Lord I Say Yes to Your Will

Chap­ter One

Peter Lu’s Tes­ti­mo­ny in Jan­u­ary 1994

I expe­ri­enced a life-chang­ing week dur­ing the Christ­mas break when I attend­ed Urbana 93, the Chris­t­ian stu­dent con­fer­ence held at Urbana/Champaign Illi­nois. I had nev­er thought about attend­ing the con­fer­ence before Novem­ber, 1993. The cost was too high and there were oth­er prac­ti­cal obsta­cles that I could­n’t see how I could over­come.

God began His work dur­ing one chapel time last Novem­ber when our school’s pas­tor prayed for this con­fer­ence and for “the stu­dents who want­ed to go but had no means to.” I guess that prayer was for me. That night, a friend called me and encour­aged me to go. I told her about my dif­fi­cul­ties. She offered her gen­er­ous help. I decid­ed to go.

On Mon­day, Decem­ber 26th, I arrived at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois at Cham­paign. After two hours wor­ship on the first night, I called my cousin and told her that I sensed some­thing life-chang­ing would hap­pen that week. It turned out to be the most impor­tant week in my life.

We had two gen­er­al ses­sions every day, in which we sang wor­ship songs, stud­ied the sev­en “I am” state­ments made by Jesus in the Gospel of John, and lis­tened to tes­ti­monies told by mis­sion­ar­ies. Besides that, I had two sem­i­nars every day and two small group prayer/Bible study times. The dai­ly sched­ule start­ed at sev­en in the morn­ing and end­ed at mid­night. We were all tired but excit­ed. God answered the prayers of more than one hun­dred peo­ple who had prayed con­tin­u­al­ly for this con­fer­ence dur­ing the past three years. The Holy Spir­it filled the audi­to­ri­um dur­ing the wor­ship times. Many stu­dents were called to devote their lives to mis­sion fields.

My most pre­cious mem­o­ry was the con­cert of prayer on Tues­day night, dur­ing which God called on me to devote my whole life to the mis­sion field. 18,000 stu­dents, on our knees, con­fessed our sins of neglect­ing the needs of the world. We prayed for the Mus­lim world and the chil­dren suf­fer­ing from hunger, fam­i­ly abuse and war.

We sang some new songs. This song espe­cial­ly touched me:

“We’ll walk the land with hearts on fire
and every step will be a prayer
Hope is ris­ing
New day dawn­ing
Sound of singing fills the air
Two thou­sand years,
And still the flame
Is burn­ing bright across the land
Hearts are wait­ing, long­ing, aching
For awak­en­ing once again.
Let the flame burn stronger
In the hearts of dark­ness
Turn­ing nights to glo­ri­ous days
Let the song grow loud­er
As our love grows stronger
Let it shine,
Let it shine!”

The screen showed peo­ple of dif­fer­ent nation­al­i­ties wor­ship­ping God, chil­dren in Africa dying for mal­nu­tri­tion, Chi­nese stu­dents demon­strat­ing on Tianan­men Square … I start­ed weep­ing. A thought grasped my mind: men were cre­at­ed by God to be His friends, walk­ing and talk­ing togeth­er in the Gar­den of Eden; but since when did we fall into such a con­di­tion: poor, cru­el and apa­thet­ic?

Dur­ing the past sev­er­al years, I had always sensed that God want­ed me to live a mean­ing­ful life, but I could not give up my own plan of life. This self­ish plan became more promis­ing since I came to Amer­i­ca. I would be a doc­tor, be rich, and earn myself a pros­per­ous life. I believe that there is noth­ing wrong with such a life; but sub­con­scious­ly I under­stand that a rich schol­ar is not what God wants me to be. My self­ish con­cern was the major obsta­cle for me to ded­i­cate my life to the mis­sion field. That night, all these self­ish con­cerns were removed. I could not for­get the painful real­i­ty of the world. If I still held on to my plan, I would nev­er have peace again. I decid­ed to serve the world with my whole life. Since that moment, all the scrip­tures we had learned at Urbana and all the songs we had sung became tru­ly mean­ing­ful to me. I could sing with joy: “I am here, Lord. I will hold your peo­ple in my heart.”

