Till now, I'm not quite sure what it was exactly which made me so angry and grieved and agitated at the same time. Perhaps, until we ourselves are in another person's skin, we shall never fully understand the pains, deep sense of inferiority and anguish of the poor.
This one-week holiday has been an extremely fulfilling one, one in which I have had the time and space to truly enjoy spending time with and thanking the people I love, and have been so grateful to. After having been so deeply touched by the people whom I train together with, people who've literally and metaphorically gone the extra mile to help me to road-cycle well, and encourage me in my training and journey in life, I finally had the chance to invite 4 of them to my home for a simple dinner I cooked for them. Salad, macaroni & cheese, wine, baked salmon and brownie with ice-cream. The best item was Company. It meant so much to me to be able to spend the entire afternoon cooking for them- they have taught me so much.
After the dinner near 11pm, however, as I walked 2 of my friends home past the train station, I packed some pasta for Grandpa Zhou and passed a box full of it to him.
"Zhou yeye, ni hao. Zhe shi wo de peng you, jin tian wo qing ta men zai wo jia chi fan, wo qin zi xia chu. Zhe li you yi xie shi wu gei ni." Hi Grandpa Zhou, I invited some of my friends over for dinner at my place tonight, here's some pasta for you. Here're 2 of my friends- meet J and Am.
He was so grateful. " Oh, this is tong xin fen (macaroni)!" he said, "Ah, I shall put them in soup."
"Oh no no, don't do that. It's macaroni & cheese. You eat it dry like this- it's cooked already."
"Don't you put macaroni in soup? OHHH... you mean it's STIR-FRIED (gan lao)."
"Er.... yes. Sort of!" I smiled. "Grandpa Zhou, I'm walking my 2 friends home now, I'll come look for you later."
As my 2 friends and I walked away, Am sniggered, " Old man. He probably doesn't even know what macaroni & cheese is, doesn't even know how to eat it! Put it in soup? Did you hear that? Haha! Geez. What an old man."
I cannot say that my heart didn't feel a sting at the moment. Am and Grandpa Zhou were both my friends.
When I returned to Grandpa Zhou, he told me all about his great day at church leading a song session for the senior citizens, before asking me a barrage of questions.
"I want to ask you a question, Wai Jia. Do we need to give money to God? Is it really true that it says we must give God 10% of our money? What if we have no money, like me? Or if we have no income, like you?"
" Of course we have money, Grandpa Zhou. You have a small income in your box over here, and I have an allowance. It's not a didactic rule that we have to give money to God. He doesn't need our money- it's just a privilege on our part, an act of trusting Him with what He has blessed us with. "
"Oh. Well, I happened to tell my friend who has a meagre monthly income of $400 and who donates $40 monthly to church that he ought to save the money for himself."
"What? Grandpa Zhou!"
"What! He's no money for himself. Why should he donate to others? Look at me, what do I have?"
" Grandpa Zhou. Have you heard the story in the bible about the poor lady with only 2 coins? She gave all she had. We will never have enough money. It's an act of faith. We entrust a portion of what we have to God because we trust that He will provide. Giving is an act of love. "
I don't know why but at this point, I became very passionate about what I was saying. Something inside me actually hurt, because while I believe it is comparatively easier for me to say all this because I have never known Grandpa Zhou's kind of poverty, this season, I have had to learn much about my own stewardship of money, and I have had some painful lessons to learn. I'm broke now, completely and utterly broke for the rest of the year- from sponsoring one too many children in Borneo, Sri Lanka and Africa, and from paying for Grandpa Zhou's hospital bills. I don't understand how little subsidee someone like Grandpa Zhou is actually entitled to for his illnesses.
"My friend earns so little! Look at me, I'm so poor too. What is there for me to give?!"
" Of course you have something to give. We all do! But it's a matter of the heart's attitude. There's no point in giving if we feel forced to. God doesn't need that kind of money. Look," I said, "Look at how God provided for you for your hospital bills and your meals. Did this money belong to you? If your friend has the faith to give his money to the church to support other poor people, I don't think you should stop him... I think you can pray for God to provide for his needs."
