Everlasting Joy.

I was surprised at my reaction. It was first to say no, I’m sorry. I can’t help you. Help yourself. This has happened before and you need to learn how to get yourself out of the pit. It was then that a blast of realisation hit me in the face and knocked some sense into me.

It was M, the orphaned girl whom I’d met at hospital before, the one who was abandoned as a child in the Philippines, had suffered the guilt of “causing” her Singaporean foster mother’s death since she was 14, and been wandering outside by herself bumping from odd-job to odd-job with recurrent admissions for her severe skin condition since then.

“I’m so sorry, Wai Jia. I’m stranded outside. My pay check for $500 comes only next week and I’ve no money in my transport card. I’m really really sorry but could you help me? Could you transfer $10 into my account? Please?”

When I saw her number on my phone, I half-guessed that it would be for money. I hesitated for a long while before picking the phone up, half hoping she would give up and hang up. She didn’t. I was preparing for my final exams and wanted to say: Look, stop being so dependent. You can’t keep calling me for money. The last time, you called me for twenty dollars and now this?

She could be a phoney. A trickster. Just finding an excuse to cheat me, right? Or so that’s what people would tell me.

But I remembered, that the last time she asked for twenty dollars and I brought her instead to the Community Services division of my church, she brought all her documents to prove who she was, where she was born, how she was fostered and where she was working. I remember looking at all her documents in some shame and awe because some part of me didn’t believe that dramatic life story she shared with me that day.

But it was all true.

Just the day before, I was reading my Oswald Chamber spiritual study guide, something I’ve decided to embark on to stay rooted in God during my exam period. It wrote:

“And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.

Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.” -Matthew 5:40-42

I remember being convicted by it. Now, God was prompting me to do the same. It wasn’t about the amount, but really, about the attitude of my heart. Did I really think that all my life, all the help I had got from others was that which I deserved? Were they not extended to me out of the grace and compassion of others? And now, when faced with the same choice to help the “undeserving”, did I feel I’d the right to judge their situation on my lofty place and lecture them about their financial insufficiency?

My best friend, a girl with dreams of becoming a longterm missionary as well, was studying with me when M called. How much does she need, she asked. I can help.

It was then that what I had read the day before became real to me. When we go the first mile for others, it is often from our own strength. But when we go the second mile, it is not for their sakes nor ours, but from God who lives within us.

Something more divine kicked me out of the house to transfer the money to her account. Twenty instead of ten. Two miles instead of one.

Not everyone will agree with the decisions I made. And that’s okay.

Last night, as I sent a friend who came over to study with me to the train station, I saw Grandpa Zhou.

“Oh, Wei Jia,” he said. “ I have something to tell you. My feet, they became swollen again and I’d to see the Chinese sinseh.”

“The sinseh?”

Sinseh. It means Traditional Chinese Practitioner. My heart sank.

“Yea, he’s very good. It was $50 and he says I’ve to go back and see him again to be fully cured. He makes a lot of sense. He told me my tummy is “cold” and that’s why my feet swell. You don’t learn this in Western medicine, right? Yea, but he’s good. Okay okay, you may not agree, and that’s okay.”

“Who’s paying for your fees?”

“I borrowed. Didn’t use the money you gave me because I know that’s for all my follow-ups at the hospital. I won’t have enough for this sinseh so I borrowed.”

I was aghast. I had heard stories about Traditional Chinese Practitioners swindling people before. I heard about some of them charging exorbidant fees and dispensing steroids mixed with herbs, or chanting spells over patients, or giving patients false hopes. I had the last straw when my mother’s fractured hand was being wrapped superficially with a piece of flimsy cardboard after she decided to see a sinseh and it took me ages to convince her she needed to go to the hospital because the sinseh had reassured her. The glaring X-ray of displaced fractured bones would have put the sinseh to shame. Since then, I’ve always been wary of them. That anger never quite dissolved.

So I was furious when he told me that. His feet were swollen because of the anti-hypertensive medication he was taking for his high blood pressure. It was a transient side effect. It would pass. We had gone through this before. But no, he said the “cold tummy” logic made sense, and he truly believed the sinseh was brilliant.

I wanted to hit my head against a wall.

But I also remembered one of the hardest and yet most important lessons I had learnt from the mission field. That is, never to impose our expectations and standards on the poor, because the love we share with the poor ought not to be conditional.