God con­tin­ued to strength­en my deter­mi­na­tion through­out the rest of the con­fer­ence. The peak was Fri­day night, Decem­ber 31st, the last moment at Urbana. After a com­mu­nion with 18,000 peo­ple, the direc­tor of Inter­Var­si­ty prayed for us that: “God will use your life to do more than you can dream.” 18,000 stu­dents shout­ed with a joy­ful and earth-shak­ing “Amen!” At 12 a.m. the screen showed “1994, Hap­py New Year.” That moment, we sang: I say “yes, Lord!” to your will and to your way!

An inde­scrib­able joy filled my heart. We jumped and hugged oth­ers, say­ing “Hap­py New Year.” I had nev­er been so hap­py in my life. That was a won­der­ful start to the new year.

The Urbana speak­ers encour­aged us to take con­crete steps to answer God’s call­ing. My cur­rent plan is:

First, to be more active in cam­pus min­istries of my school. I will share my vision with sev­en oth­er stu­dents par­tic­i­pat­ing in Trin­i­ty Sum­mer Mis­sion. (TSM is a pro­gram of my col­lege that sends stu­dents each year for short-term mis­sion trips. I applied this year and I am going to Aus­tria this sum­mer to par­tic­i­pate in church-plant­i­ng work.) Although Aus­tria is not the first place I would like to go, I know I will learn a lot about God’s faith­ful­ness dur­ing the whole process. This is my first short-term mis­sion and God pre­pared this for me even before I gained the vision of mis­sion!

Sec­ond, to study the Bible more dili­gent­ly and read oth­er books reg­u­lar­ly to learn how to reach out and place myself under Christ’s Lord­ship.

Third, to par­tic­i­pate in more short-term mis­sions. I have con­tact­ed some med­ical mis­sion­ary agen­cies at Urbana. One pro­gram is called “the mer­cy ships.” Three ships are spon­sored to go to Africa and South Amer­i­ca to give free med­ical care and the gospel. Before I am qual­i­fied for med­ical work, I can go to expe­ri­ence the life on the ship for sev­er­al months.

My life-long plan is to be a mis­sion­ary doc­tor. There are var­i­ous ways to do that. I can work on the mer­cy ships as a long-term doc­tor. I can go to some oth­er coun­tries where med­ical care and the gospel are extreme­ly need­ed. Turkey and some Mus­lim coun­tries, where mis­sion­ary visas are not issued, need med­ical and tech­ni­cal pro­fes­sion­als. Chi­na needs schol­ars teach­ing at med­ical schools. Above all, I trust that God will do more that I can dream.

Chap­ter Two

Car­men Tol­hurst: My Friend­ship With Peter Lu

Peter Lu’s death stands in front of me, huge and close. Some­times it has been so close that I could not see around it.

The sto­ry of my rela­tion­ship with Peter Lu began two years before he was born. As a for­eign stu­dent in a sem­i­nar under Vis­it­ing Pro­fes­sor Den­linger, who had left Chi­na in 1949, I was drawn by the pos­si­bil­i­ty of clar­i­fy­ing for myself some­thing about the ten­u­ous and com­plex rela­tion­ships of lan­guage, faith and cul­ture. Pro­found­ly dis­e­qui­lib­ri­at­ed by my cul­tur­al jour­ney, dis­turbed by the ques­tions that con­front a per­son liv­ing in a for­eign coun­try, I felt over­whelmed by the way in which my intu­ition of per­son­al uni­ty was shak­en. I would return to these as a cen­tral con­cern and cat­a­lyst for reflec­tion and growth in my per­son­al and aca­d­e­m­ic life.

In that spring of 1972 Pro­fes­sor Den­linger talked of lan­guage and cul­ture-and he spoke of Chi­na. I lis­tened. There must have been oth­ers in the ses­sions; I remem­ber no one but Den­linger ‑bril­liant and wiry-and Chi­na. Who can name the rea­sons why a cer­tain place, its peo­ple, their cul­ture, and expe­ri­ence, res­onate in one so deeply and not anoth­er? Chi­na did that in me, and that is where I dreamed of going.

In 1982, weeks away from leav­ing for a work assign­ment in Tien Tsien, Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of Chi­na, sud­den­ly, I found all of the doors slammed shut.