"What if say, I have absolutely no income? Zilch?"
"Then you can give God your time. Your precious service."
I was very enthused at this point, though anguished too. It cut me close, because giving Grandpa Zhou my time at the end of a busy day, spending an hour talking to him even in hectic times and helping him with his bills at the expense of not having enough at times to spend on myself were little sacrifices I had to and was willing to make. I gave up my time and money. Because of principle, I gave up buying a bike I could have easily got. Over the dinner, my cycling friends (who are all working already and much older than myself) all talked about the bikes they owned, their latest buy- how I wished I had one too. But meeting Grandpa Zhou has changed me so much. I weigh every haircut and expenditure against his hospital bill. I have been struggling in recent months to keep within my allowance, and to have a taste of what missionary life could be like in future. I cannot say all my financial choices were wise ones, but I can safely say they were done out of and because of faith in God's provision for me. And in His own ways, He did.
"It's all about having faith in a God whom we trust, Grandpa Zhou." I was emotional about this. It cut me real close.
He changed the subject. "Then let me ask you," he jumped to another question. "Why should I get baptized? I don't want to only because my family shares a different faith. But I believe in God right here."
"You don't have to," I said. "You're not any less in God's eyes if you don't. Baptism is a ceremony, a symbol of faith, that's all. But if you're holding back because of certain hang-ups, then, it doesn't seem quite right to me."
He continued to defend himself. It was strange- he kept asking me over and over, wanting my answer to change, as if some tumultuous force were tossing and turning within him, unable to give him peace.
" Look, Grandpa Zhou," I said, finally exasperated, tired from explaining to him after a long day. "My responsibility is not to convince or convict you. That's God's job. Mine is to love you, and to share God's love with you. The rest, is between you and Him. You'll have to seek and ask God yourself."
He changed the subject again. " Who are those people. What do they work as. What are their names. How do you know them," he asked me in merciless interoggation, referring to my 2 friends. Two days ago, Am had met Grandpa Zhou for the first time. Am says a lot of people think he is very arrogant because he is known to speak too frankly, but I love him the same because he is my swim coach, and I think I've had a glimpse of who he is on the inside, underneath that muscular hulk of a hard, hard man. When Am came to my home that night and entered my room, saw all the photos of the children I had visited all over the world plastered all over my room, read my article about Grandpa Zhou in Herald magazine and as I shared what was on my heart with him, he actually teared. A big grown man like him. And he asked for that magazine (Pg 12&13) because he wanted to keep that article. He wants to come with me to church this Sunday. I want to believe he said what he said about the macaroni & cheese in affection, not scorn.
I answered Grandpa Zhou patiently at first, but when I saw how doggedly he was asking me question after question, in greater and greater detail, almost to ridiculous extent, I asked pointedly and almost in frustration, "Why are you asking me all this, Grandpa Zhou? WHY DOES IT MATTER?"
He blinked, went silent, then said, "Because I think... these people do not look at me the same way you do."
"Don't say that, Grandpa Zhou," I said very firmly, in my no-nonsense tone. We had had this conversation a million times before.
"Your boyfriend, he might not approve of you mixing with people like me."
"If my future boyfriend thinks so, then he obviously won't be my boyfriend any longer." Tears dammed behind my eyes. I seriously meant it.
"Your husband may not think of people like me the way you do. He may despise people like us. " he said dejectedly.
" God will most certainly not give me a man like that," I said with complete certainty. "And I most certainly will not marry a man like that." Tears continued to well up.
"How about that boy who used to like you, that Mister Y who saw you associating with me. To tell you the truth, I think Mister Y and your 2 friends just now don't look at me the way you do. I am just afraid, your associating with me would make them despise you. They would think.... otherwise of you. Have a different opinion of you because of me. "
" Mister Y and I didn't work out because I didn't like him for other reasons, not because of you." I was exasperated, truly. "Do other people's opinion of you matter to me? Do you really think I care how people perceive the way I see you?" By this time, I was not only exasperated, but agitated as well.
