RESTFUL AVAILABILITY

I've just returned from an exciting extended weekend in Paradise—Pennsylvania, that is—near Lancaster.
In my blog post on June 1, I described the purpose and the relevance of my being there. I'm the only remaining co-founder of the large para-church university campus ministry, Ambassadors For Christ, Inc.

While there, besides speaking, I was scheduled to be video taped for an interview about my nearly thirty years' friendship with the Leaman missionary ladies and the famous Chinese Christian lady who deeded their property to the AFC ministry. Christiana Tsai came from an affluent family during the late Qing Dynasty. She spent over fifty years as a bedridden invalid in a dark room necessitated by the light sensitivity her illness caused.

Her life story Queen of the Dark Chamber, translated into over thirty languages and versions, brought an estimated 10,000 visitors from many parts of the world during the thirty-five years she lived in Paradise. With God-given strength, Christiana was able to rise to each occasion (while sitting up in bed) and witness under God's anointing to each of her visitors—university students, faculty members, church groups, housewives, businessmen, famous Christian leaders, school children, military personnel, and people from other countries. Although she could not continue to serve God in China, God brought the world to her bedside.

I choose only one reflection to share with you from my extensive preparation of down memory lane recollections. It started out to be only a few pages and went on to become at least a short book probably headed for publication. It is my personal, intimate look “Beyond the Books” which made her story such a page-turner.

Interruptions of visitors were almost a daily occurrence throughout their long lives. Of the four single, aged missionary ladies, Christiana was the weakest and most helpless, but the last to be called to her Eternal Reward at age 94. Even after she was left alone with her caregiver helpers, the Lord kept right on bringing people to see her and her witness to the gospel continued unabated. In fact it was during her final twelve years that she was the most productive and we wrote the sequel book to the flagship book, The Queen. People would come unexpectedly and at inconvenient times when they were exhausted and at their weakest. They taught me by their example to pray each morning, just as they always did, “Lord, bring only those people to us whom You desire, and keep away all who would only tax our strength and take our time away from Your ministry to the lives of people who really need You.”

They summed up the offering of their lives to God as RESTFUL AVAILABILITY. I have taken that prayer into my heart and written it in one form or another into most of the books I have published. These precious friends taught me by their example to keep pressing on, as the Apostle Paul declared, “for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” That meant whether “in season or out of season,” convenient or not, to welcome whatever or whoever God sent into their lives—or mine.

Christiana always declared, “My bed is not a prison but a training school; the Holy Spirit is my Mentor, and my visitors are my homework.” It linked with Christiana's lifelong decision based on Psalm 84:11. “I never ask God WHY He allowed me to suffer for so long; I only ask Him WHAT He wants me to do.”

Can we think of a more pleasing attitude to offer our God, the Creator and Sustainer of our lives who lovingly only plans for our good? (Romans 8:28)