Friday, July 17, 2009

Profile in Courage

Ray Bakke has said that some things in history have been just too difficult or too dangerous to do, so God has called a woman to do it. Such is the case of one of my DMin students, Po Ming of Hong Kong. She lives in the Kowloon City district, a space with thousands of poor that many in Hong Kong stigmatize and avoid. Here in Costa Rica where she is studying in the program I am teaching, you see her reaching out instinctively to children in the Los Tables slum of San Jose. It is an extremely dangerous area we visited and served in, and you see her loving children on the spot where there had just been a murder last month. Po Ming came from a difficult family situation growing up, but broke free and came to Christ, who has now called her back to the very kind of environment she had left. She planted a church for the urban poor of Hong Kong, and now is part of an NGO that reaches out there. I don't know whether I am teaching the class, or she is. I know that I am humbled by her courage, and so sad that most what she does is invisible to most of the world. But there is One other who sees, and I know that there are tears of joy in his eyes tonight too.

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