In 1987 I found myself with col­leagues trav­el­ing from Bei­jing south to Kun­ming to teach for the sum­mer at a uni­ver­si­ty. Riv­et­ed to the win­dow as we trav­eled across thou­sands of kilo­me­ters of undu­lat­ing fields and ter­races some­times impos­si­bly cut into deep gorges and steep moun­tain­sides, I won­dered: How? Who? Why? Ques­tions flood­ed over me. Slow­ly, pieces of answers came togeth­er; slow­ly I began to make sense.

They say that one’s body, its place­ment and how it uses space, makes a pro­found moral state­ment before one even speaks a word. Chi­na’s coun­try­side made that kind of ini­tial, majes­tic state­ment to me. The Chi­nese peo­ple I met, unre­mark­able, famil­iar, ordi­nary folk, gave the state­ment vibran­cy. Their sto­ries of suf­fer­ing and joy, mis­for­tune and over­com­ing, of doing all one does to con­tin­ue and renew life under extra­or­di­nary cir­cum­stances, left me utter­ly shak­en. My Chi­nese stu­dents and col­leagues showed me more joy in learn­ing than I ever dreamed pos­si­ble. I came back utter­ly changed.

In Chi­na a friend­ship with a col­league whom I val­ued deeply was com­pro­mised.

I looked at the clock, groaned and reached for the phone. It was 11:00 p.m., mid-April 1997. Who could it be? Peter’s char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly bemused voice apol­o­gized for call­ing late. I had last seen him in March when he trav­eled back to Trin­i­ty to attend a piano recital by his beloved teacher, Jack­ie. He had asked me briefly, “How’s Tom?” Peter had tak­en my boy under his tute­lage dur­ing a dif­fi­cult time in his life. “That’s good,” he smiled at my report. On this night I heard excite­ment in his voice.

-Do you remem­ber you said my par­ents could stay with you last year for grad­u­a­tion?
‑Of course!
‑Well, can I bring my mom to you in a cou­ple of weeks?
-Peter! She’s got a visa?

We arranged for Peter, his friend and his mom to vis­it for sev­er­al days in ear­ly May. I agreed, if he would treat us to some of his cook­ing.

Peter Lu’s aston­ish­ing appli­ca­tion came to Trin­i­ty Col­lege Admis­sions in late sum­mer, 1991. We weren’t used to receiv­ing stu­dents from Shang­hai, Chi­na. And here was this boy with spec­tac­u­lar aca­d­e­m­ic cre­den­tials, besides! Elat­ed but wary, we won­dered: can he make it with so lit­tle actu­al expe­ri­ence in Eng­lish? Deter­mined to help make it hap­pen, Admis­sions appealed to the Pres­i­dent.

Look­ing ter­ri­bly young, pre­cise, expec­tant, Peter final­ly arrived in Octo­ber on a full, four-year schol­ar­ship. Dur­ing his sec­ond semes­ter at Trin­i­ty, for his first research paper he ana­lyzed the cross-cul­tur­al jour­ney using a social Dar­win­ist frame­work. When I told him I liked his work, he said it was fun! He talked about cov­et­ing the chance to write cre­ative­ly dur­ing his high school years, so he flow­ered in the expres­sive free­dom of Amer­i­can edu­ca­tion. But Peter’s habit of aca­d­e­m­ic dis­ci­pline gave wings to his cre­ative impulse.

I had begun to think about pas­sion seri­ous­ly some­time in the ear­ly 1990s-more pre­cise­ly, the pas­sion to know-and how, con­trary to com­mon wis­dom, pas­sion and rea­son are not dis­con­nect­ed or oppos­ing forces. Some of my thoughts I dis­cussed with the stu­dents:

• Joy at con­firm­ing an insight is like a flame reach­ing, flam­ing onward
• My mom feigned com­plaints about my curios­i­ty: “You invent prob­lems for your­self!”
• Utter skep­ti­cism, or creduli­ty seems self-regard­ing and cen­tral to cog­ni­tive apa­thy.
• Sur­prise (foil­ing our expec­ta­tions) seems cen­tral to revis­ing our inter­nal maps.
• Tenac­i­ty is a sine qua non of knowl­edge.
• Dog­ma­tism dis­claims respon­si­bil­i­ty for expe­ri­ence.
• I used to imag­ine poten­tial as a line run­ning into a pos­i­tive hori­zon.
• Now I see we need for­ti­tude to be able to cut back neg­a­tive poten­tial.
• C.S.Lewis talks about water­ing deserts, not cut­ting down forests.

