“Grandma Lazarus”

“Grand­ma Lazarus”

By Esther Wang

My years of study at Trin­i­ty Evan­gel­i­cal Diniv­i­ty School had not been easy. The world famous edu­ca­tor, Dr. Ward, quite often declared, that he aimed at train­ing “sci­en­tif­ic” Chris­t­ian edu­ca­tors, authors and researchers. Our lit­er­ary com­po­si­tion must be objec­tive; first-per­son address­es were nev­er per­mit­ted, so as to anni­hi­late the taint of sub­jec­tivism. Only when sub­jec­tivism is elim­i­nat­ed will lit­er­ary com­po­si­tions be objec­tive, dis­ci­plined and sci­en­tif­ic. Once we were required to select a project that would relate to each stu­den­t’s future min­istry areas. This was to exer­cise our sci­en­tif­ic research abil­i­ties as future Chris­t­ian edu­ca­tors. We were to uti­lize advanced elec­tron­ic tech­nolo­gies in the world such as CD ROM and Inter­net Online, to search for infor­ma­tion as we con­duct­ed research on our indi­vid­ual top­ics. Of course, no first-per­son “I’s” were allowed in the paper.

My cho­sen top­ic was “Faith and Suf­fer­ing.” I intend­ed to explore the rela­tion­ship between faith and suf­fer­ing from the aspects of the­ol­o­gy, phi­los­o­phy and psy­chol­o­gy. But I am not a born “sci­en­tif­ic” researcher. As I faced the insur­mount­able amount of data pro­duced from my input of the indi­ca­tor “suf­fer­ing” into the com­put­er, with Ger­man, Hebrew and Greek inter­mixed in the Eng­lish text, my mind would start wan­der­ing to the land far far away.

I remem­ber that gloomy and cloudy morn­ing when I was in my ear­ly teens. That ear­ly Spring morn­ing I was just return­ing home from my aun­t’s in anoth­er province. The whole lit­tle town was in dead, cold silence; not a soul was seen on the long and nar­row street. And yet cov­er­ing all the street walls were mam­moth posters denounc­ing my Father. The big black brush traced out Father’s name upside down on a big white sheet, with a crim­son red “X” over it. Although I was used to the real­i­ty of per­se­cu­tion suf­fered by Mom and Dad, I felt fear again-being per­se­cut­ed was too heavy a bur­den for the heart of a child.

Skies became dark­er; thun­der was heard roar­ing from afar, the wind began to blow. At the end of the long nar­row street, it looked vague­ly like a fig­ure of an old bag lady; oth­er­wise, there was no sign of life in this lit­tle town.

Father, a well-known Doc­tor in this town, now had been beat­en, laid up in bed at home; his ribcage on the right side was bro­ken this time. Mom and Dad were not local folks, but had set­tled here for many years. Because of Father’s high med­ical skill and his tes­ti­monies as a Chris­t­ian, he had a high rep­u­ta­tion among the towns­peo­ple. When they heard that Father was beat­en so bad­ly that he had to lie in bed with bro­ken ribs, the ordi­nary cit­i­zens and peas­ants of this small town who did not care about polit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion came to com­fort him by the droves. The “Rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies” had to put up a rec­tan­gu­lar desk at our front door to block vis­i­tors. Two men wear­ing shoul­der bands of “Red Med­ical Com­mune” stood guard. They would yell at any­one com­ing near, “What is your class cat­e­go­ry? What are you doing here?” Then they would denounce Father as an “anti-rev­o­lu­tion­ary” and “an impe­ri­al­ist spy dis­guised with a reli­gious cloak.” They would force the peo­ple to turn away and sep­a­rate them­selves from this “Anti-rev­o­lu­tion­ary.” Most peo­ple would mum­ble some­thing and turn quick­ly away. Who dared offend these “Rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies” sup­port­ed by Mao? But only a few young and strong hot-heads yelled back, “I am a poor peas­ant from three gen­er­a­tions back. What can you guys do to me?”

That after­noon, the front door was slight­ly pushed open, an old lady with a bas­ket hang­ing on her arm crept in. She appeared ordi­nary, wear­ing a dark blue old-fash­ioned coat full of patch­es; her back was slight­ly arched, slow­ly and qui­et­ly she stag­gered into this house that was severe­ly under sur­veil­lance. (I won­dered how she came in?) She asked about Father’s health, and com­fort­ed him, “Doc­tor, please stand firm. Don’t lose heart, be at peace!” Father repeat­ed­ly affirmed, “That’s right, that’s right.” Then the old lady turned to look at me, hes­i­tat­ed for a sec­ond, turned back to Father and said in a low but clear voice, “Doc­tor, remem­ber Isa­iah 53? ‘He was oppressed and afflict­ed, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaugh­ter, and as a sheep before her shear­ers is silent, so he opened not his mouth…’ Are these words not proph­esy­ing about Jesus?”

