Sacrifice

長路奉獻給遠方　玫瑰奉獻給愛情
我拿什麼奉獻給你　我的愛人
白雲奉獻給草場　江河奉獻給海洋
我拿什麼奉獻給你　我的朋友

我拿什麼奉獻給你
我不停的問
我不停的找
不停的想

白鴿奉獻給藍天　星光奉獻給長夜
我拿什麼奉獻給你　我的小孩
雨季奉獻給大地　歲月奉獻給季節
我拿什麼奉獻給你　我的爹娘

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Dear Kate,

I smelled spring this morning, for the first time this year, a smell of everything giving to everything else.  It transformed my visions: every most threatening thing seems bearable.  Hope was in the air and I was breathing it in, I merely--yet wonderfully and fearfully--a channel of blessing to give it back, having taken only what I needed and nothing more but also nothing less, good enough for me to flourish and be my best.

A piece of local news here, two days old, sharing with you: "A Grade 12 student in Kamloops and her father were speaking out after they said she was pulled out of class and told her black dress and white turtleneck were making her teacher and a student teacher uncomfortable."  Then yesterday: "Kamloops students walked out of school in support of peer over controversial dress code."  And today, justice swiftly restored: "Kamloops dress code to be updated after controversy over teen's outfit."

This father, I, would have told my daughter to consider what is best for the others in her community, especially for her teachers, who are considered her parents according to (the best of) the Chinese culture, especially during a pandemic, the constant and escalating stress they need to face, for her, the student and many others, everyday, empowering them to be trusting and trustworthy fathers and mothers of the generations to come.  I would have asked her to consider the meaning of the Cross, the "magnificent defeat" of our Lord Christ Jesus.  "And now [my daughter], I will ask you a terrible question, and God knows I ask it also of myself. Is the truth beyond all truths, beyond the stars, just this: that to live without Him is the real death, that to die with Him the only life?"

What my daughter would choose to do, immediately and ultimately, is up to her, up to her relationship with Jesus.  I the father can only hope and wish and pray for her wisdom and courage, creativity and lovingkindness, and the real moral victory would not be what I can pull off in the social media in two days, but what God would nurture and nourish in her in a life time.

The song I share with you today is a song about sacrifice.  I would rather that you cut and paste the words and Google-translate them.  This way you can pay attention to how the Chinese characters are enunciated, smell the transforming vision set to the melody of spring breeze.

The singer speaks about how one thing gives to another, such as a rose to a romance, a long path to a distant future, the rain to the land, and asks herself the question: How, then, should I give, to you, my lover, my friend, my child, my parent?

And she does the Christian thing: to ask the question ceaselessly (我不停的問), search for the answer tirelessly (我不停的找), ponder and meditate on it day and night (不停的想).

Christians once claimed a badge of true discipleship is that we ponder and meditate on the words of God day and night, abide in them as He abides in us, our path to human flourishing, on our Way that is Christ Jesus.  Many of us have lost our way and gone on different paths.

The song I share today is not for the faint of heart, not mine anyway.  Every time it plays I would start to weep, I merely a vessel of joy and sorrow to give it back to the spring breeze.

Yours, Alex