I am continually fascinated with how this phenomenon of “goodness” actually works out in real life. How, when, and where, do all the unique “needs” of this old world get hooked up with the potential “helps” that are available?
I had been working in the Madras, India area, and in Salem, India, with Dr. Samuel Stevens, director of the Sharon Cancer Center. I needed to make my way to the City of Coimbatore, and then on to Hong Kong. I made it to the airport in time for my flight, but I wasn't real keen on the equipment for the trip. It was an older propeller driven plane and loaded with lots of people headed to Madras.
Different connecting flights had me flying all night, and until 1:00 p.m. the next day, with a little layover in Singapore. When I reached Hong Kong, I took a taxi from the airport to the Kowloon Hotel. I checked in and made my contacts with Caleb Lam, who represented several medical mission enterprises throughout the China mainland.
Perhaps, as significant as any other meeting in Hong Kong was one appointment I hadn't scheduled. My first evening at the hotel restaurant they seated a white-haired gentleman at the table next to mine. He was trying to read the menu in the dimly lighted room and he had forgotten his glasses.
I could tell what was happening, because I had been in situations before like that myself. In fact, I was wearing a pair of glasses I had just recently purchased. I never said a word -- but gently took my glasses and quietly reached over and laid my glasses on his table next to his silverware.
It absolutely caught him by surprise, and he just stumbled all over himself thanking me for noticing his plight. He said he was about to just randomly point to something on the menu to the waiter, not being able to read a thing. We began to chat and when I had finished my dinner and was finishing my tea, he invited me over to his table.
He told me that he lived in New Zealand and was a successful businessman coming to Asia often in his line of business. He had been buying and selling umbrellas for over twenty-seven years. He inquired about what I did and I shared with him about Project C.U.R.E. He asked a million questions and my answers kept getting a little more spiritual. He said, finally, you couldn't do what you were doing without being a deeply religious man. I told him that once I wasn't, but several years ago everything had changed.
That opened the flood gates of emotion for him. He told me that just three weeks prior, the diagnosis had been confirmed that he had cancer -- the same kind of cancer that had taken his mother, within a span of 10 months after her diagnosis. He told me how he was trying to cope with everything that was now crashing in on his life. He shared how his wife had begged him not to go on this business trip to Hong Kong. But he said he felt he absolutely had to get on the plane in New Zealand, go to Hong Kong and check into the hotel.
We talked about goodness, and hope, and the brevity of life. We stopped, and in that dimly lighted restaurant, we bowed our heads and had prayer together. "Now I know,” he said – “Now I know, -- just why I was supposed to be here tonight! – thank you.”
I left the restaurant that night very humbled -- just to think that God would bring one man from New Zealand and one man from Colorado all the way to Hong Kong in order to strike a match and kindle a flame of hope and encouragement in the heart of one of his hurting children who needed to talk and then hear of things eternal. Indeed, I would have traveled just to Hong Kong for no other reason than that one precious experience of goodness.
Next Week: Goodness and Governance