I ran across this article in my Monday morning Sunday paper reading.
It’s the story of one man who has taken on the mission of watching over a bridge in China famous for its suicide rate. China right now is dealing with, by some estimates, more than 280,000 people taking their own lives each year. That’s more than twice the rate here in the U.S.
This man, Chen, spends his weekends watching for jumpers. He’s done it for the last 4 years and has saved almost 150 people in the process.
No one has asked him to do this. He doesn’t have a group sponsoring him or supporting him. In fact, even the people he’s trying to save don’t always appreciate his efforts, at least not at first. But still he goes, watching for those people he can save, those individuals so full of despair and hopelessness that they’re ready to end it all. And he stands there, ready to pull them out and let them know that hope never leaves. That as bad as it may seem right now, there’s always hope.
Here’s a portion of the article:
On a sweltering summer day in 2004, he made his debut on the Nanjing Bridge. He spotted a man who had thrown his shoes in the river and already had one leg over the railing.
“I grabbed him by the waist; he hardly fought back,” Chen said. “I pressed him to the ground. He started to cry.”
The man was a farmer who had come to the city with his entire wheat harvest. But a
business partner had fled with all the proceeds, and the man felt he couldn’t go home and face his family and children. So he used the last change in his pocket for a bottle of liquor to numb himself for the big fall. After talking the man out of ending his life, Chen gave him some money to go home.“In a time of crisis, all people really need is one person willing to lend a hand,” Chen
said. “It could make the difference between life and death.”
One person willing to lend a hand. One person who can tell someone it will be ok. Not to convince them that all of their problems will be solved, or that everything is going to change instantly. But by standing in the gap between hope and despair, that one person can make a critical difference.
This is how I feel about what I’m doing with Wives of Faith. We want to be a group that stands in the gap for military wives, to connect, to encourage, to support ladies when they’re doing just fine to when they don’t know if they can face another day. We’ve had some opportunities to do just that here recently and it is awesome to see the connections God has made, and the hope He provides to people when we let ourselves be available.
Too often we get so comfortable with our lives as they are. We go to work, we come home, we do the day to day things with family, we keep it all going and we’re satisfied with that.
I never want to be satisfied with just existing. I always want to be looking for a way I can make a difference for someone else. Whether it’s an email of encouragement to someone I don’t know, or connecting a wife with a group to help her get some things done while she’s going through a deployment, I want to make a difference.
Sometimes that may mean I fail to meet the expectations of other people. There will always be people that are disappointed with what you’re doing, or not doing. But I’m learning that you can’t please everyone all of the time, and if you try to, you end up pleasing no one.
Be like this “lifeguard of the bridge” today for the people you come into contact with. Your one action may make a major difference.
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