I know at first glance it feels distracting to hear a story and care for somebody on the other side of the globe. You don’t even know them, so why should you care? God uses a multitude of stories about people we don’t know. They are threads creating the weave of scripture. Life stories that warmly yet sometimes painfully make us care as we realize someone cares for us. My hope as we cross into the New Year is that we would be inspired by fresh stories of rescue and redemption that elevate our faith for even greater exploits in the coming days. Edgardo’s story is one such example (name changed for security).
One side of my head was having a conversation with the other as I listened to Edgardo’s story. “This guy should really be in jail,” I thought. “He’s extremely dangerous!” I observed the cautious glances of his eyes, the conditioned and controlled motion of his body. He was a professional. He had assassinated so many people that he should be a hardened shell. But instead, I watched him continually tear up as he told his story. You see, Edgardo is a former child soldier and assassin who is now one of our key workers in the Philippines. He was instrumental in helping us launch our child soldier rescue project there in early 2010.
Edgardo’s constant training as a killer began at a very young age. He spoke of the day his father pulled him by his small hand to the riverbank to gaze at the bodies of his three aunts who had been raped and killed by the opposition army. It was in those broken moments he plunged down the precipice of hatred for the outsider “Christians.” Every day, his father would take him to the beach and have him shoot bottles out of the air. When he missed, he was punished. By 12 years old, Edgardo was a skilled gunfighter and sniper. He recalled his triumphant assassination of a 40-year-old “Christian” at age 14, which he carried out by emptying all 30 rounds of his M-16 magazine into the man.
He then shared about how a decade later a different Christian from his own culture spoke simple words that jarred his soul. This man was a senior leader among his people, so he was required by honor to listen to him as he told the story of Messiah who triumphed over the need for revenge and offered a path to heaven that was not earned by giving death to the “unbeliever.” This micro-narrative was the story that not only had ultimate cosmic impact, but it was the one that gently
crumbled his resolve as a hardened killer as well.Back in my head again, I heard another side of my internal argument as I began to visualize the story of Paul the apostle. Paul made more than a few people in the Jerusalem church uncomfortable, too. A few of them could have said, “Hey! That man killed my daughter!” Or, “The fiend beat my brother bloody, what is he doing here?” As I considered Edgardo’s story in light of this, I couldn’t help but notice how it really is a story of the kingdom of light plundering the kingdom of darkness: the former child soldier and assassin is now a rescuer of the same.
Doesn’t Edgardo’s story retell the power of the crucial story of scripture? The Good News that our God forgives and his vibrant gift of forgiveness through Jesus is strong enough to redeem and rewrite every story in the world into a celebration of love. These stories of rescue belong to us. Rescue is in our blood. Our DNA is of Jesus. The majestic blood that flows in us is from a Savior, a Redeemer, and a Rescuer. That is His name and so also it is ours!
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