If I decide to give money to say, Africa, and the people from the organisation decide to use it to build latrines instead of schools, then I respect them for it; If I give money to Smokey Mountain and they decide to build more homes in the trash dump instead of revamping the whole site, then I respect them for it, because that is their home, not mine. When one decides to give, one must make the decision to give with respect, with allowance for autonomy to be exercised by the recipient, and if not, perhaps it may be better not to give at all. What makes my “first-world” mind think I know what’s better for them? Do I have the right to bring my colonial uppity better-than-thou attitude into my giving and so-called philanthropy?

“I also want to ask you, after what I said to you that day, are you angry with me?”

That day. Yeah, sure I was. About three weeks ago after my birthday gathering, Grandpa Zhou had gone on and on about my friends who had come for my gathering. He knew one of them was trying to win my heart and went on a home-run shooting him down.

“Someone like you should be with someone else, someone who can give you Eternal happiness! How much do you know this person? How far apart are you two? I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

He went on and on, but didn’t realise, that all his words already did that day.

Yong yuan de xing fu. Everlasting happiness. He kept repeating that over and over. He wanted me to have yong yuan de xing fu.

“Hey, actually, why don’t you consider L? You know, he actually likes you. Really, he does!”

That really frustrated me. I guess having a bad day at school and struggling already with a myriad of emotions just added to the brew of emotions simmering inside.

I know, why take him seriously, right? Other people may think, he’s just an old man. He’s just an old busker sitting by the roadside. But he is a special friend. And for some reason, maybe because of all the other things that I was going through that period, and my sensitivity to this topic and what I felt God was speaking to me during that period, I was affected by what he said. He had voiced all my insecurities about relationships, about the one which had surfaced itself in my head, and the insecurities were all those which God had Himself convicted me that I should let go off.

“Yes,” I said. “To be honest, I was rather angry. And I also disapprove of you going to see the sinseh.”

“Okay,” he said. “Sure. I’ll find a way to pay for it.”

“I have to go,” I said. “I’ve another exam tomorrow.”

It was then that he whipped out a piece of paper.

“I wrote this for you, Wai Jia. This is my prayer letter for you. I wrote it out so that I can pray for you every day, twice a day. So that I can follow it and not forget to pray about anything for your life.”

He showed it up to me and read it aloud.

“Dear God, please protect your precious daughter Wai Jia. Please help her to become a good doctor to help the poor and needy. Please help her in her studies, please watch over her and please grant her everlasting happiness in her relationships and “heart matters”. Please bless her with Everlasting, Everlasting Joy. Amen!!

I looked at him reading the letter. I thought of M, who had asked me for ten dollars. I then saw his receipt to the sinseh and realised he had gone to a fairly reputable one at Eu Yan Seng and not some bomo. I thought about all the money I had spent on physiotherapy and sports massage for my own injury, and all the money God had blessed me with on my birthday through the generosity of others and about what I had learnt about respecting the poor, and not judging them even though we may not agree, and finally felt at peace.

I had exams the next day but some things in life are just more important than another paper. After all, I am studying to serve the poor. I went home, put his medical fees in a red packet and wrote him a note on a little card which I redelivered to him.

I wrote, Thank you for your earnest prayers for me. Don’t worry about me, God will protect me and take care of my ‘Everlasting Joy’. May He bless you with good health.”

“Love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” -Mark 12:30-31

Over the past few days, I had been thinking about my attitude towards the poor. Have studying for exams consumed me so much I have no time for them? I thought about the two men sleeping on the park bench along my running route, and about an elderly lady who picks trash to recycle (who works as what we call a karang guni) who has been phoning me to ask for a place to stay and who has refused my help to refer her to shelters because she wants “her own place”… and wondered if my heart had grown cold.

I learnt, from these two experiences, that I find it impossible to love the poor with my own capacity- I am judgemental and emotional and proud.

But God is big enough to break my heart of stone and to teach me, that the spring of giving is not impulse or inclination, but by the divine inspiration of God, and a choice to love not man, but God Himself.

We wriggle and twist and compromise and think,

” It is absurd; if I give to every one who asks, every beggar will be at my door.”

Try it.

I have yet to find the person who did so who did not realise

that God restrains those who beg. “

-Oswald Chambers