The Rest of the Story

Last night Janet and I watched a recording of a recent World Vision weekly chapel service. It started with a faded documentary-style video, circa 1979, chronicling a dramatic moment when World Vision’s ship Seasweep rescued a floundering vessel crammed with Vietnamese boat people. One four-year-old boy who was on that boat that day …then stood up and spoke to the chapel crowd! Now in his mid-30’s, Vinh is a graduate of Harvard Medical School and a skin cancer surgeon in Colorado. He said, “Without a doubt, if it had it not been for World Vision, the story of my life would have ended anonymously at the age of 4 in the South China Sea.”


Vinh’s parents had 11 children (he has only three of his own, thank you very much), and of the 11, five have Masters’ degrees and five have doctorates. The youngest recently graduated from Stanford and is on his way to medical school at Penn. Dad worked every hour he could as a laborer for a company that manufactures air conditioners, though the plant was not air conditioned and he stood all day on the assembly line through Arkansas summers. As Vinh told the audience, thanks to his father’s commitment, today he and his siblings all sit in offices, make their living based on their minds, and work in air conditioned facilities.


All in one generation. It’s a great illustration of the incredible opportunity possible in America—with sufficient parental sacrifice, a strong work ethic cascading down to the children, (yes, let’s acknowledge serious IQs and study habits!) …and the kindness of others, especially the amazing church which sponsored them from the refugee camp, helped them into an apartment, likely found the father a job, and told them all about Jesus.


World Vision played but one tiny, yet also decisive, role…saving the lives of 93 people that fateful day caught on film, including this entire family. What an amazing privilege for our staff to hear “the rest of the story” from Vinh and to have played a small yet critical role in it.


Somewhere in here is a lesson on gratitude. Vinh was thanking “people I will never meet”: not only the World Vision staff, but also the donors who supported this risky, reckless and costly venture. WV put a ship on the South China Sea to resupply Vietnamese refugee boats at a time when no governments wanted to get involved. Then the crew superseded the rules of the ship’s registration by following the law of their conscience, dramatically hoisting these 93 people aboard the Seasweep when their refugee boat was irreparable and had been floundering helplessly for six days, now out of food. Vinh’s mother was so beside herself at being unable to meet her children’s needs that “she would have given her blood” to nourish them; she has since admitted that she considered drowning the youngest ones to save them an agonizingly slow death. Such was the desperation of their situation when Seasweep found them.


How do we—you and I—get the privilege of being part of stories like this, and of literally millions more we’ll never hear this side of eternity? Rich Stearns went up to the podium to close chapel after Vinh sat down, and he became emotional. He wondered if maybe this is what the entertainment will be in heaven, hearing such testimonies.


In the meantime, it’s a huge blessing to savor the representative gratitude of one young father, husband, doctor, and son. He was on his way to becoming a statistic, simply a rounding error to add to the estimated three hundred thousand souls who had by then already been lost at sea as Vietnamese boat people.


Often, this is what life is like. We do our one part, we respond to an inner prompting of the heart and provide a helping hand—a touch, a word, a gift, and we have no idea how the story of that life ends. We never learn the rest of the story. Granted, the story isn’t usually as dramatic as Vinh’s—certainly my own story is not, though someone I’ll never meet provided the scholarship which allowed me to finish college summa cum laude and land a great corporate job that fed my young family and gave me skills and clarity of purpose which I employ every day.

This Thanksgiving, it’s worth taking time to go beyond the more obvious and visible objects of my gratitude—family, friends, my life today—and remember those unknown people who helped me along my way, maybe even without knowing me, to have the life I enjoy now.


And perhaps I’ll even take a moment to thank God for those people like Vinh, those I’ve personally or vicariously been able to somehow touch, bless, and strengthen on their journey, often without even knowing them. The apostle Paul encourages us, “Let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we shall reap a harvest if we do not give up.” (Gal 6:9)


Giving thanks isn’t just a way to honor God by recalling our own life’s blessings, but also an opportunity to encourage ourselves by recalling the privilege God has given us of helping others in our own outpourings of time, talent and treasure. And what a great way to not grow weary in doing good!


Who knows—maybe a long ago passerby or someone you or I haven’t even met, like Vinh, will be thanking God this week for a decisive impact in their life in which we had a hand.


Understanding that, Vinh’s story is a Thanksgiving gift to us all.

Cory

Thanksgiving, 2011

Deeper Than Beauty

Deeper Than Beauty

I recently presented one of our supporters with a piece of original artwork, World Vision style. It was a lovely depiction of what appeared to be a peaceful village scene from rural Bangladesh, drawn by a Bangladeshi child…

Jim and I admired it together, wondering about the couple sitting on the ground in marriage attire in front of a tiny home, a child near another small hut, and what was clearly a church right smack in the center, replete with a cross on the peak of the roof beams. We both really liked the piece.