I used to say to Peter that I did­n’t care if the sci­ence depart­ment had snagged him-he would feel com­pelled to write! He would tell me not to scare him. Once we talked with oth­er for­eign stu­dents about how we were the Amer­i­can Dream! Peter began work­ing as a tutor, and Diane Mil­ton, his super­vi­sor enjoyed describ­ing his work-he taught mul­ti­ple sub­jects at once, con­duct­ing his ses­sions mas­ter­ful­ly and with wry humor.

At 7:00 a.m. Thurs­day May 8, with no fore­thought or plan­ning, I called Jack­ie. Per­son­al suf­fer­ing had restored our friend­ship; our com­mon expe­ri­ence in Chi­na and with Peter would strength­en it.

-Can you eat din­ner with us tonight? Peter Lu and his mom are com­ing.
‑Real­ly?
‑She’s got a visa! They’re arriv­ing this after­noon!
-Sure! I’ll come right from school.

I had a good day at school. I rushed home by 3:30 p.m. The phone rang.

-Car­men, what are you doing?
‑I’ve got the broom in my hand-just start­ing to clean Peter’s room. They’re arriv­ing about 4:30.
‑Car­men, sit down a minute.
‑Jack­ie, what is it?
‑The Mis­souri State Police just called. Peter is dead.
‑No-o-o‑o. No. Not Peter.

In The Book of Job we read a curi­ous allu­sion to the sounds of ostrich­es and jack­als. They describe what must have been Job’s cries of ter­ri­ble anguish, his repu­di­a­tion of what is.

Tax­onomies usu­al­ly tell us lit­tle. Often life seems sub­lime in its indif­fer­ence; events are dis­tant and for­eign, hos­tile to each oth­er. And God answers us with silence. Per­haps. If we note no con­nec­tions, if we fail to hear the Silence in the Whirl­wind as Voice.

• Peter and his friend were incin­er­at­ed in a hor­ren­dous auto acci­dent on May 7.
• The State Police can find no one who knows where they were head­ing.
• His school records con­tain the tele­phone and address of his par­ents and no one else.
• Some­one work­ing with inter­na­tion­al stu­dents recalls that Peter spoke of a piano teacher at his under­grad­u­ate school.
• Car­men unex­pect­ed­ly invites Jack­ie to help wel­come Peter and his moth­er at her home.
• The State Police locate Jack­ie, who calls Car­men
• Wait­ing six hours for her son, Bet­ty sees his teacher rush­ing down the mov­ing walk­way.

While in Chi­na, my heart had stayed in my throat at the sig­nif­i­cance of what I was see­ing-the one child pol­i­cy. I had writ­ten a poem enti­tled, “Lit­tle Emper­or, Lit­tle King.” I had ached to hold my own two chil­dren to my heart.

Slow­ly, as though push­ing through an obsta­cle, a thought forms while I am on the phone: Peter’s mom is wait­ing some­where at the air­port. I don’t know her name, the air­line, the arrival time. Des­per­ate­ly I call the Records office at Trin­i­ty ask­ing for the name or num­ber of some­one to con­tact in the Unit­ed States. They have a wrong num­ber. The Los Ange­les oper­a­tor works with me, giv­ing me sev­er­al, and the first num­ber I call is Peter’s Aunt, who has stayed home from work that day. Hope gives me her sis­ter’s name and flight num­ber. My neigh­bor waits in the car; I don’t know if I may need help. Final­ly, at 6:30, rush­ing across the elec­tric walk­way, I look up and see at the end of the walk a woman about my age sit­ting straight and alert, a suit­case on either side of her. It is Peter’s face at its most seri­ous that looks into mine. I am ter­ri­fied. I think she is.

-Bet­ty?

