Last weekend was busy too. I went to see Br. Jinmu on Sunday afternoon (Jan 30), with a whole bunch of people from our group. He’s in hospital, again, with liver failure, again, after years of heavy drinking. This time the doctor says it could be the end. I remember a couple of years ago when he had a similar relapse, I helped baptize him, and tried to set up regular home meetings to stimulate his appetite for the word of God, and get him back on the straight and narrow. He pulled through that time, and made some improvements, but quickly slipped back into his old ways.
Last weekend, he was looking very yellow and bloated. His skin was like a paper bag, and the whites of his eyes were coffee-colored. His arms and legs were thin and weak, his face was drawn, and he had a great swollen gut. He was obviously tired and in pain, and he was drooling from his mouth.
He was sitting on a chair in his small hospital room when our group trooped in, and he glared at everyone with his angry coffee-colored eyes. I was at the back of the crowd, and apart from his wife, children, and mother-in-law - who are all in the same church group as us - he didn’t know anyone in the room. So I pushed my way to the front, and he smiled when he saw me. I crouched down beside him, and held his hand, and we all sang him a hymn, prayed for him, and I even got him to mutter a few words of prayer himself.
I don’t know why, but I feel strangely connect to Br. Jinmu. The first time we started praying for him about four years ago, not long after his wife was saved, even though I didn’t know him from Adam, I started weeping tears for him. After that, I felt compelled to go and see him at the market in Bali where he sold pork, to tell him about the gospel. He was permanently drunk, and virtually impossible to talk to, but when he got ill after a bout of very heavy drinking two years ago, he hit an absolute low point and really had no choice but to go up. I remember clearly when I got the call to go to his house to help baptize him, I was in a meeting at DaAi, listening to the global Tzu Chi volunteer coordinator talking about why Buddhism was better than Christianity. I made my excuses and left, then met Br. Jinzhong outside the TV station. In the back of Jinzhong’s van was a big plastic bathtub that he’d just bought, because he knew Jinmu didn’t have one at home. It was too big to fit into the small bathroom, so we had to baptize him in the kitchen - which didn’t have hot water!
That chilly introduction into the kingdom of God didn’t bring about the instant salvation that I’d hoped for. Like I said, there were some improvements, but they were mostly blips on a downward slope, which turned into free-fall when Jinmu lost hope that he’d ever get back together with his wife and children.
Shuzhen blames herself for not getting saved sooner, and letting her marriage drift beyond the point of no return. I don’t know what to think, except that we’re all on the road to salvation - some going the right direction and others heading the wrong way; some going faster than others, and everyone starting at different points, so each running their own race. Like Paul says in that brilliant analogy in Philippians 3:12-14: our finishing line is when we win full maturity; but Christ has to lay hold of us before we can lay our hands on the trophy.