Father was imme­di­ate­ly full of joy. He respond­ed with a low but firm voice, “Yes, it is speak­ing of Jesus. ‘He was pierced for our trans­gres­sions, He was crushed for our iniq­ui­ties; the pun­ish­ment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed .…”

The old woman low­ered her voice once again and com­fort­ed Father, “Doc­tor, Jesus is with us … Let us keep pray­ing and keep our hope in Him!”

The old wom­an’s vis­it was not long. After her hur­ried depar­ture, I asked Father, “Who is she?” Father replied, “She is the Lazarus of our town!”

“What is Lazarus?” I did not under­stand.

“Lazarus is a Bib­li­cal char­ac­ter. He was a beg­gar who was full of boils in his body; he suf­fered much on earth, but entered heav­en after his death …”

Then I recalled the morn­ing scene. It was her, an old bag lady; when dark clouds were all over, and thun­ders were drum­ming, it was her erect body, stand­ing at the end of the long street.
 

That night Father qui­et­ly prayed after mid­night; his voice was once again filled with yearn­ing for and thanks­giv­ing to the Lord. He firm­ly trust­ed that the Lord Jesus was with us in our suf­fer­ings; he espe­cial­ly gave thanks for the Lord Jesus’ gift of “won­der­ful fel­low­ship in Christ.” I did not under­stand what “fel­low­ship in Christ” meant at that time.

The Chi­nese Church’s Career Fel­low­ship in a Mid­west­ern City in Amer­i­ca has the fol­low­ing announce­ment: “Career Fel­low­ship will meet for din­ner at the lux­u­ri­ous Fura­ma Restau­rant in Chi­na­town at 5 p.m. this Sat­ur­day. Please come and enjoy the fel­low­ship and the love feast togeth­er.”

The word “fel­low­ship” is defined in the Evan­gel­i­cal Dic­tio­nary of The­ol­o­gy as: the word orig­i­nates from the Greek word koinon­ia, has the mean­ing of “par­tic­i­pa­tion” in Eng­lish (Elwell). The sense of shar­ing and self-sac­ri­fice that is inher­ent in the word is clear­ly evi­dent in those ref­er­ences to finan­cial sup­port in the ear­ly church as Koinon­ia. The Bib­li­cal con­cept of “fel­low­ship” indi­cates that the true believ­er has fel­low­ship in or par­tic­i­pates in the suf­fer­ing of Christ, (Phil. 3:10, 1 Peter 4:13) the suf­fer­ings of apos­tles, (2 Cor. 1:7) and the suf­fer­ings of his fel­low men (Heb. 10:33).

The Ger­man the­olo­gian and mar­tyr Diet­rich Bon­ho­ef­fer (1906–1945) dis­cov­ered that the whole life of Christ is summed up by the word “suf­fer­ing.” The church is but “Christ exist­ing as com­mu­ni­ty.” Because Christ is revealed in suf­fer­ing, the church should share in the suf­fer­ings of Christ.
 

I picked up bits and pieces of her sto­ry lat­er from my par­ents. She was an old lone­some wid­ow, hav­ing been through much in her life. As the poor­est per­son among the poor in town, she was so hum­ble that she did not even have a name for her­self; so hum­ble that no one was even aware of her exis­tence. If peo­ple chanced to men­tion her, they would call her “that old woman of the New Street.”

And yet it was her, when days were filled with mad­ness and ter­ror, she calm­ly, fear­less­ly, even stub­born­ly expressed her faith. When Jiang Qing (wife of Mao Zedong) proud­ly announced to for­eign cor­re­spon­dents that “there are no reli­gions in Chi­na,” she was the one preach­ing “the King­dom of Heav­en is at hand; you must all repent.” Her fee­ble yet firm voice was heard amidst the uproar of idol­a­trous shout­ings such as “Long Live and Long long live Chair­man Mao!” Grand­ma Dong, anoth­er poor lady in town, who heard her preach­ing the gospel in the midst of “no reli­gions in Chi­na,” was saved and born again before she peace­ful­ly went to be with the lord.

