As I sat around the coffee table chatting with my cousins on New Years Eve, my aunt walked into the room and announced that, per request of my grandfather, we were going to have a brief life-prep workshop. As you might imagine, the prospect of talking about careers and how to prepare for crazy interview questions wasn’t exactly our idea of New Year’s Eve fun. But we stuck it out. After half an hour of information on job hunting and networking provided by my aunt, the focus shifted to interview prep. Naturally my uncle, with his cunning ability to put people on the spot, took up the task of interviewing each of us (there were 7 of us cousins there–so much for a brief session!). I was second in line. The interview soon turned to a question of motives for the “line of work” I’m interested in. In the end it came down to one question, “on your deathbed will you be satisfied knowing that you have given more to others than to yourself and even possibly your own family while knowing that even with all of your effort, at the end of the day there will still be poverty and suffering in the world?” My immediate response was “Yes.” And yet… the part he added about the futility of my work struck a chord in my heart. It seemed like he had a good point.
A week later, after flying across the Pacific and arriving in China, I received an email from a friend who was struggling to see God amidst the hopeless brokenness of the world. Her words echoed the many prayers and frustrations I had cried out to God on countless nights in the past few months. And as I reflected on her email I realized that although I’ve said and will continue saying “Yes,” I struggle to see where redemption through Jesus is amidst our war torn, poverty stricken, consumerist-blinded world. And what’s more, it seems that no matter how many good people there are and no matter how hard they try they can never end the brokenness. Even in our Christian homes and Christian churches the brokenness and poverty prevails. So where is God? And what difference can one person’s feeble efforts make?
Another week later and I was sitting in a small, dimly lit living room in southern China, catching up with a friend who is teaching English for a year. Across the room (as in, a few feet away) my grandfather was showing his cousin pictures of our family. As my friend and I sat on a wooden bench, the remnants of pumpkin seeds and Clementine peels at our feet and our breath gently condensing in the cold air, our conversation shifted from stories about family to some challenging spiritual issues. I told him about some of the frustrations and questions that had been plaguing my heart and mind. As I pondered these things, something changed. I started to wonder if maybe it wasn’t so much about doing as many good and great acts of kindness as possible to make the world a better place, but about the love that goes into and is shown through these actions, because material things and physical health will eventually pass away, but love is eternal. At the time it was more of a fleeting thought or concept that I could not fully grasp, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more convinced I have become that there might be some truth in it.
Shane Claiborne puts it this way in The Irresistible Revolution:
“What had lasting significance were not the miracles themselves, but Jesus’ love. Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the dead, and a few years later, Lazarus died again. Jesus healed the sick, but they eventually caught some other disease. He fed thousands, and the next day they were hungry again. But we remember his love. It wasn’t that Jesus healed a leper but that he touched a leper, because no one touched lepers. And the incredible thing about that love is that it now lives inside of us.”