Even after twenty-five years, Cambodia remains for me a country of deep and unsettling contrasts – moments so wildly at odds with one another that they can provoke tears, laughter, or both in a single, unguarded instant.

In preparation for this trip, I described this dynamic to my team. And as we wrapped up our time in Cambodia together, we all experienced it first hand.

We spent a somber morning touring Phnom Penh’s Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, the site of the Khmer Rouge’s notorious S-21 interrogation and torture center. A converted primary school, a facility like Tuol Sleng is shocking not only for its banality, but its ubiquity as well.

There’s nothing special about the building. From a bit of a distance it looks like any other school building in this part of the world. Simple brick and stucco construction, three story shoeboxes arranged around a central grassy courtyard. Closer inspection reveals the horror within. Barbed wire across the windows and hallways to prevent escape or suicide attempts. Room after room of photos and artifacts documenting the atrocities that Pol Pot’s forces inflicted on their own Cambodian brothers and sisters: photos of the victims, dead and alive. Whips. Electrified bed frames. Axes and clubs. Playground equipment perverted into gallows.

Imagine the sounds: the moans of agony, the shrieks of pain, the keening wails of despair. And then consider that S-21 was only one of almost 300 such facilities operating in a country not much bigger than the state of Ohio.

As I often do on such visits, I found myself standing in front of a wall filled with 3x5 photos of children – toddlers to young teens. Nauseated with grief and shaking with anger, my only thoughts were, “Why? Why them? Why did they all have to die?”

A quarter century on from my first visit – back in the days when blood stains were still visible on the floors and walls – that question remains unanswerable. I’ve read all the books, heard a lot of the lectures. And I still can’t figure out why a little girl, no more than three years old, had to be executed as an enemy of the state.

And then as sun set over Asia’s Hope’s campus in Prek Eng, we devoured a tantalizing feast prepared with love by the staff from six of our homes, and when Sopheng, our Prek Eng 1 home dad, started the music, we all knew what to do.

We danced. Young and old, lithe and lethargic, graceful and, well, whatever I was – we laughed and cheered. Arms pumping, hands waving, feet tangling with varying degrees of coordination, we celebrated, basking in the joy that God has freely poured out on these six families and on us, their grateful guests.

As Rich Mullins said, “With these our hells and our heavens so few inches apart, we must be awfully small and not as strong as we think we are.” On this night, I felt both infinitesimal and infinite in a land where hells and heavens hover at a distance of a hair’s breath.

These Our Hells and Our Heavens...

Even after twenty-five years, Cambodia remains for me a country of deep and unsettling contrasts – moments so wildly at odds with one another that they can provoke tears, laughter, or both in a single, unguarded instant.