I remem­bered lat­er, since I grew up, I start­ed to get involved with “Father’s affairs.” I remem­bered it was in a lunar Decem­ber when peo­ple were prepar­ing for a “Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Spring Fes­ti­val,” Father told me to vis­it her to bring her some food for the Lunar New Year’s. She lived in a bro­ken-down shed in the south­east cor­ner of a large com­pound. To be more accu­rate, it was only a shab­by hut that was unable to with­stand the wind and rain. The roof was about to cave in; the win­dows were crooked. To my amaze­ment, though this was dur­ing the lunar Decem­ber, on her door was hang­ing a bam­boo cur­tain, which was used in sum­mer to keep out flies. I called out, “Grand­ma!” lift­ed the cur­tain and went in. I saw the secret behind the bam­boo cur­tain.

She was using a coarse­ly made stool as her desk, sit­ting on an even short­er stool. Using the nat­ur­al light that came in through the door, she was read­ing a large black book with gold let­ters up and down, “Com­plete Old and New Tes­ta­ment.” If the door was closed, the whole room would be pitch dark. The dou­ble pur­pose of the bam­boo cur­tain was to allow day­light to enter, and to pre­vent any­one see­ing from out­side. The tiny room was sim­ply fur­nished: an old kerosene lantern stood on the only rick­ety table. This was the 1970’s, when elec­tric wires went over her roof to every oth­er house; she could only use the kerosene lamp for light.

She was joy­ful­ly sur­prised to see me. “It’s you, lit­tle girl!” She tried to find a seat for me. Hur­ried­ly she fetched the only bowl in her house, bring­ing me some water to drink. I sat down to chat with her. I did not ask her “tes­ti­monies;” I was not mature enough to ask; but I did ask many ques­tions about her life.

She was born in 1900. She became an orphan at age four and grew up in an orphan­age man­aged by mis­sion­ar­ies in Tengx­i­an, Shan­dong Province. When she became an adult, the orphan­age arranged a mar­riage for her. They nev­er had chil­dren. Her hus­band “died of star­va­tion in 1958,” she said very calm­ly, “He had a big appetite and nev­er could get enough. So he died of star­va­tion. I could not afford a cof­fin. We wrapped him up in a bam­boo mat and buried him.” Her face was calm and at peace as she told the sto­ry. I was amazed at her nar­ra­tive, as if her hus­band’s death was sim­ply due to “hav­ing a big appetite.” She had no com­plaints or anger about the cause of her hus­band’s death.

She pos­sessed noth­ing in this world, no loved ones, no mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions. She was get­ting too old and had too lit­tle strength to work. Five Chi­nese dol­lars a month from pub­lic wel­fare was for all her liv­ing expens­es. Besides that, she would go out every­day, pick up junk paper and stuff to sell for a few coins to help with her liv­ing.

I nev­er knew her name. I just called her “Grand­ma.” In my heart, she is for­ev­er “Grand­ma Lazarus.” She nev­er asked my name either; she just called me “lit­tle girl” accord­ing to the local cus­tom. If my sis­ters were present, she would call me “the sec­ond lit­tle girl” to dis­tin­guish me from “the first” and “the third” (my old­er and younger sis­ters) respec­tive­ly.

At the orphan­age, she stud­ied the Bible, learned to read Chi­nese and was trained on knit­ting and nee­dle work. She said her vocab­u­lary was lim­it­ed; she could only rec­og­nize words in the Bible. I had seen two crum­pled pieces of paper along­side her Bible; they were obvi­ous­ly ripped out of unused pages in an ele­men­tary school stu­den­t’s exer­cise note­book. I could see the neat char­ac­ters she had writ­ten, fill­ing the pieces of paper, each char­ac­ter fill­ing a square: “I believe I believe Jesus Christ was born of the vir­gin Mary Son of God I believe Jesus died on the cross to save the world and after three days was raised from the dead ascend­ed to heav­en I believe we all sin and will be for­giv­en only by believ­ing in Jesus…”

As I read the paper filled with rep­e­ti­tions of “I believe,” I could­n’t help but lift up my head to look at her. I saw firm faith and undis­turbed seren­i­ty behind her peace­ful face. I real­ized why she had no trace of com­plaints about her own mis­er­able life.

