As a child in 1972, I saw a picture in a magazine that has remained in my memory throughout the passing years. It was a photograph of a nine-year-old girl (the same age as me in that year) named Phan Thi Kim Phuc, and it has become perhaps the most indelible image from the Vietnam War. During a battle between North and South Vietnamese troops, Kim Phuc joined a group of civilians fleeing from her village of Trang Bang to positions safely held by South Vietnamese forces. A South Vietnamese Air Force pilot mistook the group for enemy soldiers and diverted to attack with napalm bombs. Two of her brothers were killed, and she was severely burned. Wearing no clothes, she fled up the road toward cameraman Nick Ut with her arms held out sideways due to her pain, her mouth open in a cry of sheer agony.
According to Elaine Sciolino in the New York Times, Kim Phuc suffered third-degree burns over 50 percent of her body, which led to fourteen months of painful rehabilitation and numerous skin grafts. Sciolino reported, “It was so painful to have her wounds washed and dressed that she lost consciousness whenever she was touched.” Kim Phuc developed an interest in medical treatment as a result, and in 1986 she was granted permission by the Vietnamese government to further her medical studies in Cuba. Four years earlier, she had converted to Christianity, and, upon arriving in Cuba, she met fellow Christian Bui Huy Toan. They married in 1992 and embarked on an international honeymoon trip. During a refueling stop in Newfoundland, they left their airplane and asked for political asylum in Canada, which was granted. Still bearing the numerous scars left from her painful ordeal and still suffering from lost sweat and oil glands, she began a new life with her husband and began to tell her personal story.
In 1996 she accepted an invitation from several Vietnam veterans groups to participate in a Veterans Day observance at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, where she laid a wreath and talked about forgiveness. “I have suffered a lot from both physical and emotional pain,” she told the audience of several thousand people, who welcomed her with two standing ovations. “Sometimes I could not breathe. But God saved my life and gave me faith and hope. Even if I could talk face to face with the pilot who dropped the bombs, I would tell him, 'We cannot change history, but we should try to do good things for the present and for the future to promote peace.'”
Often those who suffer greatly become the greatest peacemakers. They understand full well the ravages of conflict, despair, and human suffering, and they go the extra mile to insure that others will not learn these lessons the hard way. Certainly Jesus went to the cross with such an understanding and with such an experience of personal suffering, and, in doing so, He became our peace (Ephesians 2.14). This supreme Peacemaker reminds His followers that those who make peace are blessed, for “they shall be called the children of God.” Peacemaking is hard work, whether it be between warring nations in a geographic region or warring individuals in a family, neighborhood, workplace, or social media forum. Nevertheless, it is the work to which we are called as followers of Jesus in today's world…and it cannot be ignored.
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