erudite prayer and silent moments, the heart swelled with indescribable sourness. I don’t know if it’s an intensification of my feelings or if is it inspired by divine revelation, but I gradually fell in love with prayer, and the gesture of crying in my heart was so moving and painful. How incredible is this! For a “post-80s” boy who is recognized as having extreme thoughts, a strange personality, and an indifferent expression, there is the softest blood and heart. And this softness, gentleness, and true self of me is fully awakened when I face God directly. This is my inner room, this is the magic of my communication with the universe. all the outward laughter and strength, disguise and meanness, are shattered in an instant. I have seen my death at the same time, and I will see my resurrection at the same time.
The resurrection may take a long time.
I’m a mortal! I was uneasy when I suddenly realized this big problem. Even when I prayed, I thought that I had entered the supernatural realm and obtained some kind of supernatural energy, but I did not feel humbled and felt the cosmic kinship that the transcendent had bestowed upon me, and I was connected by blood. When He approached me, the mountain of my soul was moved, torn down, and returned naked with a new life. It’s all grace! Nothing but grace. If it weren’t for grace, my life, the changes in the world, the withering of plants and trees, and the movement of the planet. All of this is maintained by the benevolent protection of the first driving force. There is no greater power of faith between heaven and earth than this.
Faith in mortals takes on a new connotation for everyday life, and faith in the superman leads us to certain glory. This is the promise of the incarnation.
Although the scenery on the side of the road is bleak, a person’s trek has long forgotten the beautiful scenery, as if I have forgotten myself. I’m young, I’m on my way, I’m young, I’m longing to travel.
● The beginning of life
Individual life, as if born with a religious nature, may be strongly adhered to atheism or other discourses in the future, and you will never be able to avoid the myriad complexes of life coming from the chaos to the earth, in Dr. Leung Yin Cheng’s view, this event is the great cosmic affection. The advent of life is the greatest miracle in the universe. All the delicate arrangements and proper arrangements in the universe, all the light and rain, can be seen as a heartfelt welcome to individual life. The life that comes out of life, the light that comes out of eternity, the cold cosmic and biological laws, in the sustainment of divine love, gives dignity and breadth to life itself.
When I was young, I experienced several coming-of-age disasters. My father lived in a remote but historic village, which was once a desert outside the Zhou Dynasty. Facing a large wasteland for generations, I don’t know how many bones have been buried and how many unjust cases have been caused in this piece of yellow earth. Fei Xiang’s song “Hometown” resounded in the sky over China in the 80s, but it did not awaken people’s search for a more beautiful hometown. In the Chinese mainland in the 80s, the vigorous stories of the times were constantly unfolding against the same background, and at the center of all the stories continued to write a common theme: this ancient land, the dignity, and value of human life were devalued to a lower degree.
After the “purge” of Wen Gee, the masses have never been able to produce a deep awakening of the soul, and people yearn for real and certain comfort. In the countryside, many people enter the monastery in a hazy way, worship in front of the statue of the Buddha, and all the goods built come from the donation of each family. People do not know anything about the wisdom of the Buddha and his life, words, and deeds, and they do not know anything about the refuge of Master Hongyi and the journey of faith of Mr. Lin Yutang and only regard the Buddha as a fantasy god to seek prosperity and physical well-being in the future. The countryside in my childhood memories presents an incongruous atmosphere.
Our past and present lives have been laid out by God’s pen. He has never kept humanity in a state of chaos. In the beginning, the earth was empty and chaotic, and the Spirit of God moved on the waters, and also on every chaotic and confused land.
When my mother was young, she came to God. This was an unprecedented move at that time. Almost the whole family could not understand that the people of the clan had always cherished the deepest loyalty to the Buddha and other gods of all kinds, and were vague when asked about the reason for their hopes. Under the mysterious influence of the historical allusion to “Fengming Qishan”, too many people are in a deep-rooted haze and uncivilized state. Faith in God’s Mother shows extraordinary wisdom, tolerance, and fraternity among her neighbors, and although there is little culture, the outpouring of inner life is evident. In the ostentatious countryside, my mother always used Jesus’ teachings as the foundation of her life: blessed are the peacemakers, love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.