A present-day the­olo­gian, Dr. Alis­ter McGrath, point­ed out as he sum­ma­rized Mar­tin Luther’s views of faith and expe­ri­ence: “Faith is an abil­i­ty to see God’s pres­ence and activ­i­ty in the world, and in our own expe­ri­ence. Faith sees behind exter­nal appear­ances and the mis­lead­ing impres­sions of expe­ri­ence. It is an open­ness, a will­ing­ness, to find God where he has promised to be, even when expe­ri­ence sug­gests that he is not there. Luther uses the phrase “the dark­ness of faith” to make this point. This has impor­tant results for Luther’s under­stand­ing of the nature of doubt. Doubt shows up our nat­ur­al ten­den­cy to base our judg­ments upon expe­ri­ence, rather than faith. When faith and expe­ri­ence seem to be out of step with each oth­er, we tend to trust our expe­ri­ence, rather than faith” (McGrath).
 

In late years every time I returned to Father’s town dur­ing the 70s and 80s, I would go to vis­it her. Just about every time I saw her, she was read­ing the Bible. I thus stepped into her “Bible study class.” I grad­u­al­ly under­stood that the strength of her faith orig­i­nat­ed from this great and amaz­ing book called The Bible. The Bible to her was not only a book of instruc­tions, teach­ing her how to live each day, but also a great book of prophe­cies con­cern­ing human des­tiny. She would nev­er be sur­prised at the dis­as­ters around her: the mad­ness and tur­moil of the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion, “broth­er betray­ing broth­er to death, and a father his child” (Mark 13:12) caused by the cru­el­ty of “the class strug­gle,” the hor­rif­ic rumor and pro­pa­gan­da of “war-and-famine,” the unprece­dent­ed earth­quake of Tang­shan City (in Hebei Province in July of 1976); and the suf­fer­ing caused by the impo­si­tion of the only-one-child policy…all these suf­fer­ings of the Chi­nese peo­ple, of Chi­nese Chris­tians, and espe­cial­ly of her­self that had been endured were noth­ing but his­toric events from God’s sov­er­eign plans; they all have been proph­e­sied in the Bible long ago.

She would slow­ly but clear­ly read every word and sen­tence to me: “When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must hap­pen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and king­dom against king­dom. There will be earth­quakes in var­i­ous places, and famines. These are the begin­ning of birth pains” (Mark 13:7).

Hear­ing her read­ing, I felt the Bible was no longer abstract or remote. It became real and instruc­tive, relat­ed with our dai­ly lives. Even the Book of Rev­e­la­tion, which had long been most mys­te­ri­ous and hard to under­stand to me, became crys­tal clear and vivid through her read­ing and inter­pre­ta­tion.

I was amazed at her exten­sive Bib­li­cal knowl­edge. I was even more amazed at her prophet­ic wis­dom. Short­ly after Deng Xiao-ping reap­peared on the polit­i­cal scene as the leader of the coun­try, she insight­ful­ly asked me to pray for him. I hes­i­tat­ed, won­der­ing why per­sons as ordi­nary as her and me would pray for some­one high up in the gov­ern­ing posi­tion? Does it work? But she firm­ly insist­ed: “Pray for him. Ask God to soft­en his heart so that all Chi­nese peo­ple may have the free­dom to accept Jesus as their Sav­ior!”

I believed the prayer of a right­eous man is pow­er­ful and effec­tive. So I asked her to pray for the increase of my faith. Sur­pris­ing­ly, she was not that “kind” this time. She told me, “You should pray your­self; God will hear your prayers.” I was some­what dis­ap­point­ed at the time, but lat­er I under­stood her good will in urg­ing me to pray. We sub­se­quent­ly knelt down and prayed togeth­er on her high straw bed made out of sorghum stalks. In the dim­ly lit room, her prayers were so sin­cere and spon­ta­neous. Her words of thanks­giv­ing flowed like a stream. She not only gave thanks for the sal­va­tion from God, for the peace and joy she enjoyed, she thanked God for giv­ing her pover­ty and low­li­ness. Her love for peo­ple was abid­ing end­less­ly like the spin­ning silk­worm or the light from a can­dle. Peo­ple looked down on her, they despised her, treat­ed her as more worth­less than the grass; yet she prayed earnest­ly for “all peo­ple in Chi­na,” for those in posi­tions of pow­er, for the sal­va­tion of all Chi­nese peo­ple, for every Chi­nese to enjoy eter­nal joy and peace. Who is to say that God had not heard her prayers? There was obvi­ous reli­gious free­dom after the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion, House Church­es sprang up like mush­rooms after the 80s. Were they not answers from God to her prayers?

