Amina

Voice of the Martyrs Newsletter (Dory P.)

 

“As they struck me [with machetes], I raised my hand to block,” Amina said. “I shouted and said, ‘Oh my God! I am finished today. Oh God, forgive me.’ They then hit me again. They also cut my head, but I did not feel the pain. I was lying down in the pool of blood until they finished.”

     

When Amina thought she was dying, she asked God to forgive her. But forgiving the men who attacked her was far from her mind as she lay on the ground, weak from blood loss. As Amina healed, however, she felt convicted to forgive the people that had caused her so much harm.

      

As believers, we know we are commanded to forgive. Sometimes it’s easy, but other times the deep wounds we’ve suffered make forgiveness seem impossible. Offering forgiveness to those who hurt us sets us apart as Christians. While some other religions advocate avenging injustices, Christians are promised that God will avenge the wrongs committed against is according to his perfect justice. Jesus’ instruction to his followers in Matthew 5 to “turn the other cheek” and “go the extra mile” are as revolutionary now as the were then. We’re naturally inclined to feel wronged and to protect ourselves from further hurt.

     

When we see a persecuted Christian forgive his or her persecutor, we witness the incredible transformational nature of Christ. In circumstances that make forgiveness seem impossible, the power of Christ enables Christians to forgive even the biggest offenses.

 

Forgiveness as Obedience

 

It was dark outside when Amina Yakubu was awakened by the sound of gunshots near her home. Living in Bauchi state in Northern Nigeria, Amina had heard of hundreds of attacks on Christian villages over the years. Only a year earlier, Muslim Fulani warriors had attacked a nearby village and massacred more than 500 men, women and children. And now, on April 22, 2011, Amina realized they were attacking her village of Kataru.

     

When Amina understood what was happening, she and a friend tried to escape with their children over a back fence, but Amina was six months pregnant and had difficulty climbing the fence. As she struggled to reach the top, a bullet shattered her leg and she fell to the ground. Her friend dragged her back into the house to hide, and they locked the door behind them. But attackers soon followed the trail of blood from Amina’s wounds and broke into the house.

 

They slashed Amina brutally with their machetes, leaving deep gashes in her scalp, neck and arms. After leaving Amina for dead, the attackers searched every room in the house looking for others, but they didn’t discover Amina’s friend. Then they left, setting fires throughout the village. The day after the attack, the Fulani warriors returned to Kataru and set fire to Amina’s home, which was completely destroyed.

 

Several hours after the attack, the Nigerian army transported Amina to a hospital, where she spent the next four months recovering. As a result of the trauma, Amina’s baby was delivered stillborn, and doctors took six days to suture all of her wounds. VOM’s medical program paid her medical costs, and VOM workers visited her periodically to check on her and offer encouragement.

 

Amina cried a lot while she was in the hospital, mourning her losses and lamenting the physical pain. One day as her husband sat next to her bed, he said, “Those that did this to you, if they brought them to you and you saw them, what will you say should be done to them?”

 

She showed him her fractured right leg and told him that she’d do to her attackers what they’d done to her.

 

“Won’t you forgive them?” he asked.

 

“I will never forgive them,” she said.

 

Obeying Christ’s command to forgive is often an act of the will; we choose to act on forgiveness before feeling the change internally. Sometimes we achieve forgiveness only through prayer and a long struggle of the heart. Other times, it comes immediately as a gift from God. Although it took time, Amina ultimately forgave her persecutors in obedience to God’s Word.

 

Several weeks passed before God’s work changed Amina’s heart and mind. She was reminded of Scripture passages that teach forgiveness, and she knew she needed to obey. Eventually, Amina told her husband about her change of heart. “If I see those that attacked me, even if today they are arrested and brought to me, I have forgiven them,” she told him. “All this suffering I am going through, even before it happened,I know that the Lord had already known and he has written it, that at so and so time I will find myself in this suffering. Therefore, I will forgive them for everything they did to me.”

 

Amina’s resolve was tested less than a year later by an encounter with her attacker. On December 27, 2011, she was at her mother’s house when a man selling firewood came to the door. Amina’s mother agreed to buy some firewood and asked the man to set the wood inside the house.

 

“When I looked up and saw him, my heart just cut as I saw him,” Amina said. “I started thinking of all that happened to me.” And the man also recognized Amina. “He could not look at me again. He put his head down. He quickly put the wood down, and my mother gave him his money.”

 

Amina didn’t say anything until the man had gone. Her uncle later chastised her for not speaking up, saying he would have beaten the man. But Amina is not seeking revenge. “I don’t have any bad intention against them,” she said. “Our prayer is that they should understand what they are doing is not good, so that they will be saved when they die or when our Lord Jesus will come. Because if they died in this habit, they will not see God.”

 

Today Amina is recovering well and starting to walk with the aid of a walking stick. She has been ill, however, and VOM’s medical coordinator reports she will need another surgery soon.

 

Forgiveness hasn’t been easy for Amina. It’s a constant internal struggle. “I am pleading with God to give me a courageous heart, that he will give me patience in all pestilence so that I will not betray his name,” she said. “Let me not think that he is what brought this to me. I should hold onto God no matter the suffering or persecution. Every day, I ask him that in all of this suffering that I am passing through that he will give me courage, that nothing will tempt me to turn back from him.”