To Forgive

On Monday, I saw a fifteen-year old girl in the HIV clinic. She was thin, shy and stunted, accompanied by her mother for her first appointment. When I asked about the girl's medical history, her mother did all of the talking while the girl stared down at her feet. The mother told us that her daughter was recently diagnosed with HIV. The girl had been raped ten years ago, when she was 5. 

At that moment, the girl began to cry. After some silence and comforting from her mother, the translator I was working with asked the girl why she was crying. In choking sobs, the girl said she didn’t understand why this happened to her and that she didn’t do anything wrong. 


"Are you Christian or Muslim?" the translator asked.
"Christian," the girl answered. 

The translator gently told the girl that she should try to forgive the man for his actions. The girl, still looking down at her feet with tears rolling down her eyes, didn’t say anything for awhile. 


“I’ll try to but its hard”. 


I nudged the translator and asked her to tell the girl that it was true, she did nothing wrong, she did not deserve to get the disease, and that God would deal with the man’s actions accordingly. It's heartbreaking to hear these stories, to meet young girls caught in situations like this. What I hold onto is that we serve a just God, who will not let evil triumph at the end.