Friedrich Heil­er describes six types of prayers in human expe­ri­ence: prim­i­tive, rit­u­al, Hel­lenic, philo­soph­i­cal, mys­ti­cal and prophet­ic. Among these, the prophet­ic is the high­est form. The object of prophet­ic prayer is not only to meet one’s own need, but to be con­cerned for the brethren, focus­ing on the inward expres­sion of the soul. Prophet­ic prayer offers no method, no arti­fi­cial­ly refined mys­tic med­i­ta­tion. It is a spon­ta­neous man­i­fes­ta­tion of a com­pelling emo­tion, a sim­ple out­pour­ing of the heart (Heil­er 1958).
 

On April 9, 1945, the prison doc­tor at the Ger­man Con­cen­tra­tion camp wit­nessed Bon­ho­ef­fer­’s mar­tyr­dom. He wrote many years lat­er:

“On the morn­ing of the day, … through the half-open door I saw Pas­tor Bon­ho­ef­fer still in his prison clothes, kneel­ing in fer­vent prayer to the Lord his God. Hear­ing his evi­dent devo­tion and con­vic­tion, the prayer of this intense­ly cap­ti­vat­ing man moved me to the depths.

“The pris­on­ers were ordered to strip. Naked under the scaf­fold, Bon­ho­ef­fer knelt for one last time to pray. Five min­utes lat­er, he was dead.”

The doc­tor recalled him to be a man “devout … brave and com­posed. His death ensued after a few sec­onds … I have hard­ly ever seen a man die so entire­ly sub­mis­sive to the will of God” (Bosan­quet 1973).

Diet­rich Bon­ho­ef­fer （4 Feb­ru­ary 1906 – 9 April 1945)

“Let’s start pray­ing,” the pas­tor said to the sev­en or eight peo­ple sit­ting in the oth­er­wise emp­ty church; “We have the fol­low­ing prayer requests: Mark’s fam­i­ly is going on vaca­tion next week, he asked us to pray for their safe jour­ney. Our church will have a BBQ gath­er­ing in Cen­tral Park on Sep­tem­ber 28, let us all pray, and ask God to give us a good weath­er day, no rain… …”

Time flies. In the sum­mer of 1984, I went back to Father’s town like a refugee. I had my own fam­i­ly then. I was mar­ried, but did not have a house to live in. I “fool­ish­ly” mar­ried a fool­ish man who was a “polit­i­cal­ly prob­lem­at­ic” per­son. That was why we had no house to live in after mar­riage. We could not start up a fam­i­ly. When I was about to give birth to a baby, I just had to come back to my maid­en home and squeeze in with Mom and Dad and my younger sis­ter.

It was in the mid­dle of sum­mer, this time Grand­ma came to see me. She had knit­ted some flow­ery lace to give me, she said it could be used for the baby’s clothes. She looked even old­er. She wore a big white old-fash­ioned Chi­nese over­coat, her back bent even more than before, her gray hair had now turned pure white. But her face was still full of kind­ness and smiles as before. Joy emanat­ed from her kind­ly eyes and gen­tle brows.

“What’s the good news, Grand­ma, how come you’re so hap­py?” I inquired.

She joy­ful­ly replied, “Oh, yes, I was just about to tell you. Dur­ing the recent bad rain­storm, my house col­lapsed in the mid­dle of the night when I was sleep­ing. The wind was wild, and the rain was severe. A beam fell down along the wall, land­ing square­ly upon me. Neigh­bors got up and pulled me out of the mud, I was unharmed. Not a hair of mine was hurt! Was it not the grace of God? Praise the Lord!”

I thought about her dilap­i­dat­ed lit­tle house that was so shaky. Soon­er or lat­er it was going to fall as every­one expect­ed. When the house fell, it did not hurt her. That was real­ly God’s grace! Then I asked with con­cern, “Where do you live now?”

“Oh, I live in the church.” she was full of joy, as if it was a bless­ing for her to move into the church.

“Where can there be a dwelling place inside the church?” It puz­zled me.

She remained joy­ful as she answered, “Under­neath the stair­case, it is such a good dwelling place!” I felt hap­py that she final­ly had a safe place to stay. For hous­ing was real­ly hard then. Was I wor­ry­ing about where my dwelling place might be with my first-born son?

Not until the fol­low­ing win­ter did I find what a “good dwelling place” she had. Right after win­ter break began, I hur­ried­ly ran away from my cramped 12-square-foot dorm-room assigned by the school. Car­ry­ing my baby on my back­pack, I returned to my par­ents’ home for the Lunar New Year’s fes­ti­val. One day at noon, after my baby was asleep, I thought that I should go to the church to see Grand­ma.

