When I was an adolescent – I’m thinking the summer after 7th grade – a group of college age students came to our town. They were part of a new student movement called Youth With A Mission (YWAM). There must have been half a dozen of them, all women, in the group. My dad, the host pastor, asked if I could go with them door-to-door as they did their evangelism survey around town.
That was more than 50 years ago, and I remember little of that week. Except one home we visited that has stuck in my memory. The woman of the house – I am guessing she was in her 60s – said that she had never been outside of our town her whole life. Now understand, our town wasn’t very big. Maybe 20,000 people. And you could get to the next town from her house by driving only 3 miles. But she had never been there. Felt a bit scary for her.
Felt a bit strange to me. By that time, I’d already been all up and down the East Coast and clear out to the West Coast with points in between. Vineland, the nearest town, was a place I rode my bike to.
I thought of that woman recently when I was invited to speak at a meeting at a local YWAM base. For those not familiar, YWAM is a worldwide Christian mission organization that had started several years before that team came to our town. For the past 65 years, YWAM has organized people of all ages traveling from all over the world to other places all over the world on a mission to share God’s love.
When the local YWAM base invited me, they asked me to share some of my experiences living overseas in Taiwan and Northwest China. Which was fun to do.
As I was preparing for that speaking engagement, a letter came in the mail from an old friend. Someone from my China days. In the letter was a photo that brought back a flood of memories.
The photo included a coworker from back then. Her name is Jackie. She and Cynthia had come to China together to teach in a business program we were running. Cynthia had returned to New York City for a short time, leaving Jackie alone at the school.
One evening Jackie called us, urging us to turn on the TV. In Northwest China, the only channels we got were local. Yet as soon as we turned the TV on, we saw live coverage of the World Trade Towers burning and collapsing. It was September 11, 2001.
Even as we were absorbing what we were seeing, our thoughts went to Cynthia who was scheduled to fly back to China from New York City that very day. We had no way to reach her and had no idea what was going on with her.
What we learned later was that Cynthia was at the JFK International Airport when the attacks came. Her flight was cancelled, and it would be two weeks before she could return to China. She had originally tried to book a different flight out of the Newark airport, closer to her home. But she couldn’t get a ticket on Flight 93, the one that crashed in Pennsylvania as hijackers commandeered it, intent on hitting another landmark.
The World Trade Center was very close to home base for Jackie and Cynthia. Their church – the Times Square Church pastored by David Wilkerson – was a short distance away. People that attended that church worked in the World Trade Center.
Suddenly the world felt very unsafe. What was going on? Was any place on earth truly safe?
We were especially relieved when Cynthia made it back to Xi’an. For us Xi’an was that safe place.
Many of our family and friends in the US didn’t see it that way. They urged us to leave China and get back home as quickly as possible. However, that wasn’t going to happen right away as flights were cancelled for days on end and travel worldwide was a mess.
No, we said, we are as safe as we can be right here in the heart of China.
Not every foreigner in Xi’an thought that way. Several Westerners working in our city contacted me with their concerns about 200 Pakistanis studying at a medical school in the city. These Pakistanis were Muslims just like the terrorists in New York City, so they were a threat. Or so went the reasoning. What was being done about them?
My wife and I had no such anxieties, but I knew I needed to allay the fears of these friends somehow. So, I went down to visit the head of the foreign affairs police bureau in our city of several million. I’d met him before and had found him approachable. I kind of knew what his answer would be before I asked it, but I also knew I needed to have an answer directly from him for these other foreigners.
When I told the police chief some of the Westerners were concerned about the Pakistani students at the medical college, he looked at me – did I detect a twinkle in his eye? – and said, “You tell them we keep a good eye on all the foreigners here.” And then he said to me, “But of course you know that.”
As I shared with the YWAMers the other evening, Jesus prayed a prayer that his followers would be protected right here in the world. He said, “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.” (John 17:15) That won’t make too much sense for some of my readers, but for those of us who follow Jesus, it is a very powerful reminder that God’s got us covered.
As I read the other day in Psalm 20: Some people trust in chariots and horses (the protections this world has to offer) but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. (verse 7)
I think of that with Jackie and Cynthia. Jesus sent them “into the world” and they could go knowing that whatever happened, they would be protected.
As believers, they were “in the world,” wherever they found themselves – in NYC or in Xi’an – but they were not “of the world.” Which meant that wherever they were – home or abroad – they were outsiders.
Their worldview was not the same as others around them. They saw things through the eyes of Jesus, who was himself in the world but not of it.
Again, this isn’t going to make much sense to some of my readers. Even Christians forget this “in but not of” reality, that we are part of something much greater and that we don’t have to get caught up in the drama of the world’s systems.
Home is wherever God calls us to be. We can be at home wherever we find ourselves even though we know our allegiances are of a higher order.
As I talked with that police chief, I was reminded that the safest place to be is wherever God has called you to be. Now, that doesn’t mean you won’t suffer or even die. You can suffer and die just about anywhere, for sure. But I’m talking about a safety that transcends all circumstances, even death itself.
And for me, that safe place was right there right then in Xi’an.
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