Yesterday was April 24, the remembrance day of the 1915 Armenian genocide. Both my parents became orphans: my father as a five year old city boy and my mother, a litlle country girl.

I had listened to my father’s horrific story. Left alone in the street, a kind man brings him a piece of bread every day. Some time later, his older sister finds him; they survive to live through some gruesome suffering! My mother, at the age of 6, finds herself in the town’s church with her younger sister, alongside other children. Her older sister Lousin and her mother – my grandmother, both perish during the forced walk in the desert. Swiss missionaries rescue my mother with her sister and bring them to an orphanage near Beirut.

What does the God who knows “the path of justice” want from me? While sitting at my prayer corner, my Bible open on my table, I find my last year’s journal where I had scribbled in pencil my conversation with God.

Will I forgive? Yes, I will… not just for the Turkish people in general. But to forgive those who took the life from my grandparents. Here, now I say to the Lord, I do forgive. Oh Lord, help me forgive.