It was a sun­ny win­try day. Grand­ma was sit­ting in the church­yard, tak­ing in some sun while she ate her lunch. On her right was a lit­tle wood-burn­ing stove made from a lit­tle clay-pot past­ed togeth­er with some clay. In her hand was a bowl of corn por­ridge. She was hap­py to see me. I asked her repeat­ed­ly, “Have you eat­en, Grand­ma? Are you cold?”

She knew I was no chat­ty type, that I tru­ly cared about her being warm and hav­ing enough to eat. She lov­ing­ly told me that she was com­fort­able and was not cold. She wore a dark col­ored cot­ton-padded over­coat and cot­ton-padded pants. She said that the cot­ton inlay was still pret­ty new. Her white sil­very hair blew in the light wind; her joy­ful heart and gen­tle smile blend­ed well with the bright sun­shine.

But when I said, “Let’s go see your dwelling place, Grand­ma,” she became ner­vous. “Lit­tle girl, don’t both­er, don’t both­er see­ing it.” She tried hard to block me from going into the church. I would have none of her dis­sua­sion, I turned and walked into the church.

Actu­al­ly I had been very famil­iar with this huge church build­ing since as a child I had lived in a house close to the church. In my mem­o­ry, the build­ing was gigan­tic and splen­did. Stained glass filled the 16 colos­sal arched win­dows sur­round­ing the church. A Cana­di­an mis­sion­ary had built it before 1949, but in the 50s it was closed and remod­eled as hos­pi­tal offices and stor­age. How­ev­er, it sur­vived the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion and re-opened as a church now. Sev­er­al decades passed, all the col­or­ful­ness of the church build­ing had fad­ed. The stained glass had bro­ken to pieces. The brick walls had dete­ri­o­rat­ed in the entire build­ing, The doors and win­dows were loose and dam­aged.

As I pushed the door to go in, I felt a chill. Gone were the red paint­ed floors of old­en days. Rows of long bench­es now lined the damp and cold ground of dirt. Wind came in from all direc­tions into this cold open space which could hold 1800 peo­ple (squeezed togeth­er) for Sun­day wor­ship. On the north­west cor­ner, under the stair­case was a trape­zoid shaped space of about six square feet. There was about a half foot thick of straws and mat upon the cold damp dirt floor. Under the mat a brick was used as a pil­low. Upon the mat were bed­cov­ers and two lay­ers of cot­ton blan­kets. This was Grand­ma’s bed­room. The entire church had absolute­ly no heat. All the huge win­dows were bro­ken. When the wind blew, snow came in too.

I was filled with sad­ness. Walk­ing back to the yard under the sun­shine, I said to her, “Grand­ma, you’re actu­al­ly camp­ing out in the open air. How can you live here in such cold weath­er?”

Grand­ma raised her head. She still had no com­plaints. She was actu­al­ly uncom­fort­able to see my sad­ness, as if it was her fault that I wor­ried for her. She turned around to com­fort me repeat­ed­ly: “Lit­tle girl, I’m not cold. Don’t you see I have two lay­ers of blan­kets? Don’t wor­ry, I’m not cold. Your dad and many oth­ers take care of me!”

Her sil­very hair was fly­ing about in the breeze. Her holy face was shin­ing under the bright sun­shine. What radi­at­ed from that face was her gen­tle­ness, good­ness, peace, joy, thank­ful­ness, humil­i­ty and per­se­ver­ance.

I nev­er thought that that meet­ing under the sun­shine would be the last time I would ever see her in this world.

Sev­er­al years lat­er, as I pre­pared to come to Amer­i­ca, I made a quick trip back to my home­town to say good-bye to every­one. When I asked about Grand­ma, Father told me, she had peace­ably left the world. She just remained asleep under the stair­case of the church.

Although I know that she had eter­nal life, there is still in my heart an unspo­ken, inex­press­ible sor­row and melan­choly …

There was a rich man who was dressed in pur­ple and fine linen and lived in lux­u­ry every day. At his gate was laid a beg­gar named Lazarus, cov­ered with sores and long­ing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

The time came when the beg­gar died and the angels car­ried him to Abra­ham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In hell, where he was in tor­ment, he looked up and saw Abra­ham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, “Father Abra­ham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his fin­ger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.” 

