Love anyway.

I was angry. For weeks, I refused to see or talk to him.

 

It was one day, when Cliff came home from buying Grandpa Zhou a warm take-out meal, that he said to me, “Zhou yeye (Grandpa Zhou) asked me how come it’s been so long since he last saw you. He asked me if you are angry at him.”

 

“So what did you say?” I asked curtly.

 

“I acted dumb, haha. I said no. ”

 

“Well, you should have told him I was, because I am. It’s the truth,” I replied with resentment.

 

My anger was not one of infuriation. It was more like a sad disappointment which grew and boiled over days and then weeks into a warm, bubbling frustration. I felt offended, taken for a ride- in other words, cheated. And I wanted him to know it. For weeks I considered telling Grandpa Zhou how upset I was with him. But the rehearsal of words in my head only exasperated me further. I resolved to pen it down into an ireful letter in mandarin to him, but I never came round to doing so.

 

I’m glad I didn’t.

 

One day, while watching a powerful video by Jackie Pullinger, a missionary who had travelled to Hong Kong alone to serve and share God’s love with the gang-chiefs and drug addicts in the Forbidden City of Kowloon since 1966 and seen up to 500 drug addicts freed from their addictions, I was gripped as she shared about the countless number of missionaries who had gotten burnt by disillusionment and given up loving, because they had been hurt along the way by the very people they were called to serve and love. She recounted times of betrayal, and situations where one’s generous loving only met with unfounded hate and spite. It was a mockery, almost, to find oneself having given up one’s life of comfort to follow God’s call, only to be met with ingratitude.

 

“So do you choose to love because you want to be thanked?” she said. “Did Jesus stop loving you when you were sinful?”

 

At the point I heard that, I thought of Grandpa Zhou immediately. She had hit the nail on the dot, and the hardened crust of my heart started to melt away.

 

You see, weeks ago, I had braced myself to share with Grandpa Zhou our decision to serve overseas in an underprivileged community for a period of one to two years or more. Breaking the news to him had bothered me for months- what if he took it badly. Would he be sad, depressed even? Would he miss us? Would it add to his worries and stress him out?

 

As soon as I broke the news to him, he replied without hesitation, “Then who will pay for my medical bills?”

 

It felt like a slap across my face. I was outraged. For years I had sat by him, talked to him, developed a friendship with him, bought him food, paid for his meals and medical bills, visited him at hospital, invited him to our home and birthday gatherings and wedding… and this is the first thing he has to say to me when I share that we’ll be away?

 

Just before Christmas when we invited him out for dinner, he waved our invitation away. “No, no, it’s okay, let’s wait till Chinese New Year. Having dinner is not too important. I need to make more money.” 

 

It felt like all those years of friendship had been flushed down the drain. Those hours I spent talking to him, sharing God’s love with him, seemed like an absolute waste of time. Five years later, it seemed like he hadn’t changed one bit. It seemed as if he did not see how God had provided for him, and would continue to provide for him. Did he not see how God had placed us in his life to provide for him in so many ways, much more than a few hours of busking would earn him?

 

So for weeks I was sullen whenever I thought about this. Instead of dropping by to say hi to him, I would hurry home to prepare dinner for Cliff, after having texted Cliff beforehand to visit him with dinner. Weeks passed, and Grandpa Zhou missed me.

 

As I pondered over what Jackie Pullinger had shared, I reflected upon my motives for loving the poor and needy, and how that had shaped my sulky reaction. Even though I wasn’t aware of it, I was loving Grandpa Zhou with the expectation of gratitude. At least, I wanted to know he had been transformed in some way.

 

But when God told us to love others as He had loved us, not once did He give the condition that we should love Him back in return to enjoy His grace and mercy. He loves us while we are faithful and unfaithful; he endures our pitiful disobedience when we are full of sin. His disappointment doesn’t cut off His love to us. He only waits patiently for us to turn back to Him. In the best-selling book “Generous Justice”, Timothy Keller quotes the renowned late Jonathan Edwards having said,

 

“God loved us,

and was kind to us, and was willing to relieve us,

though we were very hateful persons, of an evil disposition, not deserving of any good…

so we should be willing to be kind to those who are…

very undeserving.”

 

I learnt a very valuable lesson- that when we love with the intention to transform lives or to receive gratitude, the lack of visible fruit and transformation will inevitably kill our passion. To put it simply, it’s what we call “burn-out”. Jackie Pullinger saw sixteen years pass before the chief opium gang-leader of the Forbidden City fall to his knees in repentence and welcome God into his life in a dramatic life transforming moment. In those sixteen years, if she had shrugged her shoulders and thrown in the towel at the tenth year because she didn’t see anything substantial, because she didn’t feel people thanked her, because she was disillusioned, what a waste that would have been.

 

I remind myself, that the poor see life from a very different perspective. Money is something they absolutely cannot live without. Money to Grandpa Zhou is different from money to me. This is a man who had had to eat leftover rice thrown to the dogs during the Japanese Occupation to survive. How can I judge him for what he has been through and what has shaped him for decades of his life. Can I truly blame him for being worried about his finances? After all, before he met me, he never went for his medical appointments unless it had deteriorated to the point he could not ignore it.

 

So we love, we have to love because God loved, loves us. We cannot love because we want a word of thanks, or love because we are encouraged by the results, which we tend to do. We love, because He first loved us. And we continue loving, just as He loves us when we are unloveable.

 

I forgave him in my heart and the anger dissipated.

 

Last week, I finally mustered the courage to see Grandpa Zhou. Cliff and I bought dinner for him, and I offered him a Bunny Pineapple Tart that I made. He was relieved to see me.

 

“Raah- beet”, he said in English with a laugh, as he looked at the bunny pineapple tart. This time, he didn’t complain, didn’t say it was “too sweet” or “too salty” or “too hard” or “too flaky”, unlike his usual self. He just said it was very tasty, even though I could see he had a little trouble eating it with no teeth.

 

This time, it was he who asked me instead, “Will you be free for dinner sometime? Chinese New Year is coming.”

 

I smiled. I looked upon his face, dry and wrinkled from years of hardship.

 

Last night, over a simple meal of home-cooked mixed “8-treasure” brown rice and won-ton soup, we listened to him as he shared joyously about his busking, his opportunities to perform with his harmonica over Christmas and the coming Chinese New Year celebrations. He asked how I got the idea to make the Bunny Pineapple Tarts.  

 

He laughed and talked about many things. 

 

 We had not seen him so happy for a long time.

 

Before he left, having taken a packet of brown rice, some bunny pineapple tarts and some money for his next medical appointment along with him, he said to Cliff in Cantonese, in between laughs in sheepish amusement, “Wow, oh my, I’ve come here to eat and take freely!”

 

Looking back, he didn’t exactly say thank you, still. But seeing the image of God in his face, and remembering what God said about “how we treated the least” was exactly how we treated him, made seeing Grandpa Zhou’s smile more than enough.

 

It was a privilege to have him.

 

“Please do,” I said. And in my heart, I remembered what many missionaries have done and are doing, inviting the poor and needy not only into their homes for meals, but invite them into their homes to stay with them, journey with them, rehabilitate them back into society. I have not even had the courage to ask Grandpa Zhou if he’d like to stay with us.

 

If God loved us even before we knew how to thank Him,

can we not learn to love those around us,

with or without thanks, too?

 

“We love, because he first loved us.”

—1 John 4:19.