Destinations in a Jail Cell

The lead scrapes across the page, marking down words that forever burned on the hearts of those who received them. The light, caused by the small flame, illuminates the passionate fervor with which he writes his heart’s cry. “Do not neglect the love…let brotherly kindness abide…let love abide…do not forget those things I asked for you to bring…I have raised up a young Timothy here…greet one another…rejoice always…your suffering is not in vain…remember my chains.” Rats scratch in the corner begging for more scraps of their daily meal of molded rice. He lifts his head. There are footsteps. They fade past his cell and continue on down the corridor of stone. He breathes and continues writing his message to the beloved ones.

They receive it much later with such joy. Such joy. Knowing that his sufferings are not his destination, but that God’s glory is his destination.

I sit in the living room on the twentieth floor of an apartment building in downtown Kunming. The spring city. The city of life. The city of green. The city of redemption. I sit and listen to a heartbroken man whisper the words written earlier by a man in his cell, encumbered by rats, his only hope for release being death – yet knowing that death is not his destination – his Father’s glory is his destination. I listen and I weep because for the first time in my life, I am finding what it is like to have lived 2000 years ago and sit in the New Testament Ephesus church. Surrounded by my brothers and sisters and listening to words of a man who leads and loves his flock, I found my heart ripped to shreds. Whatever notions of coming to minister to the Chinese Christians in my short time there vanished in one moment, knowing that I was in the middle of historic Christianity and knowing that I will never know what suffering is. I will never know what sacrifice is. I will never know what true discipleship is, unless I can know Christ with even a fraction of the intensity that this writer has.

His name is Brother Jao*. He lived in Inner Mongolia. He now lives in a six by six cell, eating a daily bowl of rice mixed with sand, and doing hard labor for the communist government that rules his body but cannot capture his soul. He is the leader of over one hundred thriving underground churches in China and sees to their needs even when his own are sorely lacking. He writes of his desire to see them grow further up and further on. He writes of his desire to see his family learn the meaning of persecution, not so that they can gain the respect or support of westerners, but so that they can know more clearly what it is to be called a Christian. A little Christ.

Know Christ.

But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death: in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. (Phil 3:7-11)

For the first time in my life, this passage has substance to me. It is not simply written by a man called Paul whom I’ve read about and heard about all my life to be a saint and a father in my faith. It has suddenly become a black-haired, brown-eyed Mongolian pastor whose daughter I am now a sister to.

No longer is my vision of imprisoned and persecuted Christians relegated to the tri-fold from the center of the Voice of the Martyrs Magazine. No longer can I look the other direction when I see a Compassion International ad. No longer can I nod my head and put the expected ‘amens’ in when I hear a missionary on furlough speak. No longer can I envision suffering in quite the same way.

Because now it has a face. Now it has a name. Now it has a daughter I love. And now it has a message. A message of hope. Because we know that our sufferings are not our destination. We know HIS GLORY is our destination.

Footnotes
   * not his real name.