But Abra­ham replied, “Son, remem­ber that in your life­time you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is com­fort­ed here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you can­not, nor can any­one cross over from there to us.” (Luke 16: 19–26)

In the sum­mer of 1991, the first Sun­day after my arrival in the Unit­ed States I joined the wor­ship in a Chi­nese church in a sub­urb. This was the very first time I had stepped into a church in North Amer­i­ca. Soft and cush­ion­ing was the car­pet, soft and bright were the lights over­head; 700 F was the con­stant tem­per­a­ture all year round. The place was lux­u­ri­ous, splen­did, and gigan­tic. There was space every­where, in use or unused. Her image sud­den­ly came into my mind. If only Grand­ma had such a space for her dwelling! That hall­way at the entrance could actu­al­ly hold 10 Grand­ma’s to live there.

The Sun­day School had start­ed. A broth­er was shar­ing what he had learned from the retreat at Yel­low­stone Park. He said that he had attend­ed many work­shops; learned a lot, from finance man­age­ment to mar­i­tal rela­tion­ships. He talked about things I could not under­stand, such as “stock” and “mutu­al funds” and things I could not tell whether I under­stood or not, such as “hus­band and wife should keep dat­ing,” etc. His pre­sen­ta­tion was live­ly and humor­ous, draw­ing a lot of laugh­ter. But I could by no means laugh. I stood up, rushed to the restroom; my tears flowed out like a riv­er…

After wor­ship, my son and I walked out of the church hand in hand. My 7‑year-old son seemed to think about some­thing. Sud­den­ly he asked, “Mom, where is he?”

I did not under­stand, “What? Who are you talk­ing about?”

My son was seri­ous, “I am talk­ing about God. Is God in that crowd­ed church of Grand­pa’s in Chi­na? Or is He here in this church?” He hes­i­tat­ed for a while, adding, “Does He love the peo­ple at Grand­pa’s church more or does he love these peo­ple more?”

I could not give him an answer.

The pas­tor asked me to “give a tes­ti­mo­ny and share the sit­u­a­tion in Chi­na” dur­ing the Mis­sions week. The first thing that moved my heart was to talk about “Grand­ma.” But I dis­cov­ered I could not com­mu­ni­cate with the audi­ence. Was it because I could not use the right words to tell her great tes­ti­monies in a life of suf­fer­ing, or because there was a cul­tur­al gap between the audi­ence and me? Only a few peo­ple among the 30 attend­ing could under­stand the sto­ry of “Grand­ma Lazarus.” In the audi­ence one sis­ter, an open, cheer­ful, hap­py-go-lucky type, laughed at every word I said. When I said Grand­ma became an orphan at age four, she burst out laugh­ing. When I men­tioned that her hus­band starved to death and she became a wid­ow, she laughed again. When I described that Grand­ma had only five dol­lars a month to live on, she burst out laugh­ing again. I described how Grand­ma lived under the stair­case of the church; she laughed at that too.

In fact, I like this sis­ter; I love her per­son­al­i­ty. We were sup­posed to be home­town kin­folk. Although she was born in Tai­wan, her father came from our area. I asked if she had ever been to the old home­town. She said that she had nev­er been to Chi­na, that two years ago, “Dad went back and found his eldest daugh­ter. She was real­ly poor!” She seemed very inno­cent; her per­son­al­i­ty was good. I knew that her laugh­ing was not out of mali­cious­ness; it was only because she did not under­stand and could not imag­ine what suf­fer­ing was. It was this kind of “not-under­stand­ing” which caused my heart ache.

John Stott points out in his essay “God On the Gal­lows”: there is good Bib­li­cal evi­dence that God not only suf­fered through Christ, but that God in Christ still suf­fers with His peo­ple. In min­is­ter­ing to the stranger Jesus explains that we min­is­ter to Him, iden­ti­fy­ing him­self with all needy and suf­fer­ing peo­ple. In the real world of pain, how can one wor­ship a God who is immune to suf­fer­ing?

I final­ly com­plet­ed my sci­en­tif­ic research on “Faith and Suf­fer­ing.” I went through works of the­olo­gians, philoso­phers and psy­chol­o­gists, accu­mu­lat­ing 86 pages of sum­maries from them. I dis­cov­ered that Chris­tians and non-Chris­tians alike all acknowl­edge and advo­cate the pos­i­tive influ­ence of faith in suf­fer­ing. But in the realm of the­o­ry, every­body has his or her own opin­ions. I was not sat­is­fied after a rough syn­the­sis of 12 cat­e­gories of answers to suf­fer­ing, so I quot­ed what McKen­zie had said: “To the peren­ni­al prob­lem of suf­fer­ing the believ­er has no con­vinc­ing and com­plete ratio­nal solu­tion. The dis­cus­sion of the prob­lem of suf­fer­ing has not advanced sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the last two and half thou­sand years. All the main argu­ments list­ed in the mod­ern books on philo­soph­i­cal the­ol­o­gy are to be found in one shape or anoth­er in the lit­er­a­ture of antiq­ui­ty” (Mcken­zie 1971, 246). Then I con­clud­ed: Suf­fer­ing is an expe­ri­en­tial, not the­o­ret­i­cal ques­tion. It can only be explained the­o­ret­i­cal­ly and ratio­nal­ly on the basis of one’s faith. Fac­ing the prob­lem of suf­fer­ing and faith, what we need is none oth­er than faith.

