Heritage
About 2 weeks ago I received a short message from someone saying she had finally made it to visit my parents' grave - to remember them and their impact on her life. She added a picture of herself next to their headstone. I messaged back that had I known she was in town, we could have met. We were not very well acquainted or connected, and she didn't know I lived in the Chicago area. She was leaving the next day, and we had enough time to catch a deep-dish pizza lunch together.
She had met my parents in 1979 when she had escaped from Vietnam on a boat - many were fleeing the country at that time. My parents had just begun to work in the refugee camps in Hong Kong. Winnie got her English name after asking my Dad to give her one. When she became a U.S. citizen she made it official - taking a Western name, given her by a western man who once took her to the dentist when she was in great pain. She never forgot his kindness. She wanted to bless his memory somehow.
I asked Hannah if she wanted to come along, and we met at a halfway point between our house and the airport. Winnie remembers me as a young child - down to the dress I wore when we visited her in California. For a few moments during lunch, I got talking to her travel companions, and she was talking to Hannah. When we got to the car, Hannah told me she was given an envelope, with specific instructions to share the contents evenly with her siblings.
This is a custom in Asia - for older family and friends to give monetary gifts to younger relatives and friends. Hannah's eyes grew wide when she opened the envelope. "This is more money than I've ever had in my possession at one time!" she exclaimed.
Over lunch, Winnie told me how fond she was of my parents - how my Dad had helped her practically and emotionally through her time as a refugee. She was still moved to tears recalling his kindness to her.
I made sure Hannah distributed the gift, and I explained to my kids that this is a gift in part from Winnie, but also from Grandpa. If Grandpa had not been kind to Winnie, if he had not seen her in her distress, helped her, cared for her, and reached out to her, we would not be sitting at the pizza place and receiving this gift. Grandpa planted seeds of kindness and love in others, and my kids are receiving a tangible expression of gratitude some 40 years later. This is my kids' heritage: a heritage of kindness and compassion.
Grandpa may not have left them a huge inheritance of the financial kind, but they are heir to his faith, to his vision for those under oppression and without resources. I know he could have invested his life trying to make money to leave to his grandkids. Instead, he gave himself to the work God called him to, leaving me and my kids a legacy of faithfulness to God - one that calls us to love, service, compassion, and opening our eyes to see those hurting around us.
Today in America we think a lot about freedom as a nation. Freedom as individuals. My Dad was American and free, yet he used his freedom to serve others. Our heritage is not one of self-indulgent freedom, but freedom of another kind. Since we have been freed from fear, from the drive to be self-serving (though that does still plague me at times), we are free to give, free to sacrifice our selves to serve others. And yet even this opportunity to freely serve came at a cost. Today we celebrate this national freedom to worship God without fear (and serve Him without restraint). Countless soldiers have given their lives and service to protect these freedoms we enjoy. That is what we are grateful for today.
As I reflect on our heritage as both a nation and a family, I'm grateful for those who have given of themselves to enable us to enjoy these gifts - and not merely to enjoy them as an end in itself, but to propel me to carry that legacy forward: of self-sacrifice, love, service, and kindness.
In asking God to bless our nation, my prayer is that He blesses us with an awareness of what this blessing involves: a calling to live out and give out this blessing to others - the blessing of freedom - the blessing of freedom to serve, give, and extend ourselves to free others. It saddens me to think that many of us not only take our freedom for granted, but fail to see what we have been freed *FOR*. The Christian understanding is that freedom is meant to be a channel, not a dead end. Our freedom is to be a conduit of freedom for others.
Let's live in the calling of our freedom: "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free."
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