" I am just afraid, that they don't look at me the same way you do."
" Why do you think I care what people think of me!" I was angry by this time.
"I am just afraid you don't understand. That I am dragging your face down into the ground. I am just afraid you don't understand the ways of this world... I am afraid that, that..."
"Grandpa Zhou!" I said, finally angry. Angry. " WHY are you asking me all these questions!"
I was in tears. My heart was still stung by my friend's scorn to Grandpa's Zhou reaction to macaroni & cheese. They were both my friends whom I loved. At once, I finally blurted out. "Do you really think I care what people think? Don't you think our love for God supercedes this? Yes, it isn't convenient. Yes, maybe it isn't conventional or easy or convenient for me to love you, just like the way it isn't easy for you to tithe your money at church or get baptized, but since when was loving God easy? What is there in this world of any worth that doesn't require dying to ourself? That doesn't require some sort of sacrifice? Do you think it really matters to me what other people think? Stop this, Grandpa Zhou. You are hurting me saying all of this! You are really hurting me. Ni zhe yang jiang shang tou le wo de xin."
After all these months, was he still not convinced why I "associated" with him? Associated, why did he use such a word?
I blurted out all that in a moment, and all of a sudden, I just wanted to cry. I did, finally, because it cut so close.
Didn't he understand he was precious to me, too? I thought of all the times we sat by the train station under the stares of strangers, the time he first rejected me, the times he used to curse God and the mean things he said to me, the time where Mister Y and I sent food to his home, the time where he finally softened his heart toward me, the time where he came to love God with tears streaming down his cheeks, the time where he sang to me in Hokien and Cantonese dialect song after song which he had learnt at church about loving Jesus... ... and wrote down notes for me so I could play the same songs on my flute. He even gave me his precious music lyrics so I could have his favourite church songs too.
"It's just that I don't understand... " He went very, very quiet, then said softly. "... why someone like you would love or even bother about someone like me."
"BECAUSE OF GOD. BECAUSE HE LOVES YOU. BECAUSE I LOVE YOU," I said, in love and anguish and exasperation and certainty.
Silence and tears.
He said very softly. " Did you ever feel it was God who told you to talk to me?"
"Of course."
" Because I always sit here, asking God why, oh why did I meet you. Do you know, that I used to hate God so much. And you just swung by into my life... I'm so very old already. Haha, do you know, do you know no one, absolutely no one has treated me the way you have. To think I would meet someone like you in my old, old age, after so many years! Do you know I treat you like my own kin, my own granddaughter. I keep asking God, how it was possible for me to meet you. I wonder how I even came to believe Him. Now I love God so much, Jesus has really changed my life."
Silence and tears.
"I'm sorry I made you so sad... ... Jia Jia, don't cry anymore. I'm sorry. Every time you sit here, we should be joking and laughing."
"I'll pray for you now."
"For understanding and insight. For God to speak to me about all my questions about money and baptism."
"Indeed."
"I'm so sorry, Jia Jia. Please don't cry anymore. I feel my tears coming too. Go home, it's late."
"Goodnight Grandpa Zhou. Enjoy the macaroni & cheese. Don’t put it in soup, eat it as it is. Love you. ”
Grandpa Zhou's music lyrics- "Jesus is so good"
"That is just what God did - He wore my skin -
in order to solve the dilemma of my debt of sin.
As Jesus, He became human flesh,
living the life of a common man.
Then He suffered the ultimate price, death,
in order to provide the only possible payment t
hat could erase my indebtedness to God
- amazing!"
-Bob Synder
"Since the children (mankind) have flesh and blood,
God too shared in their humanity
so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death-
that is, the devil-and free those who all their lives
were held in slavery by their fear of death.
-Hebrews 2:14-15 NIV
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