“Left Behind”, a series from “Casting Crowns”, a collaborative project between Wai Jia and Ian Ho
(Concept and modelling by Wai Jia, Photo by Ian Ho)
As we started to make preparations to transit into mission work in Africa, I found myself in a state of growing unrest and unease. How could it be? Hadn’t this been our long-awaited dream?
But once the glimmer of the romantic idea of missions lost its sheen, I realized it was the continual process of saying goodbye that I grappled with the most.
Goodbye to the stability of a well-paying job, goodbye to people and places I so loved and called Home.
But the hardest to say goodbye to were the castles I had built for myself, the shoes I had forced myself to fit into, the adornments I had used to embellish myself to present a character on a stage set before a dying world of fading applause… and most of all, the crown I had made for myself, bejeweled with pride, self-entitlement and idolatry.
In a collaborative project I entitle “Casting Crowns”, I explore the themes of ticking time, letting go of earthly riches and the search for treasures in eternity, in light of our brief existence. Here is the second of the series, named “Left Behind”.
All these things, which moth and rust will destroy, will perish on earth. In heaven, only true riches can exist.
Thank you Cliff, for having journeyed with me through the most heartbreaking seasons of grieving and mourning of loss. Thank you for not judging me, or brutally expecting me to stoically accept the realities of dying to oneself, but accepting me in my moments of real pain and grappling with loss, even of silly things like a favorite dress, a favorite coffee place, or books I so treasure.
Thank you for reminding me,
that whatever we say goodbye to,
will be something God will give us to say “hello” to.
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“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
– Matthew 5:4
“Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied,
“no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children
or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age:
homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—
and in the age to come eternal life.
But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”
– Mark 10:29-31