An afterthought from movie --- 舉自塵土 (Raised from Dust)

On June 3rd I went to see this movie with a few friends from church. The story from this movie, despite being very simple without many up and downs like many of the ones that came out from hollywood, is one of the most thought provoking movie I have ever watched. To be honest, I can't stop thinking about this movie the whole day.

This movie took place in the rural area of Henan province in China and narrates about the life of a Christian woman, Xiaoli and her relationship with her rural church. Despite living in poverty, she still participates in the marching band of her church, has to look after her husband who suffered from a serious lung disease plus her daughter who has to go to school. However, living in extreme poverty prove to be difficult as she can hardly finance both her husband's treatment as well as to pay for her daughter's tuition fee in school. The movie shows her tremendous faith in God during all these difficult life trials, even though at the end of the story, the situation remains helpless. Due to insufficient finance to meet her needs, she ended up giving up her husband's treatment and her husband died on her way back home from the hospital, and her daughter has to quit school due to the inability to pay her tuition fees. At the very end, it shows much sarcarsm as it portraits Xiaoli and her daughter siting at their dining table (as plotted many times throughout the movie), and singing the famous prayer of thanksgiving...

"Thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus, for the food, for the food... thank you for the blessing, thank you for the blessing, A-men, A-men."

(The music goes like this, 1 2 3 1 / 1 2 3 1 / 3 4 5 - / 3 4 5 - / 5654 3 1 / 5654 3 1 / 1 5 1 - / 1 5 1 - // )

This movie indeed portrait many of the life difficulties in rural China. The comparison of Xiaoli's life difficulties through financing the expense of both her husband's treatment as well as her daughter's tuition fee with that of the thanksgiving prayer song (in English!!!) is thought provoking. The movie director (Gan Xiao-er) could have round the ending up with a happy ending (for example, with God answering all their prayer and Xiaoli's husband recovered from her illness and someone sponsored Xiaoli's daughter's tuition fees, all because of the grace of God...), but instead he did not. The ending was just as helpless as the beginning...

One of the many "provoking thoughts" that this movie shows is how we view God's grace and God's leaderships towards our lives. Is God's grace always about giving us a happy ending? What is our faith in God bases upon? Is it only bases upon the fact that God will always give us a happy ending and meeting our end needs? This movie in fact, shows that it is not. In God's perspective, everything is being "raised from dust." It is only upon God's grace that we got to live our daily lives. As a result, every day we live is a grace from God.

Being able to live in Hong Kong, we really should be thanksful to God where despite how poor we can be, we can always meet our end needs. Comparing to facing extreme difficulties to meeting with end needs in rural China, the many problems in Hong Kong just didn't stand in comparison. It is sad to see how many of us from Hong Kong frequently complains about the lack of quality in life, standing too much during church service, food being too cold, too tiring to get up, classes being too boring, piano tutorial being too difficult to learn...

There are many things that we can learn from Xiaoli in this movie. To be honest, how is our faith towards God? Can our faith be like Xiaoli, whom despite facing extreme toughless in life, shows no words of complains, but only her pure trust that God will lead her life through? If someone from rural China can? Why can't we? (We should also add a heart of thanksgiving!)