About life (140) -“Chen” – 3/9/2016

   In our life’s journey, we may face different people, situations and circumstances; however each one of us acts and responds in a different way. Difference between people may be wide or slight. It depends on man’s vision of what he is going through. Some people always think that what they are going though is a great unbearable disaster that no one has experienced before. They think that everything is going wrong. While others may recognize that life is full of painful experiences yet they are temporary and will end one day, and that we have to learn how to pass it with the largest portion of peace and happiness and the least portion of pain. Our vision plays a great role in recognizing true meaning of life and our role in it.

   I thought deeply about a story sent by a friend who started it by saying  ” A boy who lived a whole age” .The story is about a boy who didn’t even reach the first decade of his life, but discovered the true meaning and value of this life by becoming a spring of life for others.

   “Chen” the Chinese boy who didn’t reach seven years of old who one day got up to discover he had a brain tumor  that caused him to lose his sight. At the same time, his mother, 47-year old woman, suffered a chronic renal failure. They became inpatients of the same hospital where they got treatment. During that period, life kept going and hope was still there. They kept their love for each other. Each one of them was trying to ease the illness’ burden and its effects on the other. However, the child’s case didn’t improve, it kept deteriorating declaring that death became near. During all these events, he tried to ease the unbearable pain of his sick mother by asking the doctors to donate his kidney to her. The mother refused obstinately, but due to the doctors’ insistence  and the repeated requests of the son especially when he told her that he wanted her live carrying a part of him, she agreed to do as her desperately ill son asked. He died soon after, but she discovered that not only did he grant her life, but he also asked his doctors to donate his liver to another man who was getting treatment in the same room with him. He also donated his other kidney to a young girl at the next room. Indeed, Chen is dead but he is alive in the heart and mind of those who met him or knew his story. He is alive inside three persons to whom he gave another chance to live. Some may ask, what would be the use of all that if he is already dead? He died and his vulnerable body ceased to exist, but he will stand before God, the Righteous Just, with all the love he gave and the good deeds he made which will be an extended life after his death.

   Hence, life can be either a burden or a journey of love and giving that becomes a source of light no matter how dark is the road. Life is a journey that either leads to death or to eternity.

Anba Ermiah,

General Bishop& President of the Coptic Orthodox Cultural Center