When I saw the three consecutive missed calls on my phone, I panicked.
This had happened before, not once, but thrice. Each time it did, it always spelled the same thing- crisis.
After all, Grandpa Zhou, the elderly busker who earned a living playing the harmonica near to where we used to stay, did not like to trouble others. Since we returned from Africa and moved homes, we saw him far less. We kept in touch through phone calls, often through the kindheartedness of passers-by who would sometimes offer him a favour.
On the rare occasions he called, it always spelled trouble. Once, he had nearly fainted in a train station before being warded for pneumonia.
This time, I tried calling back, but no one was home.
As the various scenarios flashed through my head, I started to worry. What if he was critically ill or in need of help? What if he had fainted at home?
As a sense of helplessness engulfed me, I started to pray. Minutes later, I nearly dropped my phone as I saw the same number call me back.
“Hello? Zhou yeye (Grandpa Zhou)?”
“OH HALLOW, WEI JIA! I tried calling you! Just wanted to say THANK YOU!! I got your Hongbao (red packet) for Chinese New Year from your friend! So generous, so wanted to say THANK YOU!!”
I heaved a sigh of relief. His voice was exuberant.
“OH! I also wanted to ask you something!” he said in mandarin, in vigorous candour.
“You know, there’s this HUGE LOTTERY coming up! The BIGGEST TOTO LOTTERY EVER in Singapore’s history! I wanted to buy, but then I wanted to ask you, because somehow I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do! Like you know, if God would feel sad about it. ”
I was stunned.
Many studies explain why lotteries are disproportionately attractive to the poor- they offer them their best hope to correct their status, even though the chances are impossibly slim and further enslave them to the poverty they desperately wish to escape from.
“So, WEI JIA, what do you think? Can I buy? I don’t buy often! But THIS GRAND PRIZE IS HUUGGGE! You must understand, it’s my once-in-a-lifetime chance!”
I was speechless. Such was the childlike trust Grandpa Zhou placed in me, and such was his guileless simplicity to please a Father he had grown to love, and desire to obey.
“Oh,” I said. “Well, I’m not God, but I guess if I were in His shoes like a parent, and if my child bought the lottery because he wanted to win it, I might feel… a bit sad perhaps. I might feel my child thought that what I could provide him wasn’t enough. Like, maybe my child didn’t trust that I could provide for him. You know what I mean? ”
I was waiting for the typical argument to erupt. Years ago, I would spend hours talking to him, convincing him to see a doctor or take a bath, or clean out his home, which hoarded so many old and rusty possessions that there was hardly room to stand.
Nonetheless, years of friendship and his new-found faith in a heavenly Father who loved him, had established a new conduit of trust, and his heart received this with enthusiastic immediacy.
“You’re right,” he said. “ OK, I won’t buy then.”
He paused before continuing, “You know, God has been so good to me. Many angels have met my needs. Can I tell you something? Just last month before Chinese New Year, I really wanted a haircut.”
It is an age-old tradition to have a haircut before the Lunar New Year, to usher in a new season.
“Yea, but I couldn’t find any cheap barber. So I just prayed by myself and told God I really would like a cheap haircut. Within two weeks, a passer-by stopped to ask me if I might like a haircut. I asked her how much, and she said she was a hair-dresser so she gave me one for free! And she said she would continue doing so as long as I needed one and when she saw me! Yes, God is so good! He hears all our prayers!”
Tears welled up in my eyes. “Isn’t God good?” I asked.
“Yes! Yes! He is really real!”
Such are the simple prayers of a little old man by the dirty steps of a train station. Such was the simplicity of his faith. And such was the specificity and care of a big God who heard and answered his heart’s deepest prayers.
In the many years I’ve known Grandpa Zhou, especially since he believed in God, not one of his prayers have fallen to the ground.
“Oh yes, one more thing! I know you’re really busy so I’ll be quick! But I’m going to pray for you and Cliff, so you have some kids soon! Is that OK?”
“Yes,” I said, with tears welling up. “Yes, sure. It’s so thoughtful of you.”
“OK, OK! I got to go now! Need to play the harmonica!! Thank you again for your red packet! I won’t buy the lottery! God is enough! He is enough for me!”
As he hung up, I thought of how far Grandpa Zhou had come. Once a bitter man who was angry with the world, he had developed an ingrained, obsessive-compulsive hoarding habit reflecting his desperation to own more, have more, perhaps so he could –be- more. Back then, he always repeated to me, “I am nobody, people look down on me.”
Now, set free from the poverty mind-set of desperation and self-striving, he is always cheerful. He always carries around a recent story to share about how good God has been to him.
On the outside, nothing has changed. He has grown older, a little more frail. After all, we are all wasting away. But on the inside, a slow but progressive transformation continues to take place, and I had the privilege to witness his culmination of faith in this significant milestone, to release his very valid human desires for wealth, in exchange for a spiritual inheritance he could not yet see.
In a renewed relationship with God, his perception of his own poverty disappeared, in understanding his kinship to a kingly Father who loved and cared for him, so intimately.
Indeed, God is enough for us, Grandpa Zhou. The heavenly inheritance in your heart, is surely beyond all the riches of our earthly life.
“… though our outward man perish,
yet the inward man is renewed day by day.
For our light affliction, which is but for a moment,
worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;
While we look not at the things which are seen,
but at the things which are not seen:
for the things which are seen are temporal;
but the things which are not seen are eternal.”
– 2 Cor. 4:16-18
*To those of you who see Grandpa Zhou, I know he would so appreciate you dropping by to say hello, or offer him a short phone call to say hi to me. Thank you for being angels to him. <3