Sermon Illustrations

In the movie, Hotel Rwanda, based on a true story from the Rwandan civil war and genocide, Paul Russebegina played by Don Cheadle goes and makes a deal with the leader of the genocidal Interahamwe militia to get more supplies for his hotel where he is hiding refugees. The deal goes fine, but this leader then tells Paul to go home a different way. It’s foggy and early in the morning when they are going back. Suddenly, the van they are riding in starts to bump and lurch. Assuming that it must be a flat tire or something of that effect, the van stops and Paul gets out.

What he sees before him is what seems like a mile of dead bodies, a highway filled with death and destruction.

It is the kind of scene that makes us ask “Why God?” It is the kind of scene that fills us with such terror and disgust that we almost throw up. But if we’re asking the question “Why God?” then we have to come to realize in this text that “Why God?” is the wrong question.