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Why did I begin this weekly Prison Pulpit series?
To remind us all to pray for persecuted pastors and believers (such as Pastor Wang Yi) as Hebrews 13:3 teaches us to do (“as bound with them”), by sharing from his own published writings in China, as well as anecdotes from other persecuted ministers who have gone before, such as Richard Wurmbrand.
Remember My Chains: https://chinacall.substack.com/p/remember-my-chains
Today I’m going to look closer at 4 of the letters, dealing primarily with prayer, from last weekend’s podcast on the China letters of C.S. Lewis: https://chinacall.substack.com/p/the-cs-lewis-china-letters
1940- To his brother Warnie, on the burden of sympathy in a world of “instant” news:
Barfield…is very much depressed, having a greater faculty than you or I for feeling the miseries of the world in general, which led to a good deal of argument, how far, as a man and a Christian, one ought to be vividly and continuously aware of, say, what it's like on the [front]line at this moment.
I took the line that the present rapidity of communication, etc, imposed a burden on sympathy for which sympathy was never made: that the natural thing was to be distressed about what was happening to the poor Jones's in your own village and that the modern situation, in which journalism brings the Chinese, Russians, Finns, Poles and Turks to your notice each morning really could not be [faced] in the same way.
1946- To Dom Bede Griffiths, on a future Christian China and carrying all the world’s burdens:
No, I don't think I feel like you, ‘disillusioned’. I think that though I am emotionally a fairly cheerful person my actual judgement of the world has always been what yours now is and so I have not been disappointed…When you say that nothing… has a value in itself, that everything has a value in relation to God, I couldn't agree with you more. And I often, like you, think that all the valuable future may lie with the Christened Chinaman.
But one mustn't assume burdens that God does not lay upon us. It is one of the evils of rapid diffusion of news that the sorrows of all the world come to us every morning. I think each village was meant to feel pity for its own sick and poor whom it can help and I doubt if it is the duty of any private person to fix his mind on ills which he cannot help. (This may even become an escape from the works of charity we really can do to those we know).
1953- To Father Manna, on the Chinese “disaster” and Western culpability in the matter:
[Dearest Father Manna, regarding] your article on [the] Chinese disaster…I used [to entertain many hopes for China myself], since missionaries have served there for many years not unsuccessfully: now it is clear, as you write, that all is on the ebb. Many have reported to me too, in letters on this subject, many atrocities, nor was this misery absent from our thoughts and prayers.
Footnote- [In his letter] Fr Manna pleads for greater recognition of the gravity of Communist persecution of Christian hospital workers (as well as missionaries) in China. He argues that if [a French Communist Party leader] is arrested in the West, the Communists rise in protest. There should be no less an outcry on behalf of victimized missionaries.
1962- To Mary Van Deusen, on ignoring present pain to pray for the suffering in China:
You are always in my prayers. As regards this particular matter [of moving], I sympathise both with [your husband’s] dislike of noise and your dislike of moves. I suppose one thing we must do about these minor crises is to get them into perspective. At the moment when the nuisance of the move is worst, remember that (at that precise moment) people are dying in pain and others are at their bedside, and in China children starving and men in prison camps and some of them being tortured.
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