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Left To Tell By Immaculee Ilibagiza Analysis

1649 Words7 Pages

Reflection on Left to Tell: The Power of Prayer and Hope It is easy to day to regulate religion and spirituality to Sunday or whichever day someone worships. It's a mentality that centers on the idea that on this day or that day I’m Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or anytype of faith, but every other day I’m just me again. Immaculee Ilibagiza's personal account of how she found God during the Rwandan Holocaust show readers how a vibrant and active faith-life can transform you, deliver you from evil, and give you hope. Her story inspires people from all over the world to not just practice their beliefs on the weekends, but everyday of the week.
Transformation and Delivery
I believe Immaculee Ilibagiza’s main messages is that spirituality has the …show more content…

She tried and tried to pray for them, in the end she prayed: “Please open my heart, Lord, and show me how to forgive. I’m not strong enough to squash my hatred- they’ve wronged us all so much… my hatred is so heavy that it could crush me. Touch my heart, Lord, and Show me how to forgive,” (Ilibagiza, & Erwin, 2014, pg 93). It was after that prayer for God to open her heart that Immaculee“took a crucial step toward forgiving the killers that day...For the first time, I pitied the killers,” (2014, pg 94). That feeling of pity has lead Immaculee down a road of forgiveness which has allowed her to eventually see both the victims and the killers from a place of mutuality. Immaculee later told Jean Paul that :...the killers are good people, but right now evil has hold on their hearts,” (2014, pg 144). Just as she rid herself from that evil, she tells us all to do the same until “Forgiveness is all I [we] have to offer,” (2014, pg …show more content…

One time that was particularly striking was when the killers were in the pastor’s home and calling out her name. They were tearing the place apart and coming closer and closer to her hiding place. However, Immaculee prayed for God to protect her and the other women. It was then that Jesus appeared to her and placed a cross over the door and she“...knew instinctively that a kind of Divine force was emanating from the cross, which would repel the killers,” (Ilibagiza, & Erwin, 2014, pg 131). Even though the killers were very close, they did not go into the bathroom. Later in her journey, Immaculee came face to face with a killer and had a staring match with him. She stated that in that moment “I prayed that God would use me to touch the killer with the power of His love,” (2014, pg

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And in spite of myself, a prayer formed inside me, a prayer to this God in whom I no longer believed.” (Wiesel 91). This quote demonstrates the internal struggle between Elie and his faith. He is slowly losing his belief in God, who was once the meaning and center of his life. This quote shows how the extreme circumstances of the Holocaust can lead to the questioning and loss of once-strong bonds of faith, ultimately changing one's life forever.

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