Charity is not as easy as you think 20080106

Verse I read today:

耶利米书5:1 “你们当在耶路撒冷的街上跑来跑去，在宽阔处寻找，看看有一人行公义、求诚实没有？若有，我就赦免这城。5:2 其中的人，虽然指著永生的耶和华起誓，所起的誓实在是假的。”
“Run up and down every street in Jerusalem, ” says the Lord. “Look high and low; search throughout the city! If you can find even one just and honest person, I will not destroy the city. But even when they are under oath, saying, 'As surely as the Lord lives,' they are still telling lies!”

约翰一书3:6 凡住在他里面的，就不犯罪；凡犯罪的，是未曾看见他，也未曾认识他。
Anyone who continues to live in him will not sin. But anyone who keeps on sinning does not know him or understand who he is.

约翰一书3:14 我们因为爱弟兄，就晓得是已经出死入生了。没有爱心的，仍住在死中。
If we love our Christians brothers and sisters, it proves that we have passed from death to life. But a person who has no love is still dead.

约翰一书3:21 亲爱的弟兄啊，我们的心若不责备我们，就可以向　神坦然无惧了。
Dear friends, if we don't feel guilty, we can come to God with bold confidence.

Question to ask myself:
Based on what first John3:6 says, if I am committing recurring sin, it proves that I don't neither really know Jesus nor understand who I am believing. If someone always stumbles on the same stone and at the same time he is telling himself and others that he believes in Jesus, he must be a hypocrite and even cheat himself. How sad :(

Do I know the one whom I believe? I am afraid I don't know him.

Charity is not as easy as you think

This morning as I was replying emails, Philip run to my room with a great excitement and showed me there was a beggar downstairs on the street. Obviously he is crippled and uses both of his hands to support his whole body moving down the street. Philip saw I noticed him and he asked me if I still remembered my promise of helping him to help the beggars to communicate when he sees one. I said, “Yes, I can company you.” Then he got even more excited. He looked through the window to assess that beggar's situation to determine what kind of clothing he needs. A few seconds later, he decided to bring a pair of woolen socks, a T-shirt. As I was watching him, rationally I thought he was doing the right biblical thing to look after for the poor. However, I never got as half excited as he was. Several questions simultaneously hovered my mind but none of them led me towards compassion.

This first question was that I was interrupted by this sudden accident when I was doing something which was really meaningful. Was it worth it? My second question was that there are so many beggars down the street, how many of them we can help? The next question was how much we should give to him. Is there a standard?

While my question lists went on and on, both Philip and I already put our shoes and went into the elevator. I noticed that Philip was literally trembling and praying at the same time. He prayed that we could be reminded to treat this beggar as a man with dignity and we could really communicate with him. On our way to approaching him, I continued to ask myself questions. How does a church treat beggars? What would Bridge do since Bridge's vision and mission are focused on students and young professionals, not homeless person? Is there a church which emphasizes the homeless people and dedicate to bring the homeless people to Jesus?
As I was wondering, we arrived and met him. Philip immediately squatted and I was standing. Philip said in Chinese, “we want to help you”. He stopped and felt bewildered and said something both Philip and I could not understand. It's not standard mandarin but it helped me to identify that we were talking to a female. Then I asked her, “where are you from?” Again no one understood what She said. I continued to ask, “do you have a home in Xiamen?” She replied to us using an unfriendly voice. Philip and I didn't know what to do. But she started to walk by her hands. Now a very strange scene! An American and a Chinese looked at a beggar confused and was discussing what to do in English. A beggar was walked away. Some audience was attracted by what they saw and stopped walking and stared at us. My heart got disturbed and embarrassed. Two second later, I asked myself, “why do I feel embarrassed when I am helping others?”

Philip and I wanted to give it another try. We walked 5 meters to stop her and Philip asked her “do you need a pair of socks? Your bare feet should be very cold.” She said something in her mouth but didn't stop walking. The last attempt failed. I didn't understand why she refused the socks. I didn't understand why she didn't want to try to communicate with us. Before we met her, we thought she must feel rejected and lonely and really wanted to talk to someone. Quite the contrary! She didn't.

On our way back home, I asked myself, 1) “what made me feel embarrassed when I help the beggar, my hardened heart or the influence of the society?”; 2) “elders in the church taught us to give some changes to the beggar as well as to tell him that Jesus loves him when he is begging. But doesn't it sound like a conditional love?”; 3) “am I willing to do it by myself even though Bible emphasizes that this is a virtue?” As James 1:27 says “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

Today was the day that my faith and love was tested and stretched. My shallow and feeble love displayed in front of me without any disguise. Oh God, help me to find my compassion. I am so incapable of pursuing it by myself.