Then he asked, "I wonder what the wording on the signs say?" I told him I'd try to find out and get back to him, then took a photo of the piece with my trusty mobile phone to send on to my Bangladesh colleague. The reply I received sent my mind spinning for several days, until I remembered a moving experience.

A few years ago Janet and I had the privilege of decompressing for a few precious days at a friend's beach house, perched on a cliff right over the ocean. It was our final morning there, wispy clouds laying a blanket of quiet over the calm grey water, and hundreds of gulls and other seabirds were circling the sky half a mile out to sea. There was a telescope by the picture window, so I used it to see the birds more closely. After awhile, I discovered the magic of following just one bird in flight. The telescope pivoted back and forth, lilting up and down as it went, tracking a singular bird along its circular journey. There was tremendous visual beauty in this, an airborne ballet of white feathers against the distant outline of Catalina Island... everything simply backdrop as I momentarily entered the reality for the one chosen flier.

In the sanctuary of that living room, watching the sky ballet outside, I noticed my eyes moistening from the stunning beauty on the other side of the picture window.

I was indoors because of the cool, cloudy weather, spying the birds from the warmth and peace of the comfortable home, a CD of soft piano music playing in the background. Then Janet opened the door and a cacophony of their distant squawking blew in on the bracing breeze, waking me to the realization that, in all likelihood, barring this gull being a direct descendant of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, my bird was probably flying not to create beauty in the eye of my beholding, but simply continuing its never-ending search for its daily bread, for sustenance to stay alive. These gulls hold no savings accounts, have no bigger barns to build for storing their bounties. Their stomachs ask every day, "What have you done for me lately?" The scene became a complicated mix of the mundane, the beautiful, and possibly the desperate all at the same time. Clearly, there was a deeper reality than simply the beauty I was enjoying, although beauty was definitely in it, as real in my mind’s eye today as on the day I witnessed it.

I remembered this experience when I re-read the translation sent by my Bangladeshi colleague of the child's artwork...

Dear Brother,
Greetings from Bangladesh. I am so much excited to know that the gift you chose to give was an art work of a child of Bangladesh. I am very happy and honored to illustrate the artwork. Please, find it as follows:


1. We see a man is exploiting a woman in the drawing (from left)...This is one of the social issues by which the life of the children is affected much. The wording says, " Stop repression on women..or stop exploitation of women...The first word is pronounced as "Nari" which means 'women'...the second one is as 'Nirjaton' that means 'repression' and the last wording as 'Bhondaya kor' which means 'to stop'...or stop it.


2. Now let's point to the corner where a boy and a girl are in bride and bridegroom dress. This is another social issue in Bangladesh that affects the lives of children....Early marriage/child marriage is very common in rural areas, especially in poor families who consider their daughters merely burdens...Where there is ministry involvement through our ADPs or special projects, we have programs to empower the children in most vulnerable situations to combat the issues...They are working to stop early marriage through Child Forums. The little child with a play card represents the child forum's participation in community development activities. The wording means...'Stop Child Marriage' The words reads as 'Ballu' that means 'child'...Bibaha..which means 'marriage'...and the last word is again 'Bhondaya kor' which means 'to stop'...or just stop it.


Yes, there is a church in the middle of the village...We have church in a Christian village...I think the child wants to say about his/her dream for the future....he/she wants to tell us about a society where there will be no 'repression on women'...where there will be no 'early marriage'...Finally, maybe it finds its expression in Kingdom of God values where there will be fullness of life...love and dignity.

To be honest, I struggled whether to share this translation with Jim. He and I had shared such a nice, idealized interpretation of the artwork, very pastoral, very peaceful, very pleasant… very nice to glance at and remember fondly one’s involvement with World Vision!

But in the midst of what appeared to be only a pleasant scene there was also drama, especially when one remembers this drawing was made by a child… a child who has had to learn about these social issues, a child growing up surrounded by very real dangers from those issues. I imagine this as something similar to a child living in the inner-city, creating art that depicts neighborhood violence: Only the uninitiated would see it only as beautiful, no matter how stunning the skill of the artist.

After a few days, I realized that’s exactly why I must share the translation of the scene with this supporter—because clearly we are uninitiated, because we are not aware. Because we need to walk a mile in this child’s shoes, and now Jim has both a lovely and a disturbing reminder on his wall of that child’s reality… as well as perhaps a glimpse of the artist’s childlike hopes for the Peaceable Kingdom.

Just like those gulls circling the grey waters, here drama and beauty are intermingled. The presence of one does not cancel out the other. There is beauty in every culture, and there is drama in every one. The presence of beauty does not negate our responsibility to understand the trauma. And the reality of trauma does not negate the invitation to appreciate the beauty.

Cory