After their marriage, their parents have been examples for their neighbors to praise and follow. They had two older sisters, and the third baby boy died in a hurry on the first night of life. In a land where there is no truth to be revealed, any ridiculous thought can flourish: the neighbors agree that a family cannot be sustained without a boy, and the family becomes the talk of others. Due to the pressure of the world, the mother wanted to support the neighbor’s child to make up for the shortcomings.
The mother later said that it was a summer moon, she had contacted a family in the same village, and the baby boy was very cute. Unexpectedly, her hands were swollen and painful for no reason, and a piece of steamed bread was difficult to hold. She prayed, then gave up the idea, and her will was renewed: if she took the neighbor’s child at will, it would bring regret and harm to three sides in the future, and it would last for a lifetime. The mother waited with hope, and she was sure that no life would come for no reason, and no life would be meaningless.
To this day, I believe that the prayer gestures of many people who sincerely look up to God are the most touching emotions in the universe: all the love and longing that come from the heart are like rivers, and the true good and evil, tenderness and longing of human nature are also vividly presented.
It didn’t take long for my parents to have me.
Perhaps only the Mother determines how God sustains the conception and birth of a love life.
In the future, when I experienced the hardships of growing up more deeply, I was greatly comforted by the memory of my mother’s prayers. It is as if every word of the Bible is closely related to the life of an individual:
“You have made my inwards.
I am in my mother’s womb, and you have covered me.
I praise you, for I have been made wonderfully and fearfully.
Your deeds are wonderful, and I know them in my heart.
Your eyes have seen my unformed constitution. ”
Life itself is a miracle. Life science is about the ins and outs of the birth of life, and cannot give nobility and dignity to life itself. Any life, whether president or beggar, is given value and meaning by God at the beginning of life. For God, there are no accidents in life. The Christian faith holds great value for the universal values of humanity, and it is revealed by the light of God. The Bible’s first place of human beings under God’s creation, care, and redemption is more moving than the cold and flawed theory of evolution. When a criminal suddenly discovers that life is not accidental, that his birth contains the most ingenious arrangement of cosmic intelligent design, that he has a pair of divine eyes that transcend worldly judgment, and that he walks lightly into the desert of your heart with the ultimate care of tenderness, he will immediately find hope of survival. He was reborn in the Holy Kingdom.
Although at the beginning of history, there was a scene of the ancestors who turned away from God and brought endless sins and disasters to the history of mankind, however, God’s loving redemption was revealed to mankind on the cross of Jesus Christ to the highest peak so that all who confessed to Jesus Christ could be reconciled to God.
This long journey home, as a sinner, still has a considerable amount of mental road to go.
● Childhood
Memories of childhood are the best testimonies to the care and love of the Most High experienced by a simple and weak individual at the beginning of his life.
When I was three years old, my partner and I were mowing grass for silkworms in the field. The scythe cut cut my left index finger, leaving only a layer of skin attached. When the neighbor who passed by saw it, he immediately wrapped his finger in a handkerchief and took me to the village medical room, where I did not feel pain, washed, stitched, removed stitches, and healed…… One year during the Spring Festival, I fell into a large pot of radish broth that had just come out of the pot, but I did not faint, I received treatment soberly, and I clearly remembered my mother’s call to God: “Lord, save my child.” At the age of six, he suffered from jaundice and hepatitis, and his two months of traditional Chinese medicine and dripping life were unbearable, he was healthier than ordinary children, which made the attending physician feel incredible. Looking back, if it weren’t for God’s love and grace, his life would have been lost.
Many theologians who have never met God in the desert of life mistakenly believe that God created the world and human beings and that we have always been in a “state of abandonment”, and that the universe and human beings seem to have fallen into the abyss, and God has never intervened in the reality of individual life. Tom Watson’s Systematic Theology, a gift from a friend, explains God’s perfect care for his creation: “By his utmost holiness, wisdom, and power, he protects all his creation, and governs all their actions.” “There is no emotion in the universe, and it is difficult to reveal its truth beyond such a divine protection, even in the liturgical form of religion.
It was very sloppy and very warm to end my childhood.
