1950s. China. Shandong province.
Before I was born, when my father was young, my grandparents owned a house church and had gatherings every night.
In those days, strangers could not remain anonymous if they lived in the neighbourhood because everyone knew everyone. It was just how things were.
According to my father, on many nights, there would be new people that would visit our house church and worship with us. I was told that some of them would actually pretend that they were "in the spirit" in order to score free meals with us afterwards. Being "in the spirit" was not a pre-requisite for us to give free meals to such people, but it made us think that they were Christians and we try to look after our own. How my father knew that those people were pretending and were not genuine, I am not sure. Perhaps he was sceptical, or perhaps the knowledge of how he knew has been left in the past.
One night, a man whom nobody had ever seen before came in to worship with us. My father tells me that this stranger knew how to sing all the songs and knew how to pray. After the gathering was over and everyone else left for their homes, this man stayed behind.
"Let me stay one night please." He pleaded with my grandmother. "Please lock all the doors."
"You may stay, but I have to register your name with the local sheriff." She replied.
"No.. that's ok. I'll go now." And with that statement the man walked out of our house.
My father tells me that this happened when he was quite young, so he was a bit unnerved by this event. As he grew up, he came to believe that perhaps the man was a wanted Christian on the run from the communist regime. He needed a place to hide and hoped my grandmother would help him.
To be honest I do not know what my grandmother would have done if she was sure that the man's speculated situation had been a fact. Whether she would hide him from the authorities or turn him away is anybody's guess. But nobody knew for certain who this man really was, and I believe my grandmother wanted to help him without compromising the personal safety of her household by asking the man to pay a visit to the local sheriff with her and register his name.
It struck me that I was feeling a sense of sadness and loss when my father finished telling me this story from the past with the words "We never saw him again."
Why am I feeling this way? Perhaps it's because I somehow believe that he was on the run from communist loyalists trying to hunt him down. I felt that somehow, I owed this man something. Perhaps my hospitality, even though I wasn't around then. I felt that I had let my spiritual kin down..that..I had let down a man with no home.
Sun 4th May 2003