With sin­gu­lar restraint and respect she asks:

-You are Peter’s teacher?
‑Yes. Car­men
‑Bet­ty holds my gaze in hers.
‑Car­men, where is Peter?
‑The police called, Bet­ty.
‑Is Peter at the police sta­tion?
‑No‑I pan­ic-
‑What hap­pened?
‑A ter­ri­ble acci­dent ‑I lock my hand in hers. Oh, God.
-Bet­ty, let’s sit down.

I hold Bet­ty tight­ly. Job’s ostrich­es and jack­als pour out their unas­suage­able grief.

-Oh! He was my only one.

My heart is in my throat once more, as in Chi­na. Yes, Bet­ty. Your only one.

That night, three women-three moth­ers, three sis­ters-stand as one in the mid­dle of life and death. But only one can drink of the cup that’s inscribed with a lan­guage none of us can speak.

Chap­ter Three

Bet­ty Lu: A Moth­er’s Tes­ti­mo­ny

At O’Hare Air­port in Chica­go, it was two in the after­noon on the eighth of May 1997. I was filled with joy because in a few min­utes I would be able to see Peter.

Peter is my only son. After high school grad­u­a­tion in 1992, he was accept­ed by Shang­hai Med­ical Col­lege and the Bio­log­i­cal Sci­ences Depart­ment at Trin­i­ty Inter­na­tion­al Uni­ver­si­ty in the state of Illi­nois. He came to the US in the fall of 1992, and grad­u­at­ed in May of 1996. He enrolled lat­er in the Mas­ters and doc­tor­al pro­gram at the Mis­souri State Uni­ver­si­ty’s Med­ical School. Last year, he invit­ed us to attend his grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny and his piano recital. We were unable to obtain visas and thus could not come; Peter was very dis­ap­point­ed. This time, I was able to get the visa and arrived at Los Ange­les on April 30th. I stayed in my sis­ter’s home for a week before com­ing to see Peter. After such a long time, how could I not be excit­ed!

Nonethe­less, I wait­ed until five in the after­noon with­out see­ing Peter. Thoughts of uneasi­ness crossed my mind. What had hap­pened?

After some time, a mid­dle-aged, dark-haired lady came to me. She was Car­men, Peter’s teacher at Trin­i­ty Inter­na­tion­al Uni­ver­si­ty. She said Peter was involved in an auto acci­dent while com­ing here, and had passed away…

I could not believe my ears. Per­haps I had heard wrong. The grief and tears on Car­men’s face final­ly con­vinced me. Peter indeed had passed away in an auto acci­dent … My only son had left me just when we were about to meet after such a long time.

That evening, I stayed with Pro­fes­sor Car­men. I was unable to sleep through the night. At mid­night, the police called to con­firm Peter’s death on May 7th while dri­ving from Kansas City to Chica­go in his Ford. The car got out of con­trol, crossed the medi­an and hit an oncom­ing truck head-on, result­ing in an imme­di­ate explo­sion and instant death of the dri­ver.

I could not stop weep­ing that night, despon­dent and sad. Past images of Peter smil­ing went through my mind.

From youth to uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­a­tion, Peter had always been an excel­lent and mod­el stu­dent. He won a num­ber of awards in the city-wide com­pe­ti­tions on math, chem­istry, physics and Eng­lish. He was saved and bap­tized when he was at the pre­cious age of thir­teen. At grade eight, he refused to answer half of a Biol­o­gy final ques­tion con­cern­ing Dar­win­ian evo­lu­tion as a tes­ti­mo­ny for the bib­li­cal truth. The result: he had per­fect grades in all sub­jects except biol­o­gy with only a pass­ing grade; and missed the “award for excel­lence.” All his class­mates felt sor­ry for him, but Peter was hap­py. He had not sold him­self as Esau had just for a lentil stew. When he grad­u­at­ed from high school, God led him to Trin­i­ty Inter­na­tion­al Uni­ver­si­ty. Peter’s spir­i­tu­al life grew in this insti­tu­tion that had Bib­li­cal truth as the basis for all sci­ences and knowl­edge.

