Amber Lu的部落格

Monday, March 30, 2009

Read: Corinthian 13:1-13

As a teacher at a Taipei Municipal Junior High School, the pressure is heavy, and the situation is difficult. All the students, parents, and administrators count how many of your students are admitted into the top high school, and what your weekly class average test marks are. They treat these marks as the teacher's own report card.

Because of the severe competition, no teacher wanted a Special Needs student in their class. One day, the head administrator asked my co-worker, Shiuven if she would accept a girl with a very low IQ. Shiuven accepted and welcomed that girl Angela into her class, and under Shiuven’s impact, all her students loved Angela. Angela adjusted to the class, and was very happy. What Shiuven had done really touched all my colleagues’ hearts.

Later my colleague Shiuven transferred to another school. One day Shiuven's brother came to visit my school. I mentioned Shiuven’s name. Her brother said, “Yes, she still is a really passionate person." He told me that one of Shiuven’s former students’ family went bankrupt. Shiuven took out her personal bank book and seal and said, "Just take these to the bank and withdraw as much money as that family needs."

I knew that was the same loving person whom I was familiar with. She was a Christian who seldom showed me the Bible or uttered a sentence from Scripture. However she lived a life that Jesus wants us to live. There have been so many Shiuvens in my life. They set a good example of what is a Christian, and that’s why I became a Christian.

I’ve heard a story: A man was led to hell. There was a round table filled with dishes of delicious food. On the table were pairs of table-length chopsticks, so long that the people around the table couldn’t get one bite of the food into their mouths. Then the man was led to heaven. There was the same round table filled with the same dishes of delicious food. With the same pairs of table-length chopsticks, the people around the table enjoyed the food, because they used those long chopsticks to feed the person who was seated across the table from them.

In this life, everyone encounters the unfortunate. I think if only there was a family or a community filled with people like Shiuven, then we would be living in heaven on earth.

Reflection Questions:

1.What do you think heaven is?  Is it outside or inside? Is it far away or nearby?

2.What can we do to show heaven in our daily life, for ourselves? For others?

Oh Lord, even though I love worldly enjoyment above you, and I often forget you, along my way you are still beside me, or you send angels around me. Thank you for your love. God, please remind me everywhere and every second of your love, so that I shall rejoice greatly in you and my soul shall exult in you, and so I can share this happiness with others, because I am a blessed person. Amen.

Appendix:

1 Corinthians 13

Love

 ¹If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ²If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

 ⁴Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

 ⁸Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. ¹¹When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. ¹²Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

 ¹³And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.