Any­one who has been saved by the suf­fer­ing and the blood of Jesus Christ should be able to under­stand suf­fer­ing.

I nev­er shared Grand­ma’s sto­ry again. But I think about her often. Every time I walk into a large build­ing such as a church, a con­fer­ence room, or a library, every time I see some­body liv­ing in a big house with five bed­rooms and three oth­er rooms, the vast, com­fort­able, sofa lined halls bring to my mem­o­ry of Grand­ma’s lit­tle bed of straw with a tat­tered mat under the stair­case. I fre­quent­ly med­i­tate on the mean­ing of her life; her holy face under the sun­shine keeps pop­ping up in my head. In her whole life, she had kept her faith, she remained kind and gen­tle, hum­ble and patient. With no com­plaints and no regrets, she was con­tent in pover­ty and hap­py in what life dished out to her. Were it not for her total depen­dence upon God, her com­plete trust in the Lord, how could she have been so fear­less in ter­ror, so joy­ful in pover­ty? How could she have uttered noth­ing but praise buried with stormy rain and mud, liv­ing in per­fect peace under long nights of chills and cold? I felt it was my priv­i­lege to know her. I praise God for His great love for me, giv­ing me such a bless­ing to know her as a mod­el of faith.

At the same time, I am con­stant­ly deeply con­vict­ed in my heart. I had not gone back to see her after that time I vis­it­ed her in the church­yard under the sun. Per­haps my rea­sons were many. My baby was small; I need­ed to take care of him. I sel­dom went back to Father’s town; there­fore I had no oppor­tu­ni­ty to serve her. But I know all these rea­sons were no rea­sons. The true rea­son was that I loved myself-my own child-more than I loved my “neigh­bor.” I real­ly regret that. Even though every­one had a hard life, even though I could­n’t pos­si­bly find a lit­tle house for her, at least I could go to see her often, I could have brought a bowl of warm water to wash her frozen feet, to help her sleep with a more com­fort.

In moments like this, I seem to hear a silent voice from above: “You still have a chance. You still have thou­sands upon thou­sands of Grand­ma Lazarus’s in your home­land. They are hun­gry and thirsty, they are sojourn­ing, they need clothes, they are sick or in prison … Go, serve them, what­ev­er you did for one of the least of these broth­ers of mine, you did for me!”

When I heard this voice, I lay pros­trate and cov­ered my face, trem­bling. I answered: “Lord, O Lord! I heard your call­ing! I will go, I am here, I am will­ing!”

Bib­li­og­ra­phy
Wal­ter A. Elwell, edi­tor. The Evan­gel­i­cal Dic­tio­nary of The­ol­o­gy, Grand Rapids: Bak­er Book House, 1992 [c1984].
Alis­ter McGrath. A Cel­e­bra­tion Of Ref­or­ma­tion Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, Lon­don: Hod­der & Stoughton, 1991, pp. 76–77.
Diet­rich Bon­ho­ef­fer. The Cost Of Dis­ci­ple­ship; [R. H. Fuller, (Trans.) with some revi­sion by Irm­gard Booth], Lon­don: SCM Press, 1964, c1959.
Bosan­quet, Mary. The Life and Death of Diet­rich Bon­ho­ef­fer, New York: Harp­er & Row, 1973.
Heil­er, Friedrich. Prayer: A Study In The His­to­ry And Psy­chol­o­gy Of Reli­gion. Trans­lat­ed and edit­ed by Samuel McComb (Trans. & Ed.) with the assis­tance of J. Edgar Park. New York, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 1958 [c1932].

Esther Wang serves as an edi­tor in CCLiFe. This arti­cle is from Chris­t­ian Life Quar­ter­ly, June, 1997, Vol.1 No. 2, pp. 28–33.

Spe­cial thanks to Dr. Alis­ter McGrath for his help in the process of trans­lat­ing his quotes back into Eng­lish. 

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