After attend­ing the Urbana Con­fer­ence at the end of 1993, Peter wrote us: “The peo­ple from Africa as a group have the least amount of hope; they des­per­ate­ly need the Gospel. I can­not just plan for my own future … I always had an Amer­i­can dream: study hard to be a med­ical doc­tor so as to earn big mon­ey, have a good house, a nice car, and give toward char­i­ty … But all these seem so far away from me now. A med­ical mis­sion­ary has no fixed income and needs to depend on offer­ing. I will be poor but will­ing­ly. It is the mis­sion of our gen­er­a­tion to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth. It is also the pre­lude to Christ com­ing. There­fore, father and moth­er, per­haps you could not depend on me to sup­port you in your retire­ment. From now on I will live by faith. I will seek for my future mate only some­one who is like­mind­ed so that we can serve togeth­er in Africa.”

From that time onward, he served with zeal. In sum­mer, he aban­doned the oppor­tu­ni­ties to earn mon­ey and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the school’s sum­mer short-term evan­ge­lis­tic teams instead. He coun­seled prob­lem youth in San Fran­cis­co, evan­ge­lized AIDS patients, gave to char­i­ties and sup­port­ed two poor chil­dren from anoth­er coun­try … We were very moved in watch­ing Peter’s spir­i­tu­al growth after his deci­sion to serve the Lord full time.

I could not under­stand how a young man of twen­ty-two years of age, a ser­vant who had decid­ed to serve God, one who had just start­ed to labor for the Lord, had gone to heav­en so ear­ly. I cried and prayed, but did not hear any answer …

The next day in the after­noon, I flew to Mis­souri State Uni­ver­si­ty at Kansas City to take care of Peter’s belong­ings. Around four o’clock, six stu­dents took me to the cre­ma­to­ri­um. On the way I cried and prayed: “Oh Lord, I can­not con­tin­ue if I do not receive strength from you, I can’t bear the sight of Peter’s body …”

In my weak­est hour, the Lord held me up. I heard Him say to me: “Your son is not here in the cre­ma­to­ri­um. He is in my bosom. He is enjoy­ing a heav­en­ly joy beyond the earth.”

I imme­di­ate­ly felt strength­ened, because God’s com­fort is supe­ri­or to man’s. Peter was already in heav­en, bet­ter than any of us. Why was I so self­ish, unwill­ing to release him to be with God?

Yes, Peter was not here in the cre­ma­to­ri­um. There were only ash­es. I did not see Peter’s body, because when his car lost con­trol trav­el­ing at 70 miles an hour, the col­li­sion with the truck killed him instant­ly and incin­er­at­ed his body. He did not suf­fer; nor did he strug­gle. When I could not bear this heavy bur­den, God lift­ed it up. The des­per­ate feel­ing of los­ing a son grad­u­al­ly gave way … From my heart thanks­giv­ing and praise began to flow.

The next day, I vis­it­ed the scene of the acci­dent. Many of the stu­dents tried to com­fort me when they observed my tears. I told them I was no longer sad for Peter’s death, but I wept for them because they had not yet known the Lord and His sav­ing grace. How frag­ile was human life, “As for man, his days are like grass, as a flower of the field, so he flour­ish­ing. For the wind pass­es over it and it is gone, and its place remem­bers it no more” (Psalm 103: 15–16). How­ev­er the God who gave us eter­nal life-His love nev­er changes, from eter­ni­ty to eter­ni­ty. He said: “He who believes in Me though he may die, he shall live. Who­ev­er lives and beleives in Me shall nev­er die” (John 11: 25–26). All the stu­dents were moved by these words, and said that they would go back to lis­ten to the Gospel at the church where Peter served.

Before we left the cre­ma­to­ri­um, a girl named Mag­gie who worked there told us the fol­low­ing. In the acci­dent, almost every­thing was con­sumed by the fire, except for a Bible that was com­plete­ly undam­aged. When she went near, she saw the Bible was turned to Leviti­cus. As she was pick­ing it up, a sud­den gust blew the pages from one side to the oth­er and final­ly closed the Bible. On the side was writ­ten Peter’s name.

Leviti­cus talked about holi­ness-that man must be holy in order to wor­ship God. God delights in a holy offer­ing. Through that Bible the Lord con­veyed to me: first, every­thing will pass away but His grace will be from ever­last­ing to ever­last­ing for those who fear Him. Sec­ond, He was pleased with Peter and received him to Heav­en. Peter was with God, and there­fore the Bible closed.

