Holy Week (Pt.2)
Written on 2025 Apr 26th.
This article shares a personal spiritual journey—not to promote miracles or judge anyone, but to remember what God has done in my life.
Because it involves others’ privacy, if you choose to read it, please do so with reverence, and pray for me and the people mentioned.
By Wednesday, the tightness in my chest remained. At noon, I went to get a haircut.
Seeing my face gradually uncovered, no longer hidden behind hair, felt oddly relieving. It was the first time since arriving in Barcelona that I got a pixie cut I was truly satisfied with.
I felt like a porcelain bead, freshly fired and cooling from the kiln.
After that, I went to a gift shop to buy small envelopes.
The sunlight on the way was dazzlingly bright, yet the wind was cold and cutting, blowing against the thick hoodie I wore and outlining the shape of my body underneath.
Back home, I took a short nap. When I woke up, I followed the preview posted by our fellowship group admin about the upcoming topic of “Mystery,” and began recalling the miracles and wonders I had experienced around the time of my rebirth a year ago.
At the end of February last year, one night, I knelt tentatively before the black mountains outside my balcony, asking God for guidance—and immediately received my first double-confirmed supernatural miracle.
In the following two months, I received nearly ten miraculous responses:
clothes on the balcony spinning against the wind, the top of a tree breaking off in a gust, my mother calling me exactly on cue…
In whatever form, whenever I sought confirmation, God almost always answered.
These miracles ceased after I experienced rebirth in mid-April. Once I had the assurance of salvation, I no longer sought signs from Him as before.
After that, I started learning about the history of the Chinese Church.
What I discovered deeply shocked me: miracles and wonders in China had largely appeared during two extraordinary periods—after the revival of 1927, and around the Cultural Revolution.
Both were eras when the Chinese Church was being rebuilt, and miracles served as a declaration that the Holy Spirit was bestowing spiritual authority upon His resurrected Church on earth.
Miracles were never meant merely for “individuals”; they were signs through which God advanced and bore witness to His Kingdom.
Back then, I realized how serious this was.
Learning about countless martyrdoms in history also filled me with terror. When I had prayed for signs and wonders, it had never crossed my mind that I might have a role to play in the history of redemption.
I began doubting whether those miracles had simply been misunderstandings. Yet I could not deny the awe and the firm faith they had instilled in me.
For about half a month, I lived in constant preparation for walking the path of the cross, almost resigned to the idea that I would die in China for my faith.
And it was precisely then that my visa was approved.
The day after receiving my visa, my mother called, asking me to return to my hometown in Hubei for a time before leaving China. I prayed once more for confirmation—was this truly God’s arrangement?
He confirmed it, so I mustered my courage and went home, only later realizing the deep significance behind that journey.
As these memories came back, I imagined sharing them during the evening fellowship:
how I had struggled to accept the group leader of “disciples of Christ” claiming that God spoke to him so casually, even reminding him to bring an umbrella when leaving the house.
I wanted to tell them how, during that season, I lived like a tightrope walker high above the ground—nervous, dizzy—either weeping for Christ or wandering half-dazed through my days.
I wanted to tell them how, during the month leading up to my rebirth, I often dreamed of being hunted, waking up several times a night in terror, immediately praying for rescue each time.
How in the final days before my rebirth, I no longer knew how to sustain my faith—
how the weather deteriorated drastically, until there were storms, torrential rains, thunder and lightning every day, mirroring my collapsing spirit.
Suddenly, a purple lightning bolt flashed across my mind—
the same purple lightnings I had seen nightly a year ago, slashing across the sky, striking into the mountains.
Those flashes had seemed to tear open a breach through which I glimpsed the spiritual realm.
And in that moment, it was as if something clicked into place.
I hurriedly searched online for news about floods in Guangdong in April 2024. The first search result was the Wikipedia page titled “2024 Guangdong floods,” which read:
In April 2024, heavy rains caused floods in China, mainly affecting Guangdong Province.
In Guangdong Province, at least four deaths were confirmed, while 10 people were missing. As many as 110,000 people were evacuated. Tens of millions of people were reported affected.
Landslides in Shaoguan caused by heavy downpours injured six people and damaged 80 homes. Losses were estimated to be around 140 million yuan. Waterlogged soil led to a highway collapse in Meizhou on May 2, killing at least 48.
…I could hardly believe the thought that had suddenly surfaced in my mind.
But the fear and pressure that had gripped me a year ago were now, in this instant, given meaning.
And yet, I did not know. I still dared not write it down plainly even now.
My instinct was unequivocal: It had been a real battle—a clash in the spiritual realm over my soul, echoing across the heavens and earth.
My rational mind pulled me back: That’s just delusion. Don’t think you’re so important.
But my heart was not eager to exalt myself. Rather, it was seized by a kind of terror—so fierce I wanted to cry aloud.
Who am I, really?
…
I packed the gifts into small envelopes, including handwritten notes in each one.
Through the story behind these gifts, I linked it to the broader cultural context—how difficult it was for Chinese people to believe in Christ—hoping to offer a possible explanation for Tina’s actions, while also expressing gratitude for everyone’s patience and understanding.
Even if Tina never confessed, I hoped the shared struggle and grace expressed in these notes might spark reflection.
“This Easter, may we remember: In Christ, we always get to start again.”
I copied the same note seven times, writing “70 × 7” on each envelope—a reminder to myself to forgive her.