When he was seven years old, his family moved to the provincial capital. I still remember that before leaving, my aunt gave me a bag of books: this is a Bible. Seven years in the countryside, there were simple Christian meetings every week in my house. There is no formal procedure, no indoctrination of high doctrines, just ordinary neighbors, gathered together to sing hymns and pray. Their timbre may be grotesque, their singing skills are almost nil, and they know nothing about the genre. In the eyes of common admiration and simple praise, it reflects a love and tranquility beyond the abnormal.
From an early age, he was able to sing many traditional hymns. A praise for life, what a pure and noble cosmic kinship.
In retrospect, the nourishment of the soul at that time had a powerful effect on one’s wholesome growth, and it will always make you feel in awe of the divine presence in the face of increasing materialization. The dialogue between man and God will make your soul grow stronger, and in the ever-changing times, you will always remain a free soul and never lose the essence of “man”. All the great evils and disasters in the history of mankind are in fact the result of the oppression of the soul by the flesh. When the two dimensions of the soul – spirit and spirituality, mind and emotion – have not yet been redeemed and reformed, and the physical body does whatever it wants in a limited and obscure space, man is not called human. A free soul is a prerequisite for the rebirth of the individual, as Berdyaev said: “For generations, mankind has pursued the path of freedom from slavery.” The decisive factor in this process is Jesus Christ. Mr. Lin Zhiping’s arduous journey of finding people in “Daytime Lantern” is probably the most detailed description of the return to the basics of “people”.
● From anger to redemption
In the city, it seems that everything has become strange, but it is also gradually getting closer to the truth. For the first time, I was deeply aware of the complex contained in Trakl’s poem “The Soul – the Stranger of the Earth”. In the nineties of the last century, the clarion call of reform and opening up sounded in this ancient land, nearby factories rose from the ground, and four towering iron towers pointed to the sky. From the 80s to the 90s, the uniformity of an era has changed to the popularity and swaying posture of an era, and the development trend has continued to the present. The continent that pursues the super-British and catches up with the United States, solidifies all values in GDP growth and personal pleasure, “I” can be above all things, and all things should be born and destroyed because of “me”, but refuse to adhere to the dignity and sacredness of individual life. The 5,000-year-old Chinese history has accumulated the root of national inferiority, and it is even more in line with the external extravagance interpretation to the extreme.
The community has a fresh surface every day. Almost the same face with a weird smile. The multi-million-dollar street garden is a place for people to chat and relax. Excluding this external prosperity, what is hidden inside is the flies and dogs, as well as the real insider trading. It seems that the inferior genes brewed by the ten years of catastrophe have refused to leave, and they still deduce the cannibalism between compatriots, but the disguise is more reasonable. A nearby disco was a place for men to have fun, and many witnessed a young girl named “working girl” being pulled into a “Buick” car by a group of men who were nearly kidnapped, leaving behind a miserable cry. The irony is that a certain office worker woman is a companion in Xi’an, and the man in the same unit goes to the same amusement park, and the two meet unexpectedly, and they are silent with each other.
Just like Mr. Lin’s helpless “daytime lantern”, the awakened suddenly found that in the hustle and bustle, the “person” was gone. “People” are wrapped in money, power, and sex, and have no freedom at all. I often miss the praise of my hometown, the simple people and things in my hometown, and I can only say helplessly like Zhang Ailing in “Love in a Fallen City”: “We can’t go back.” ”
In such an environment, I struggled to grow up as a teenager. Mother’s belief in God has been able to gain more and more respect here. Her virtue and intelligence have also made her much praised. When I was in elementary school, I was lonely and showed an excessively precocious tendency toward other children my age. At the same time, I profoundly discovered that there is a serious problem in China’s current education system, in the same class, there will be a division of 369 and so on, and the only criterion for division is always a score that is like blood illusion, the teacher smiles at the top students, and the corporal punishment is imposed on those who fail to pass the grades, and the students feel that their personality is trampled on, their dignity is violated, and it is hard to imagine that an education system without love has been cultivatedWhat will the “elite” look like, and how serious the psychological annihilation will be to the rest of the students. When the Maccajue case surfaced, the case of the murder of a political science and law student returned, and the extreme ecstasy of Chinese students after the “911” incident in the United States, our distorted national psychology was exposed. Then I think of the lies and drawbacks of “atheism”, because God is not present, and there is bound to be a lack of divine ultimate care in any field so that the cultivation of the quality of life of forgiveness, love, and faith cannot be found in our current education.