What a mar­velous tes­ti­mo­ny! Mag­gie also told me that she used to trust the Lord in her youth, but left God when she grew up. She was very moved when she saw how God spoke to her through this Bible. She has decid­ed to go back to the Lord.

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it pro­duces much grain” (John 12:24). Through the phys­i­cal death of Peter, God renewed the spir­it of many, and tes­ti­fied of his sal­va­tion to oth­ers such as the six stu­dents from Mis­souri. He also spoke to those who had lost their first love and faith, like Mag­gie, oth­ers who came to the memo­r­i­al ser­vice from Cal­i­for­nia, includ­ing Peter’s best friend Liang Hui who was just bap­tized. I was tremen­dous­ly com­fort­ed know­ing that Peter’s tes­ti­mo­ny has not dimin­ished even in death. I no longer despaired, but give thanks and praise.

Chap­ter Four

James Lu: A Father’s Tes­ti­mo­ny
Sev­en a.m., May 9. In Chi­na.

After prayer and Bible read­ing, I start­ed the day’s work. The phone rang. I thought it was one of my stu­dents try­ing to make an appoint­ment to see me. Lit­tle did I expect that it was my sis­ter-in-law from Los Ange­les. She informed me that Peter had passed away in an auto acci­dent. I could hard­ly believe this abrupt mis­for­tune; every­thing dark­ened and I almost passed out.

Peter was our only son. He was a gift from God in the 70s when I was born-again. For more than twen­ty years we had loved him more than any­thing in the world. He had yet to com­plete his twen­ty-third year of age. How could he leave this world so young, so hasti­ly?

That day, the con­tin­u­al calls and mails com­firmed that indeed Peter had passed away in an auto acci­dent. How could this be?! Our son passed away in the prime of life, at a time when he was ready to serve the Lord. I was extreme­ly deject­ed, unable to choke back tears. I asked: “Oh Lord! Why has this hap­pened to me? Why for­sake me alone at home …”

Lat­er I received an e‑mail from a niece from Cal­i­for­nia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, detail­ing the acci­dent. After read­ing the e‑mail, I real­ized that the Ford that Peter was dri­ving had explod­ed upon impact. Peter was incin­er­at­ed with­out leav­ing a body.

My heart was shak­en; I became pro­fuse in tears, and once again I fell into despair. “Oh Lord! You loved Peter, and have tak­en him home, but why through such a ter­ri­ble means?” I could not refrain from protest.

“As the heav­ens are high­er than the earth, so are my ways high­er than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa­iah 55:9). At that time I did not under­stand that the way Peter passed away was part of God’s grace and plan. The instant that the Ford col­lid­ed with the truck, Peter passed away with­out a strug­gle, with­out pain. He left in the expec­tant spir­it of see­ing his moth­er and meet­ing the Lord in joy.

Through­out that day, the Holy Spir­it spoke to me, com­fort­ed me, and encour­aged me. I under­stood that the body of a Chris­t­ian is like a house, a place for the soul to reside. If we sell the house, and leave it, we remain the same; there is no need to be sad­dened. Peter’s spir­it has already been redeemed, left his orig­i­nal body and now is with the Lord in the heav­en­ly home. Death is but a door lead­ing to the eter­nal home pre­pared by the Lord for those who love Him. My sep­a­ra­tion with Peter is only tem­po­rary, because in Christ we shall meet again.
I came to the US on the 22nd of May to take care of Peter’s belong­ings. A few days lat­er, God spoke to me again. That evening, my wife was going through Peter’s pos­ses­sions. She noticed that among the more than two hun­dred let­ters from us in five years, there was a thick let­ter still with stamps on. She took out the six pages from the enve­lope and dis­cov­ered that, besides the two pages from us to Peter, there was a poem in both Chi­nese and Eng­lish. It remind­ed me of some­thing I had almost for­got­ten. Toward the end of August in 1995, a broth­er in Christ asked me to trans­late from Eng­lish a poem that he need­ed to quote in a ser­mon. This is the poem:

I’ll lend you, for a lit­tle while,
a child of mine, He said,
For you to love while he lives,
and mourn when he is dead.
It may be six or sev­en years,
or twen­ty-two, or ‑three,
But will you, ’til I come back,
take care of him for me?
He’ll bring his charms and glad­den you, and shall his stay be brief,
You’ll have his love­ly mem­o­ries
as solace for your grief.
I can­not promise he will stay,
as all from earth shall return.
But there are lessons taught down
here I want this child to learn.
I’ve looked the wide world over
in my search for teach­ers true.
And from the throngs that
crowd life’s lanes, I have select­ed you.
Now will you give him all your love
‑not think the labor vain.
Nor hate me when I come to call
to take him back again?

