Reflections in Chinese...

Wouldn't it be cool if I could actually type this in Chinese... or speak any Chinese for that matter...

Well, regardless, I recently spent some time in China. Ten days, to be exact... or 8-10, at least... hours get lost and a lot of time is spent in the air, so it is hard for me to say how long I was there... but we'll just say I was away from home for 10 days, and most of those days were spent in the PRC.

Adam invited me and hosted me and made it the most delightful trip imaginable. Not all of you have heard a lot about Adam... and I wouldn't really know where to begin with that story! But, in a nut shell, he is a wonderful, funny, brilliant, kind man who loves the Lord... and that love has led him to China for a year to teach... and I met him through some kind and intentional friends. Ours is a funny story... a surprising one... one that makes us laugh and shrug and offer thanks to a God who does odd, delightful things ... and it is a story that is still in progress...

And here he is, fearlessly leading me through the streets of old Shanghai:

He's so legit. And here we are, after 10 (8? 9?) days traipsing around China together...

Those smiles are not forced. (At least, mine wasn't!) I'm not lying when I say this trip was wonderful from start to finish. I've done some international travel before, and this trip was by far the most delightful and easiest trip I've ever been on... which is amazing because, well... we were in China. That is not always the easiest place for westerners to travel. I know, now, that the fact that I felt so relaxed and full of wonder the whole time was because Adam was the best host imaginable... and selflessly took perfect care of me the whole time... Also, any time spent with Adam is wonderful time.

That being said... while Adam took care of all the unpredictable elements of travel... including bus drivers who tell lies, train rides with 7+ hour delay, hit-and-miss ticket purchasing and even arguing for purchases (I did some of that, too...) I soaked in all the sights and smells and general wildness of China... and indeed, it is a wild place.

China as a mirror. I've thought over the years about why it is good to go see other places... and a huge benefit is that it gives a person new eyes. To see everyday life occurring in a way that is surprising and maybe shocking causes one to examine why we assumed life only occurred that other way... suddenly everything is worth observing and scrutinizing... in China, those new eyes caused me to see myself in a way that was very humbling and even devastating...

Before I went to China, I had some pretty arrogant, deeply buried assumptions regarding my life and how loosely I held material things and how willing I was to do hard things for the gospel... etc., etc., etc... Once transplanted to a place where everything is crowded, everything is shared, people work hard for a little, and common comforts (like heated homes) are not assumed... I was suddenly well aware of how my actual attitude is one of complete entitlement. Because being cold makes me grouchy. And standing on buses gets tiring.

Add to that the fact that Adam's students served and loved me tirelessly and at the expense of their own comfort (my room was heated, they spent time making me special food, they cleaned up after all my meals, always made sure I was provided with hot water bottles, and they even greeted me upon my arrival with my own pair of house slippers,) and you will see why I was both humbled and devastated. Being the recipient of that kind of love and attention from people who endure and overcome much more than I do is quite undoing.

(Here is an image of that love and service... fresh pineapple, sliced up just for Adam and I... and in the background, you can see the silhouettes of two of Adam's students bending over the after-lunch dishes...)

China as a telescope. Or a panorama... or something that expands one's view. Life is different in China. Values are different. Attitudes and norms and behaviors are different. We eat differently, treat guests differently, have different toilets, different views on time and space and old people and childrearing and customer service and traffic laws and business ethics... these are just some of the differences that I observed in 8+ days... and differences are hard, humanly speaking. Yet such differences are moot, biblically speaking. Kumar has pointed out more than once that Jesus never critiqued cultures... that just wasn't what he was here for... but he was here to save the nations. Which is crazy. And it seemed crazier in China. Not because China was unlovable... China is magnificent, beautiful, mysterious and simply awesome. But it was enormous... and full... and it was more the realization that a)God created all this and b)God loves all this and c)God acted to save all this... which made what Jesus has done so crazy and beyond my scope of comprehension. China is God's magnificence and bigness and astounding creativity and utter unending redemptive power on display...

A little over 24 hours after I landed US again I found myself sitting in a Christmas Eve service in my church's quaint, elegant sanctuary... everything was different and new because I had just been somewhere different and new which spreads difference and newness all around... a man with the demeanor of an urban rapper shared the story of prophecies about Jesus, followed by a man with the demeanor of an urban professional talking about why that hope is ours... America is full of differences too. According to my understanding, it would take someone with complete political, economic, cultural and social agility and power to bring about any kind of unification among the vastness of all the peoples of the world. But, as the urban rapper shared with us, that wasn't how the story transpired...

" He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;

and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not"

Is. 53: 3

The magnificence of the plan of God coming down to earth, and thus redeeming all nations--overcoming all differences, encompassing all peoples, making us overtly about one thing--is that it will all be based on his person and power... not our human understandings or predictions about how such things ought to happen. It took a trip someplace wild and unpredictable to gain a glimmer of an understanding of that kind of power--to create sustain and redeem something so vast and varied as this earth--and the full realization of that kind of power is yet to come.

"And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light,

and the lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth

will bring their glory into it. . . they will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations."

Rev. 21:23-26