Craig Deall’s family farm was seized by the government of Zimbabwe 20 years ago without any compensation. Rather than fight or flee, Dealls’s faith compelled him to forgive – a decision that has reaped a great harvest in more ways than one.
Deall was raising his family on the same farm he grew up on when in 2003, the unthinkable happened. “It was obviously extremely traumatic,” he told CBN News
The government forced Deall, his wife, and children to leave their home and farm that had been in his family since 1948 as part of the government’s land reform program. An effort to more equitably distribute land between black subsistence farmers and white Zimbabweans of European ancestry. He had three choices.
Fight, Flee or Forgive
“We could fight, we could flee, or we could forgive. Some of my friends fought for their land and ended up getting killed for it,” Deall said. “Most of my friends left the country, and no answer is wrong. But we as a family decided to pursue the third option which was to forgive. We felt that if we chose bitterness instead of forgiveness, there’s no country far enough away where it doesn’t smell.”
Deall kept going back to one scripture in the Bible’s New Testament.
“That scripture where Jesus says, ‘If a man steals your coat, give him your tunic as well.’ (Matthew 5:40) And so for us, that meant, if a man steals your farm, teach him how to farm. And that’s what we did. And with that, the pressure lifted, there was a great release over us and we knew that God had opened up an avenue for us to serve the least of these and to bring them the Gospel,” he recalled.
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Source: CBN
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