Reflection: Holy Sadness
May Nor Clara Cheng is Associate Professor in Psychological Anthropology at William Carey International University. She has a Ph.D. in Intercultural Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary and served with OMF International for sixteen years in Japan, in the Philippines, and in Taiwan.
Her area of expertise is equipping cross-cultural workers in their inner-beings in order to lead a healthy emotional, social, and spiritual life and to be effective in their cross-cultural endeavors.
I am a person with an ongoing paralyzing disease that limits me much in my stamina level. It even limits my capacity to pray. During the last week or so of the nationwide protests against social injustice during the virus epidemic, I have admired people who are taking the initiative to stand up for love and justice. I saw a lot of organizations and individuals, but not local churches, move into action. When the video of George Floyd’s killing has popped up on the news screen repeatedly and I’ve seen the other police officers just standing there doing nothing, initially without being charged, my heart became sad. I started to feel a holy sadness rising inside me. I started to feel the Lord’s sadness for how the churches stay passive and the moral standard of this country is being degraded and drifting away from him. It took protest for days before the law of assisting murder was applied to the other police officers who stood there watching their fellow officer kill. When I watched the angry crowds, I felt lost. I only felt that the Holy Spirit increasingly shared his holy grief in my spirit. I could only trust in faith that God will do something. But I still did not know what and how to pray.
Then yesterday, I saw a very moving and powerful video clip. (It is scripted with Chinese but we can listen in English.) It is about reconciliation, with a group of Caucasian men kneeling in front of a group of African Americans, praying to God for forgiveness for the oppression. Then the African Americans kneel down, praying to God for forgiveness for their unforgiveness. It really helped me to see that the Spirit of God is moving among people. It helps me know what to pray for: for God’s Spirit to move among his people, to feel his holy grief over human’s sins. It enables me to love and to pray for reconciliation and spiritual revival in the US and globally. It gives me hope that God will show forth to Satan and the whole spiritual realm that God’s Salvation Plan is advancing!