Ten Years Have Gone By

by Mu Jin-min

Eila, a short Finnish Christian lady, was helping us wash the dishes after our Christmas Party. How many people had used those dishes? I only recall that I personally had filled up the dishwasher five times, and other Christian sisters were carrying on with the washing up while still other brothers and sisters cleaned up the social hall and emptied trash cans.

"Jin Min!" Eila called me with a loud voice.

I turned around and saw the last set of dishes entering the dishwasher. Eila had come over to help us at one o'clock. Now it was close to six and she was still full of energy. Before I had a chance to say thanks to her, I saw her eyes glowing with joy and she was laughing as she said something in Finnish. She knew I didn't have much Finnish, but whenever she spoke to me, she would speak in Finnish anyway before she gave her English translation. Perhaps she intended to embarrass me and spur me on to learn Finnish.

But this time I did understand what she said. She was saying: "Jin Min, do you remember the first time I brought you to a Christmas party ten years ago? Today you are able to run your own Christmas party. The Chinese people now have their own party!"

Ten years ago, or nine and a half years ago, to be more exact, I had come to Helsinki all alone. At that time foreigners were rare in Helsinki, and even fewer of them were scholars from China. Of those that were there, most were sponsored by the Chinese government. I was pretty much the only one who had come to work there from a different country. After I came to Finland, I ran into great difficulties in my living and working situations. It was common for the government-sponsored Chinese scholars to look down on those who were not government-sponsored. They would raise questions like "Who are these people ?" and "How did they get here?". It was under these circumstances that I got to know Eila, and she comforted and cared for me. She brought me to church and once we went to a Finnish family for a Christmas party specially designed for Chinese scholars.

It would seem that in the normal course of events that I should have proceeded to become a Christian under Eila's guidance.

Believing in Jesus, however, is not just a matter of simple logic

Take for example the custom of going to church. I had been born into a Christian family. When I was a child I often went to Sunday school and choir. But as I grew older I had lost interest in all of this. I felt it was OK for Eila to take me to church because that might help bring back some of my warm childhood memories. But as I sat in the congregation I wasn't comfortable at all because I kept being reminded of my experiences of listening to lengthy political reports back in China. At first I forced myself to stay there because I didn't want to hurt Eila. Then finally I couldn't stand it any longer and. I started to avoid Eila as much as I could.

It was about that time too that I began to see some improvements in my living situation and in my job. I remember that at the beginning of each year I would summarize what I had accomplished in the past year and what I had yet to accomplish in the coming year. I had always believed in the power of the individual, that we should fight our own battles, determine our own fate. To look to God when one encountered difficulties would be cowardly, and for the same reason it would be illogical to attribute one's own achievements to God.

But God didn't give up on me. In the winter of 1990 God challenged me through my aunt who lived in America and He also showed me a miracle in answer to my cry. The miracle itself was trivial and it didn't bring me any materialistic benefit whatsoever, but it defied all my explanations of it as just luck or probability. Faced with such an inexplicable miracle, I had no other choice but to believe in the existence of God. I made up my mind to believe in God and I forced myself to read the Bible. Before I went very far into the Bible, however, I started feeling bored again. So I stopped reading and once more lost interest. I even stopped praying.

I abandoned God, but God did not abandon me; He knew I would go on being stubborn until I was disciplined. In September 1991 God rebuked me for being weak in faith. My aunt in America wrote to my brother who was visiting in Finland. At the end of the letter, she suddenly started to rebuke people who abandoned God. I still remember how I felt when I read those words. My face was burning hot and my hands were shaking. The letter seemed to be red-hot and I hurriedly threw it on the table. I was a courageous person, but for the first time I was frightened.

I began to fear God. I truly confessed my sins to the Lord.

My biggest sin was arrogance; I was not willing to submit to my Creator. In Proverbs 6:16-19 it says that God hates six things, the first of them being "haughty eyes". When I first came to Helsinki, a lot of Finnish people gave me Chinese Bibles. I would take the Bible with one hand, murmuring the word kittos (Finnish for "Thanks"), but with the other hand I would throw it into the trash can. I can't remember how many Bibles I threw away, but I remember very clearly how I threw away the first Bible. It was not long after I came abroad. I had taken a train trip to Paris to visit my aunt who lived there. When I was leaving Paris, the old lady rushed down to the train station to give me some clothes, along with a Chinese Bible.

