Testimony of a Peace-Maker

I was pleased to see that Kim Phuc has won a German peace prize for her work in support of Unesco and children wounded in war. Phuc is often referred to as the “napalm girl” after an iconic photo of her from the Vietnam war, taken after she was badly burned by the defoliant used by the Americans.  Previous recipients include the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and the American civil rights activist Tommie Smith.

Phuc was nine when a South Vietnamese plane dropped napalm on her village in 1972, believing it harboured North Vietnamese troops. I was in my late teens at the time and shocked by this image of a child running down a road in tears, naked and severely injured The photographer Nic Ut drove Phuc to the hospital where he insisted doctors treat her. Only 21 at the time Ut said decades later  “I cried when I saw her running, If I don’t help her and if something happened and she died I think I’d kill myself after that.” An Associated Press photographer, Ut, won a Pulitzer prize for the image in 1973.

You may not be aware that Phuc is now a Canadian, living in the GTA. And she is a Christian, identifying with the suffering Christ as a young woman reading the New Testament:

I had never been exposed to this side of Jesus—the wounded one, the one who bore scars. I turned over this new information in my mind as a gem in my hand, relishing the light that was cast from all sides. The more I read, the more I came to believe that he really was who he said he was, that he really had done what he said he had done, and that—most important to me—he really would do all that he had promised in his Word. Perhaps he could help me make sense of my pain and at last come to terms with my scars.

 

This is a powerful testimony from someone who has received the grace to give to others.

I write about "Reforesting Faith" by Matthew Sleeth in today's Groundling blog
https://groundlingearthyheavenly.blogspot.com/2019/02/matthew-sleeth-reforesting-faith.html
 

 

 

The prize-winning image of Phuc and her relatives. Photograph: Nick Ut/AP