This perspective was shattered for me about 10 years ago. In the spring of 1994, I was living in Washington, DC with my wife and children, minding my own business and being a good civil rights attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice. I was trying to assemble cribs for our twin daughters and trying to trade in our Honda civic for a station wagon.

Then in April of 1994, small stories began to appear in the news about the outbreak of some kind of horrible ethnic conflict in an unfamiliar little country called Rwanda. Apparently thousands, maybe even millions of Tutsi's were being slaughtered by their Hutu neighbors in a genocidal hysteria sweeping across the country. But like much of the great ugliness around the world transported by television into the living room, it just didn't seem real -- it seemed true but not real. Not real like my kids when they are sick. Not real like my job when I'm behind in my work.

But within a few months, it felt all too real as I found my own feet slipping in the mud of a mass grave in Rwanda. In September of 1994, immediately after the genocide had exhausted itself, I was put on loan from the U.S. Department of Justice to direct the United Nation's genocide investigation in Rwanda. All murder investigations, begin where the bodies are and so I was given a list of 100 mass graves and massacre sites. As we would soon learn, about 800,000 people were murdered in about eight weeks.

It was standing in the midst of a mass grave in Rwanda that I stopped wondering how I might have fared in the great moral struggles of history -- for it became abundantly clear that such struggles are not matters for idle speculation -- such struggles are now.

This conviction has been powerfully reinforced today in my work with International Justice Mission.

IJM is a collection of lawyers who take case referrals from faith-based organizations serving among the poor overseas. And what we have found are massive man-made disasters of epic proportions that are not of a distant era, but are the tragedies of history taking place on our watch -- tragedies that will end up crushing more lives than the Rwanda genocide. We have met victims of sex trafficking -- the massive business of rape for profit; victims of slavery -- literally millions of children, women and men; victims of illegal detention and of sexual violence. In the face of such massive suffering, we have learned what Edmund Burke taught 200 years ago, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." That was certainly true for the Rwandan genocide. Looking back, one thing is clear -- it could have been stopped. And we missed it.

So, why, in the great moral struggles of our era, do I and other good people do nothing? As I examine myself on this question, its seems, that good people often do nothing in their time of history's testing out of a poverty of compassion, a poverty of purpose, and a poverty of hope.�We live in a shriveled world of "me and mine" with little compassion for those outside of that small circle. I am also amazed at my capacity to wage scorched earth war over petty things, neglecting the weightier matters where the larger purpose of life can be found. And, to be honest, in the face of overwhelming evil and injustice in the world -- we simply abandon hope.

In this journey with IJM, however, I have seen that if good people will just do something, the God of Justice will meet them and perform the miracles that they cannot do, but that history requires. In fact, I have more hope now than when I began the journey 10 years ago. Imagine if we took this anniversary of the Rwanda massacre as an opportunity to make a new resolution. What if we simply resolve to abandon every petty, small and unworthy battle this year -- and resolve to give ourselves fully and exclusively to larger things -- to things that matter, to things of God, to things of His Kingdom?

Indeed, I think the God of history takes attendance, and He convenes a tribunal of our grandchildren, who simply ask us: "where were you?"

Where were you grandpa when the Jews were fleeing Nazi Germany and seeking safety on our shores?

Where were you grandma when they were marching our Japanese neighbors off to internment camps?

Where were you grandpa when our African American neighbors were being beaten for registering to vote?

Where were you grandma when millions were dying of AIDS?

Likewise when the our grandchildren ask us where we were when the weak and the voiceless and the vulnerable of our era needed people of compassion and purpose and hope -- I hope we can say that we showed up, and that we showed up on time. And that the very God of history might say: "Well done, good and faithful servant."

Gary Haugen is the founder and president of International Justice Mission. IJM is a human rights ministry that rescues victims of violence, sexual exploitation, slavery and oppression. Learn more about recent rescues and the work of IJM at www.ijm.org.