I took a picture of a small group of volunteers currently working inside a hospital in central China. The lady director’s name of that pregnancy help organization is Sister Sung and she’s been at this work now for probably six or seven years at least. The last time I saw her was before COVID, but I did get a chance to have a meal with her. Sure enough, it didn’t take long for her to pull out her cell phone and begin to show me page after page of this mother and that mother, this baby and that set of twins and the example of triplet babies that were just born. To listen to her tell her stories, with a translator of course, and to share these pictures is just a sheer moment of bliss. It makes you so glad that you’ve met these people that the world doesn’t know, but you get a chance to know them.
One of the stories that she told was of a young Muslim woman who came into the hospital and was in a crisis pregnancy because she had taken some medicine that the doctor said that she should go ahead and abort her baby. But Sister Sung got a hold of her, reassured her and helped her recognize that there are lots of ways to accommodate these situations. There are many people who have been taking medicine and she got her the help that she needed and she had her baby. It’s a year later that this story picks up and she is pregnant again. This time she felt that having two children was just too much. So Sister Sung sat down with her and really began to point out to her that abortion really is a crisis of faith. Was she willing to believe that the God who made her baby has a plan to feed her baby? She really began to share with her that God can be trusted for her daily bread and that God who is the true and living God is the One who pursues her even to the point of the cross. Sister explained the whole Gospel message to her, really inviting her to put her trust in the Lord. In this particular case the young woman did. Sister Sung’s face lights up when she tells the story of this woman and many others that have come to trust in the Lord as a way of trusting Sister Sung and her team for help in finding a way to give birth. So, it’s an exciting time.
The other woman that reminds me of that Scripture about being zealous for good works in China is Sister Bai whom I’ve known for over 10 years. She’s one of the first women I ever trained in pregnancy crisis intervention in China and she too joined me for dinner when I was there. She also has a phone full of pictures and stories. In fact the last time I had dinner with her, I think her phone must have rung about six or seven times during the meal from different women who were calling her about this or that issue. The ongoing counseling goes on outside the hospital once these women have chosen life and a relationship is established. Of course she needs an army of good Samaritans to work with her to keep track of all these women, but she showed me a picture of Sister Sung holding a newborn baby with a young teenage mother who had been abandoned by her family. She was in desperate need when she found Sister Bai and her help. Sister Bai recently shared with me a story of a young mother smiling over her new baby and telling me how she’s smiling now, but when she met her she was full of tears for being pressured into abortion, again for some medical reasons all of which proved to be false. But just telling the story about how being there, being committed to rescue the innocent, being ready to help these mothers choose life, just leads to this unfolding story of God’s grace where this young mother now has a child and has a relationship with many Christians. She didn’t tell me whether she became a Christian, but she said that they have become really good friends, which is Sister Bai’s way of saying that there’s an ongoing witness present in her life.
So these are just some of the few things that I got to be an eyewitness to in China. I just want to close our time by mentioning this verse on how the Lord has redeemed and saved us, giving us a new hope. He says that: “it’s Christ that is preparing us and calling us to be zealous for good works.” That’s the phrase used in Titus chapter 2 verse 14. He’s creating a people for His own possession who are zealous for good works. In my life I think of what that might look like. I think of Sister Sung and Sister Bai. In Sister Bai’s case, in the last year, she lost her only son who was about 28 or 29 years old. Remember, with a one-child policy you were only allowed to have one child. And now another tragic side of that policy has been revealed. In Sister Bai’s case, her son got sick and died. Sister Bai herself got sick and almost died in the past year. Yet when I met her, even though she has lost weight and she’s a bit more frail, she is determined that she will be at this hospital every day. She’ll be there for the mothers. She’ll work through her grief, loss and sorrow because she’s zealous for this good work that God has called her to do. She’s a model for me. I hope you have your own model and determination of what it means to be zealous for good works. Thanks.