Tiny seeds.

Who would imagine that such a tiny seed would grow into a towering, formidable, life-giving oak tree?

It’s like how we would never imagine that our tiniest acts would have such a large impact on somebody else.

Sometimes, do you feel like what you do doesn’t matter? Does it feel like a smile, or a kind act you give out evaporates almost instantly, leaving nothing but a memory in the atmosphere? Does the answer of only God knowing and seeing what you’re doing dis-satisfy you? I know I felt that way before, but less and less.

A few months ago, Grandpa Zhou stopped me in my tracks.

“Wai Jia!” he said in mandarin. “Do you know a Marcus?”

In mandarin, he had pronounced it as MAH KER.

“Mah-ker? There are many Mah-kers around, Grandpa Zhou. Which one are you talking about?” To be honest, I wasn’t taking him very seriously.

“He says he knows you!”

“Well, okay. Tell me more?”

“Well, this boy. This boy who’s a little older than you came to sit by me just the other day! He sat down and played the guitar with me, bought me food… and so I shared with him about my god-daughter, you, and about all the things you did for me which touched and changed my life… And I said you were very kind… and surprisingly, he asked for your name! And when I told him, both of us got a shock of our lives because HE KNOWS YOU!!! He’s from your church!”

Mah-ker. Mah-ker. Ah yes, I know a Marcus! I remember now!

It was beautiful, to know that someone from Home would see Grandpa Zhou through a different set of eyes from the world-not my eyes, but the eyes of God.

A week later when I spoke to Marcus over the phone, we both chuckled. Grandpa Zhou plays the harmonica and busks at a train station in the north on some days and on other days, in the east. Marcus had met him in the north while I had met Grandpa Zhou in the east.

“What made you stop for him?” I asked Marcus.

“You know 2 years ago when you wrote an article in our church magazine on Loving the Poor and Stopping for One? (pg 7), it impacted me really greatly. So I told myself I would do the same. I didn’t think the old man whom I stopped for was the same old man you had written about!”

What a small world.

Marcus has been seeing Grandpa Zhou regularly, buying him food, bought and watched a movie with him at a cinema and even accompanied him to a mid-autumn festival event last week.

Last week, I got another email from a stranger through Facebook:

Hi Wai Jia!

You must be wondering who I am. Ha, I’ll tell you something amazing! You know the uncle who sits outside the Kembangan mrt (train station)? I know him too! Only this week did I find out that you are his “gan sun nu” (god-daughter). Haha, anyways, I forgot to intro myself, I am ZX from your church too. Nice to meet you! The uncle says you’re very nice! It’s amazing how God brought us 3 to know one another. Haha C:

God bless,
ZX

Today, Grandpa Zhou told me that when this teenage girl and her mother stopped to talk with him, and when he shared with them about this god-daughter he had, that I was from a church in the east called Cornerstone, they exclaimed that they were from the same one!

Last Friday, I got a phonecall from another friend.

“Wai Jia, I need to talk to you.”

“What’s up?”

R is a final-year law student, a budding artiste, a friend who has encouraged and inspired me greatly in many ways. He is always full of ideas and just set up his own theatre company to put up Christian theatre works.

“I read your story about Uncle Tay and his 5 shirts. And I read your story about Grandpa Zhou. I’d been organising a series of lectures lately for our law faculty- the latest one being on the topic of Social Injustice. The speaker challenged us to find one aspect of society to pray for and to take action in during the next many months… and to set small goals… … So, well… I want you to know I’m starting a movement, to raise awareness about helping the elderly in our society who fall through the cracks. I’ve been speaking to various social workers and agencies to compile a list of helpful services and hope to bring this to people, help people help others. And I need your help, because you’re what inspired me.”

We talked.

“So what made you stop for Grandpa Zhou the first time you met him? That’s what I wanna know, that’s what I feel we can impart to our youth today.”

“To be honest, R,” I said- I knew I was about to spoil his poetic moment, “if you read my writing, I hated Grandpa Zhou at the start. He was mean to me. And I was darn impatient. I was too proud to stop for him. I didn’t want to. It was God who made me stop, changed my heart. He humbled me. That was how.”

Just as I left Grandpa Zhou today and gave him another fifty-dollar note from a pool of money given to me by my junior’s boyfriend (he, whom I’ve only met once, had given me all of his Chinese New Year money given to him by his relatives for any purpose I wanted) for his medical fees, I caught sight of Rachel, my 7-year old girl from my Sunday School class.

I had shared with my Sunday School children the story of Grandpa Zhou before. I had taught them the value of loving the needy. I remember she was most attentive during those lessons, and she even asked me several things even though she was normally quiet in class.

Now, she saw me bending low to talk to Grandpa Zhou. She saw for herself what she had heard in class.

All these tiny incidents served not to remind of my own goodness, but to remind me of how God could use someone as self-absorbed and proud as me, to reach out to someone else, and how just such a tiny act of obedience can have ripple effects on numerous people, things and circumstance around us.

You just never know.

So the next time you do good and feel weary about doing so, remember that God is not the only one touched. Your smile, your gesture, your one small act of love does not evaporate into thin air.

Like a tiny seed which is the beginning of a giant tree that can bear fruit and provide shade and beauty for many others, your tiny act of love, too, can go such a long way.

I never knew.