Better Than Freedom
Theme for the Week: The Stuff of Leadership
David Aikman
Friday, July 6, 2001
 1 of 1
Key Bible Verse: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled (Matthew 5:6).
Bonus Reading: Luke 9:23-27
Han Dongfang was a soldier in China's People's Armed Police, then a railroad worker. But a month before the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Han threw himself into the Chinese equivalent of Poland's Solidarity movement. During the crackdown, Han innocently turned himself in, since according to China's constitution he'd done no wrong.
The authorities threw him into a cell with prisoners who had tuberculosis. In 1992, after losing one lung, he was allowed to come for medical treatment to the U.S. where he became a Christian. Han easily could have acquired political asylum but chose to return to champion China's defenseless workers.
Arriving, Han was expelled to Hong Kong. There he told his people, through broadcasts on U.S.-supported Radio Free Asia, how bad working conditions had become. And he simply remained in Hong Kong as it reverted to China.
Han understands that China needs reconciliation and forgiveness more than just democracy and justice.
"I found a reason for life from my faith," he told me. "Now I know that everything you achieve is because God's prepared it. You just have to do the work."
David Aikman in Charisma Respond:
Does my commitment to God's will extend to sacrificing personal comfort? Thought to Apply:
The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet.
Theodore M. Hesburgh (clergy, university administrator)
Adapted from: Charisma (9/00)
Copyright © 2001 by the author or Christianity Today, Inc./Men of Integrity magazine.
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Lord, please develop in me those qualities that others will benefit from following.
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