The Wallflower:

My wife is painting a picture of a simple orange flower growing bravely out of a crack in a wall. The beauty of the small wallflower stands in stark contrast to the drab hard cement that hosts it. In a whole field of flowers it might not be noticed at all. It might even be plucked as a weed. But placed here, against the inhospitable wall, it gives the feeling of hope, courage, and new life.

The wallflower is a representation of the people of Rwanda. Out of the tough and dark circumstances of hatred, mass murder, and poverty springs new life. The wallflowers of Rwanda are the ordinary people who struggle on in faith that tomorrow will be better than yesterday. They are those who take the painful step of forgiveness and reconciliation because their very survival depends on it. They are the group of casual laborers who pool together a day’s wages in order to help their fellow worker. They are the widows of men killed in the genocide joining together with the wives of those who killed them.

When everything has been taken from you, and you live in a place where poverty can be a death sentence, than even the struggle for the next day and the next breath becomes significant. Out of that struggle for life comes a beauty such as that described in Isaiah 40: 18, 19. “See I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”