|
|
Topics: Compassion, Missions, Love, Servanthood
"No matter who you are or what you are or where you may be-you can do
something to change the world for the better. You are important. You count!
One of the most poignant yet dramatic illustrations of that belief in
action is contained in the story of Ah Chai, an eight-year-old leper
girl in South China. Hungry, alone, and wasted away with disease which
gnawed at her young flesh and bones, Ah Chai's life reached its supreme
tragedy, so she thought, one hot summer's day when she was driven out
of the village that had been her home by the villagers who hoped thereby
to rid themselves of her pollution. So heartless and cruel was the fury
of the mob which, armed with sticks and stones, shoved and pummeled her,
that leprosy seemed fated to be cheated of its victory.
And then it happened. A missioner approaching the village from the opposite direction saw the commotion and quickened his pace until it became a trot and then his trot a run. Into the center of the crowd he went. A glance told him the child's condition, yet he didn't stop. Bending down, he picked up Ah Chai in his arms while the crowd fell back shouting in warning, "Unclean...unclean!"
Cradled in the missioner's arm, the child stopped crying, but only for a
moment. Then the torrent of tears began anew, yet this time they were
tears of happiness, tears of gratitude that someone cared. "Why...why
do you bother about me?" she asked between sobs. The priest swallowed
hard and answered:
"Because God made you and made me" And he continued, "That makes you my sister and makes me your brother. I'm going to take care of you. You'll never be hungry or homeless again."
But how can I pay...?" Ah Chai started to ask, but the missioner smilingly
shook his head for silence.
"All you have to do-all God wants you to do-is to return His love by showing that love to as many others as you can. Promise?" A nod of a tear streaked face was the eloquent reply. That was when Ah Chai was eight. She died three years later, not long after her eleventh birthday.
But in those three years she did much to bring the love of God and His Peace into the lives of all the other lepers with whom she had to live and who were given to the missioners' care. She sang to them, she dressed their sores, she fed them, but most of all, she loved them.
When she died, they expressed their gratitude, and thousands of other Chinese from the surrounding countryside echoed their feelings in these simple words:
"Our little bit of Heaven has gone back to Heaven." And they would point
upwards. And just as Ah Chai thought with the vision of Christ, in terms of herself and of the world, so you can do likewise and your power for good becomes more effective and far-reaching. Once a person gains even a partial comprehension of the role he or she can play, personally and individually, everything takes on a new and hopeful aspect.
"Better to light one candle than to curse the darkness."-old Chinese proverb
Unknown
(Inspirational submitted by: Unknown)