When I graduated from elementary school, my grandmother died. This is an old man who has been “Amitabha” all his life, treated badly by his relatives in his old age and died without complaint. Her love for me, and the filial piety of my parents to my grandmother. The past is like yesterday. I am not saddened by the death of my grandmother – death is the only way for all beings, death is a part of life, and death is the end and leap of life, as Kierkegaard said: “Each of us has to walk this way—to cross the bridge of sighs and into eternity.” “The loss of my grandmother prompted me to think more deeply about the ultimate question of life and death. The teenager is immature and difficult to bear. After settling in the aftermath and accompanying my family back from my hometown, I finished mourning for my grandmother in a small homemade box.
Perhaps, from that moment on, my memory became heavy. What comes into the faith comes from a longer period of growth later on. Whether it is joy or sorrow, sorrow or joy, all of this is still grace. There is nothing but grace.
When I was in middle school, my Chinese teacher assigned a propositional essay about the immortality of the Dead Sea. The rest of the students only analyzed from the perspective of physics and chemistry in a one-sided way, which is no different from the main text of the textbook. I thought of God’s creation, the vitality of life, and other beautiful and moving scenes, and related them to the ecological protection of the times, and wrote a “Dialogue between the Creator and Man”. Although it was praised, it also seemed to hint at the state of mind that followed with the chaos that followed. This kind of thinking was already latent in the cells of my grandmother when she died.
I traveled to many hospitals in Xi’an by my mother’s side. Occasionally sleepy, occasionally awake. The definition given by medicine made me feel funny in the future. The nurses on duty, young girls who had just graduated from medical school, judged that there were no abnormal pathologies through my fragmentary records, one chief physician scribbled the diagnosis with “depression”, and another specialist wrote “intermittent loss of consciousness”. My doubts about the nature of modern medicine as a result of this, and at the same time, I have a little more understanding of Lu Xun’s move to abandon medicine and follow literature: the two doctors with prestigious titles have no mercy, and their professional ethics make people suspicious. Modern medicine, if it lacks a divine caring orientation, is only the initiator of human troubles.
The sentence given by the medicine made me fall into an unnamed struggle for a while, and I felt a sense of hopelessness beyond words. My upbringing made it impossible for me to avoid a major breach in my life: I had a hidden disease of intermittent confusion, which would cause individuals to be unable to attain normal joy and perceive the happiness of life and the value of existence. This reminds me of the madman Nietzsche, who invented “God is dead, Superman is born” and finally died of madness; I think of Van Gogh, the impressionist master who committed suicide by drinking bombs in a delirium at the age of 37; and even Shi Lu of the Chang’an School of painting who was persecuted because of political turmoil and ran mad. These individuals who did not perceive the existence of God, or experienced the reality of God, but eventually abandoned their faith, all ended up committing suicide. The vigor of the flesh and the fame of the talent will go down in history, and the followers and admiration of the younger generations, but with the dust of history, draw a meaningful end.
In the night of life, I resolutely cannot see the morning star overhead. Mother’s faith in God has been tested like never before. All of John Bunyan’s experiments with Christians described in Pilgrim’s Progress are condensed into a mother’s concern and anxiety about her son. She still prays for me. So much so that I associated my mother with Augustine’s mother, Monica. For a while, the mother gave up her faith. The mother’s loss stems from her unforgettable love for her son, and she has a tragic episode of the prodigal son leaving home on the stage of life and faith. In the month of her departure from God, my mother said that it was the bleakest day, and she could not help herself when she thought of the praise she had received and the infinite kindness she had received. The mother immediately fell to her knees and prayed for mercy from the Lord, and no longer prayed for any satisfaction other than God, but only God Himself. The return of the prodigal son from home is also the most intimate and starry cosmic family affection.