I signed the letters on behalf of Tina, another muddled Chinese sister, and myself,
so the gifts could be presented in the name of the three of us—without exposing any conflict.
After all this was done, I packed my things and went to the fellowship gathering that evening.
I was exhausted.
Because this was not merely about “emotional regulation” or “communication skills”—
it was a matter of spiritual order and authority, something that transcended my human capacity.
The feeling might have been something like Elijah after the victory at Mount Carmel, slumping down in the wilderness and crying out, “I have had enough.”
I distributed the gifts one by one, using a blind draw method. They were delighted, but I didn’t feel like explaining anything.
I did not share any of my miraculous experiences from the past year. I simply listened.
I could feel that for them, the “mystery” and “majesty” of God remained conceptual—
as if trying to stuff God into the small box of human imagination.
They admired Him, they worshiped Him—but He still remained Other to them.
And I—
I stood at the boundary between the material and the spiritual realms,
being drawn by God from one plane of existence to another.
I tried to resist, kept telling myself that the once-in-a-century disaster had nothing to do with me, that I could go back to living as I once had, blissfully unaware.
But my way of perceiving the world had already been utterly, irrevocably changed.
It was not fantasy. It was not exhaustion.
It was real.
During the gathering, a Zimbabwean sister who wasn’t present shared a praise report in the group chat. She testified that God had answered the prayers concerning her younger brother.
Reading her words, I realized the things she mentioned were precisely the things I had prayed for two weeks ago.
That prayer had not been a casual request—I had truly exercised empathy and compassion, carefully pleading with the Lord on behalf of a young man halfway across the world in Zimbabwe.
It was less a prayer and more a conversation with the Lord.
My instinct told me with certainty: It was my prayer that had been answered.
Yet again, my rational mind pulled me back: Don’t be arrogant. Others prayed too.
But what if? What if my prayer really had power?
After the fellowship ended, I didn’t linger for socializing. I quietly slipped away, walking alone under the night sky.
I remembered how, three months ago on the train,
Tina had said I was the kind of person who would plead with God to save an entire city, like Abraham.
Back then, I thought she was exaggerating.
When I was around twelve years old, I had once innocently written in my diary:
“If one could save all humanity by sacrificing one’s life like Jesus did,
then to be crucified would be a worthy thing.
Perhaps I can think this way because I am not the only Son of God,
but merely one of seven billion.”
I had even rushed into the kitchen to proudly read it aloud to my mother.
She listened, then sneered:
“You think you’re something special just because you can write nonsense like this?”
But what if—
what if I really had been specially chosen, specially prepared for a calling?
I had once joked with Tina that I almost died three times in my mother’s womb—
first, when my mother nearly drowned while boating;
second, when my father kicked her belly during a quarrel;
third, when my father was stabbed by a student and left in a coma, with relatives urging my mother to abort me.
At the time, I was joking that my anxiety disorder must have been prenatal. But Tina had responded seriously:
“You must be important. The enemy tried three times to prevent you from being born.”
As I recalled that, a vision of fire engulfing everything around me suddenly rose in my mind.
I remembered the little girl who had walked unharmed out of a kitchen explosion, calmly checking herself and shutting off the gas valve.
I remembered that I had not been a naturally anxious child at all— quite the opposite:
I had been brave, composed—
because somehow, deep down, I knew I would not die.
I also remembered the fallen tree behind me last May.
If nothing in spiritual warfare happens by accident—
then was that tree meant for me?
…
When I got home, I realized I no longer felt angry toward Tina. I had completed my coming-of-age rite.
So I opened WeChat, ready to send her the letter.
Only to see her previous Monday’s messages—where she had tried to manipulate me using spiritual language, echoing almost word-for-word the mockery my mother used to hurl at my faith.
My heart pounded with fresh anger.
Without another word, I hurled the letter at her, shut off my phone, and had no desire to say anything more.
That night, lying flat on my bed, staring at the ceiling, I thought about the morning of my rebirth, the great flood, the purple lightning—
and the question of who I really was.
When I believed I was a nobody, perhaps I secretly envied those who were glorified before others.
But when I realized that, in a much broader realm, I had already been lifted up—
there was only fear left.
“So that you would fear, and not sin.” At that moment, I understood—
the closer God draws to a soul, the deeper He must instill reverence.
I curled into a ball and wept quietly.
I was like a child, looking back at the morning of her spiritual birth, realizing with a start that she had already grown up.
And the Father whispered to her:
“Daughter, you are no mere nobody. On the day you turned back, the blood of Christ spoke on your behalf, the Holy Spirit bore witness for you, and angels waged war over you. I did not guide you home with a few small miracles, but with the violence of heaven’s gates being torn open.”
…And all I wanted to ask was:“Am I truly worthy?”
(While writing this piece, I remembered that it was on April 11, 2024, that I boarded the train from Hubei; I arrived in Guangzhou on the morning of Friday, April 12, went straight to the notary office to finalize paperwork before the weekend. That day was sunny.
The rains began on April 13. I wrote My Greatest Rebellion then, struggling to hold onto faith. On April 15, I met Phoebe. The next morning, April 16, I was reborn—
the very day the historic flood began.)
(And now, this Wednesday, too, was April 16—my true one-year anniversary of rebirth.
God’s timetable had been far more precise than my own wishful memory.)