I fan­cied that I heard them say,
“Dear Lord, thy will be done.
For all the joy this child shall bring,
the risk of grief we’ll run.
We’ll show­er him with ten­der­ness
and love him while we may,
And for the hap­pi­ness we’ve known,
for­ev­er grate­ful stay.
And should the angels call for him much soon­er than we planned,
We’ll brave the bit­ter grief that comes, and try to under­stand.”

This is no fic­tion. It is based upon the true expe­ri­ence of Mr. and Mrs. Reed, a young cou­ple who lost their daugh­ter. In an out­ing, their six-year-old daugh­ter Wendy asked for per­mis­sion to be in anoth­er car to accom­pa­ny a friend with­out her par­ents being present. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, in a head-on col­li­sion, Wendy passed away. Dur­ing the funer­al, Wendy’s par­ents, though they had tears and grief, did not show any des­per­a­tion. They were as calm as usu­al. Asked how they could remain so undis­turbed, they answered, “If six years ago God had asked us if we would like to take care of a girl named Wendy for six years who belonged to Him, say­ing to us: ‘I need some­one to love her, take care of her, teach her to know me,’ of course we would have said yes. And it turned out that God did plan it this way. He already knew that Wendy would live for six years. We are will­ing to give thanks to the Lord for every day of the past six years. We miss Wendy very much. We have cried griev­ous­ly, and we may cry again. But we all know we will meet her again in heav­en. For all this we give thanks to God.”

I still remem­ber clear­ly ask­ing myself after read­ing the poem whether I could assume that atti­tude if ever the same thing hap­pened to me, an atti­tude with­out com­plaint but only praise and thanks­giv­ing? When this thought had come, I said to myself: “No, that won’t hap­pen. God loves him, and will use him …”

I remem­ber writ­ing to Peter and men­tion­ing my feel­ings that evening. I sent him this poem in both Eng­lish and Chi­nese as. It grad­u­al­ly fad­ed from my mem­o­ry, and com­plete­ly dis­ap­peared, until that evening.

When I reread this poem, I under­stood that God had spo­ken to us, father and son, in His unique way. Two years lat­er, when Peter was about to cel­e­brate his twen­ty-third birth­day (on June 6th), God took him away, just as it was said in the poem, “twen­ty-two, twen­ty-three years … ” The moment I real­ized that call­ing Peter home was God’s plan, I knelt and prayed, thank­ing God for every­thing. Chris­t­ian chil­dren are all God’s chil­dren. God gave them to us to take care of them. What moved us is to be cho­sen among the crowd by God, to teach him on God’s behalf and to learn from His life here on earth, for all who have believed will return to heav­en. We were told ahead of time by the Lord in this mar­velous way.

God’s love is unlim­it­ed. Our love toward our own chil­dren can­not be com­pared with His love toward us. Our doubts were van­quished by the great­ness of the love of God. Peace had filled my heart. I was no longer despon­dent, but thank­ful with praise. I bowed before the Lord: “Oh Lord! Your thoughts are high­er than our thoughts. Your ways are high­er than ours. May your name be glo­ri­fied. May your will be done!”

-Peter Lu, from Chi­na, had stud­ied at Trin­i­ty Inter­na­tion­al Uni­ver­si­ty and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­souri when he died in a car acci­dent May 7, 1997. Car­men Tol­hurst, is Pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at Trin­i­ty Inter­na­tion­al Uni­ver­si­ty. James and Bet­ty Lu, the par­ents of Peter, live in Chi­na.

-This arti­cle is from Chris­t­ian Life Quar­ter­ly, 1998, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 25–32.