I walked in the desert of youth in extreme anger and speculation about death. Even fantasizing about completing the last leap in life in the deep messianic complex like Haizi although it is called a leap, it is tantamount to self-destruction. This denies not only existence itself but also God who gives meaning and value to life.
God’s commandment “Thou shalt not kill” includes suicide.
The true Messianic complex is a willingness to go to the cross, where there is truth and life, and to be able to forgive the world as Jesus Christ did: “Forgive, Father. ”
● Healing light
About three years ago, I stopped taking medication and no one who communicated with me to a greater or lesser degree could connect me with the patient. The phrase “medication for life” on my medical card scares me, but it finally gives me confidence. I made the decision to wean off the medicine, and based on my mother’s persistent prayers, she sought God’s healing of me in all aspects. Mother is a smart person, and she has seen too many similar cases in the psychology subject. She was sure that the diagnosis of “depression” and “affective disorder” was true. Mother’s prayers always revolve around one theme: “Lord, His life belongs to you.” Pray that you will renew his vision of the world, give him a new creation spirit, and put perfect love in him. ”
My mother’s understanding of me stems in large part from God’s bonding for my family. People with depression are trapped in deep negative emotions, which are often caused by self-centeredness and a lack of a balanced worldview. More and more people with depression are moving towards suicide in anger and depression. All my judgments of my society are still based on self-righteousness, and even in Bai Yang’s “The Ugly Chinese”, I have found a trace of solace as the basis for my correct judgment of national character, but in the end I found that there is still no way out. The criticism that originates from the sinful nature has no light at all, but only proves the narrowness and self-esteem of human nature. The resulting depressed mood will gradually eat away at the normal functioning of the individual, becoming autistic in anger and resentment, and looking at everything around him tastelessly.
Mother prayed to God to give me perfect love. I was blown away by that.
When my reason, emotion, and will were renewed by God, I realized a great fact: all people have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. The Bible encircles the cynical, self-righteous “me” among the “criminals,” and I realize that I am no more noble than others, and not only that, but I can touch the bitterness within. All the criticism and resentment only illustrate one fact: my love is not perfect. There is no criminal law in perfect love, and when love is perfect, it removes fear.
In the wandering of life, about God’s grace and redemption, I have an encounter from eternity and life. What a wonderful renewal, God’s perfect healing of a sinner!
St. Francis’ prayer for peace is the truest voice of all those who come to God:
“Lord, make us your instruments of peace: sow forgiveness where there is hurt, hope where there is despair, and joy where sorrow. Lord, give us what we have always dreamed of: that we should seek comfort not for comfort, not for understanding, but for understanding, not for love, but for love. Because giving is what we gain, forgiving others and we are forgiven. Such death is our rebirth. ”
●Epilogue
“There are two things, the deeper and more persistent I think about them, the more the wonder and awe they evoke in my soul will grow with each passing day: these are the stars above my head and the moral law in my heart. ”
Kant said.
For Mother, about me, and even for everyone who looks up to the stars amid great sorrow, they live out the call of their ancestors: “Lord, if my soul does not find rest in you, it will always be troubled.” ”
Looking back, it was just the first answer sheet in life. It doesn’t matter what the results are, what the victory or defeat is, participating in a feast of life, inviting to be invited to a feast of love of life, this is already infinite grace. A person’s life trek, inadvertently, receives the true consolation of Christ’s incarnation, and henceforth does not surprise words and misunderstandings, but looks at all things with a new God-given eye, blesses and prays for one another. Christ completed God’s redemption by accepting a broken me and will heal me again. Greek philosophy’s profound and exquisite argument on the “Dao”, and Lao Zhuang’s philosophy on the “Dao” argument of the mean. And only Jesus Christ, with His outstretched arms, embraces every indifferent and lonely life in the universe.
At the moment of embrace, God said there should be light, and there was light. Since then, all beings have been perfected, and all things have been sublimated.
“Death is at me, and my body is about to return to dust, eaten by worms. How unfathomable is the abyss between my deep anguish and the eternal kingdom of Christ! I am amazed that my ambition and that of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great have vanished in the air, and that Jewish redneck, Jesus, has stretched out his hand across the ages to control the fate of mankind and nation. ”