That Bible was a kind of imposition because I already had too much luggage. So I decided to throw it away before I transfered to the next train. I didn't want to just leave it on the train because I didn't want to have it returned to me from Lost and Found. So in the night, when everybody was sound asleep, I slipped out of the compartment, opened the corridor window and threw it off the train. That was how I threw away my first Bible. Later on it became easier and easier for these criminal hands of mine to throw away Bibles. And I never felt any sense of sorrow about it.

How could such a sinner as I believe she was sinless ? The moment I knelt down to confess my sins, I experienced a kind of peace that was beyond description. I had never had such a feeling since I believed in the Lord in 1990. The Holy Spirit started to dwell in my heart. From then on, I no longer had to force myself to read the Bible. Rather, reading the Bible became an interesting event for me.

In the summer of 1992, I had the opportunity of visiting a Chinese congregation in America. This was the first time I had ever heard a sermon in Chinese. The message really hit me. Even now five years later, it still echoes in my ears. I was specially touched too by the fellowship between the brothers and sisters in the church. So on that day in that little church in Tennessee, I said to myself, "There ought to be a Chinese church in Helsinki, with sermons in Chinese". I praise God that he put such an idea into my mind when I was still such an immature Christian! In later years when I was having difficulties running the Fellowship or when I was tempted to be lazy, that experience in Tennessee always came back to my mind like a bright lamp, reminding me of the resolution I had made.

In June 1994, eight Christians got together and decided to set up a Chinese fellowship in Helsinki. I was the oldest among us, so I was elected, along with another brother, as the head of the Fellowship. At that time I had not even read the Bible through once and even then I had forgotten most of what I had read. Even when I did read the Bible, I did it merely to gain knowledge. Shortly after we established the Fellowship we worked out our constitution, assigned responsibilities to various individuals, ran different activities and we even tried to make compromises between various church denominations. In all this, we quickly ran into all the difficulties common to other fellowships: long inefficient meetings and endless personality clashes. I had a strong personality and my spiritual life was weak. I liked to rely on my own wits to deal with crises. Toward the end of 1995, our fellowship almost died out.

But glory to our Lord ! Just as He had not abandoned me a few years back, He did not abandon the Chinese Fellowship in Helsinki. Rather, through the various crises He disciplined us, so that during times of difficulty we were able to learn to rely on God. Over the past three and a half years we have seen with our own eyes the Lord at work in the Fellowship. He raised up a group of brothers and sisters whose spiritual maturity greatly surprised me and who soon became my role models. God also taught us that nobody can boast before God. We were all branches of the vine. The closer we were to the vine, the more progress we would make. How much spiritual progress we could make did not depend on our academic degrees, our social status or the length of our Christian life. I also saw how God miraculously changes a person's spiritual life in order for this person to serve God better. I mean that over the past three and a half years I have personally experienced God. I have grown up and I have come closer to God. I no longer read the Bible simply for the sake of gaining knowledge; rather I read it because I want to know God and I want my life to be changed through His word.

Recently we were making arrangements for our Christmas activities when we found that there were divergent views within the Fellowship. So I quickly called a meeting. We didn't have much time for discussion and yet the meeting was almost out of control. So I was about to make a decision anyway, based on my personal viewpoint.but I ran into strong resistance. We finally reached an agreement after lots of debate. At this time, a sister reminded me, "Oh no, we should have prayed before the meeting." I went home and confessed to God. It was only a small incident, but it revealed my old self who once again wanted to solve problems by my own wits, forgetting the principle we had established after many failures, that we should always pray before meetings and allow the Holy Spirit do His work in the heart of each one.

I thanked the Lord again because He had made me see my own sins. If this had happened two years earlier, I would not have confessed my sin; rather, I would have scolded the sister for looking down on me, treating me as if I didn't have the ability to solve the problem.

The author came from Shanghai. She was a visiting scholar in Denmark. Now she works in Helsinki University in Finland.