We All, with Unveiled Faces

By Rebecca Jackson

Hear the echo of His call, echo of another world.

Seeking balance between where you’re sent and what you leave behind, find yourself drawn away from everything you knew, and climb into a world and culture further than you thought possible. Join the journey as the Father opens lives and pathways to His people, His heart. It is a way of sojourning, with glimpses of His Presence, glorious and overwhelming.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Oct 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9781973673477

Rebecca Jackson

Rebecca Jackson is a teacher, encourager, and lover of the Lord. Her desire is to bring people together to share life’s journey, while encouraging them to open their hearts to the Holy Spirit’s promptings. She began teaching after receiving her undergraduate degree from Auburn University in 2012. As a college student, she was called to the mission fields of China. After returning to the United States, and while studying for her graduate degree from Auburn University in 2019, she is compelled to follow the Holy Spirit’s leading to again return to Asia. Becca loves finding the extraordinary in the ordinary, and seeks out new places and ways to soak in the Spirit. She is passionate about meeting new people and learning about different cultures. She enjoys experimenting with international recipes and sharing feasting moments with friends and family.

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Copyright © 2019 Rebecca Jackson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

WestBow Press

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from THE MESSAGE, copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Scripture quotations marked NHEB taken from the New Heart English Bible.

Scripture quotations marked ESV are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-9736-7346-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-7348-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-7347-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019912848

WestBow Press rev. date: 10/7/2019

CONTENTS

Chapter One

God, let your fire fall down on us

Chapter Two

A mirror up to my face: I’m not who I thought I was

Chapter Three

The way of his call

Chapter Four

First arrival in Beijing: the breaking of all that couldn’t remain

Chapter Five

I pray for wisdom and I get Julia

Chapter Six

Do not forget to entertain strangers

Chapter Seven

Shepherd my people

Chapter Eight

He weeps as we drive away

Endnotes

Yes, in the path of Your judgments, O Lord,

have we waited for You.

Your name and Your renown

are the desire of our soul.

Isaiah 26:8 (NHEB)

The cry of a generation

CHAPTER ONE

God, let your fire fall down on us

I, starting up, the light did spy,

And to my God my heart did cry

To strengthen me in my distress

And not to leave me succourless.

Then, coming out, beheld a space

The flame consume my dwelling place.

—Anne Bradstreet,

Upon the Burning of Our House

Each one’s work will become manifest,

for the Day will disclose it,

because it will be revealed by fire,

and the fire will test

what sort of work each has done.

—1 Corinthians 3:13 (ESV)

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I begin with fire.

Our year begins with fire.

Fire: who can describe it? Its colors, the flames. Its purifying, cleansing, refining.

And how it licks up everything in sight and there’s no stopping it.

No, there’s nothing you can do but watch everything burn.

Just leave it all there, leave everything in the heat. In that burning heat, so hot you feel it wants to sear your skin, your face right off.

That smoke, so thick and so black it chokes, and you suffocate for air, lungs screaming for air.

No, at that moment, you have to drop everything, leave everything in the flame, in the smoke, and get out of there.

Get out of there and get somewhere you can breathe, where it’s safe, and then you turn, and you look, and you watch everything burn.

It’s the watching that makes me weep.

And this year, this year would be a year to watch everything burn.

A year to watch everything be licked up in flames right before my eyes, and there it would burn, right in front of me, for me to see.

You just turn and watch it all be engulfed, consumed in front of you. And you just stand there still, and you can’t do anything.

But I don’t just stand there still.

I did do something.

I couldn’t just stand there.

Not with the flames rising and the smoke billowing and the people still inside.

The people. They’re still inside.

Souls, eternal souls, are still inside.

And hasn’t anyone told them the building’s on fire?

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In that moment when the flames are too hot and the smoke is too thick and it’s black—it’s too black—you have to get out.

And you know every second counts.

In that moment we can’t even get past the door three feet, and we know there’s no going in further, that we have to turn back. There was no stopping those flames.

It’s in that moment that you have to decide. And every decision counts.

My apartment, next to hers, directly across from hers. Hers, the apartment melting, licked up in flames.

We have a few minutes.

My apartment door is open—the soot travels inside, layering the floor. I think fast, making a decision. I grab my North Face backpack, the olive green one I carried everyday across the Auburn University campus, the one I carried inside coffee shops, the one I hike with.

The one I carried through that Atlanta airport as I waved goodbye to them, flew altitudes over 20,000 feet to LA to Hong Kong to Beijing, to eventually arrive in Harbin.

I grab that backpack with the straps I pull ever tighter and closer against my back every day in the painful, growing awareness that I don’t belong here. That I am stranger, sojourner, exile, a wanderer of this earth.

Constantly wandering, never at rest until I’m home.

I tear open a closet, grabbing, throwing in there.

I don’t remember if I even grabbed my toothbrush.

I grab my Word, His Word—can’t leave here without this Word. I grab my journal and a bandana—like we were just going on a camping trip. These I keep on hand for adventures. I grab my wallet, my passport.

I pull those straps tight and I turned and went.

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I can’t say I am caught off guard.

In a way, I knew. I knew it would happen.

He had told me it would.

The night before, I was restless. The mold in my new apartment bedroom had me sleeping on my living room couch until we could get it cleaned.

Outer lights glared, and China street noises filled my makeshift bedroom. It must have been midnight.

Suddenly, His presence thunders me awake.

And I mean I was wide-awake.

Energy bolted through me. I shot straight up.

"What is it, Lord? I silently pleaded with Him, listening. Tell me. What?" I was just beginning to learn Him this way, this new way He communicated with me.

As I listened, I faintly thought I heard my teammate across the hall from me crying out for help.

I was so sure, so convinced I had heard her, that I stood and opened my door to check on her. But when I opened, I heard nothing.

All was silent, sleeping.

I didn’t understand.

"What did I hear, Lord? What is it?"

I was so sure I’d heard her. I pressed my ear up firmly to her door to listen. And I listened. Hard.

Nothing. Only silence, only stillness.

I just stood there dumbfounded in the middle of the hallway.

It was midnight-something. We were at the edge of the hall. A motion-sensor bulb flickered awake above my head, dimly glowing only seconds.

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The memory of my midnight watch doesn’t hit me until after we evacuate the building.

We don’t go quietly.

Our voices echo and riot up and down the seven flights of the two dimly lit stairwells.

Our stomps, our claps ricochet, flickering incandescent bulbs awake as we tromped. We cover every floor.

Our fists bang, pounding on doors.

I bang, pounding on her door. My neighbor down the hall. The Chinese girl studying Japanese. She timidly cracks her door to see what all the knocking and screaming was about. She peers out from behind in full-length pink pajamas, her face confused, reluctant.

We scream, Fire! Fire! But she just shakes her head and closes the door on us.

We keep knocking. Not many come.

Were they afraid? Were they asleep? Do they not believe us?

They don’t believe us. She, she doesn’t believe us.

And how to know if anyone is inside behind those doors we pound on? No one answered.

Don’t they hear all this?

Our team leader ushers us outside quickly. She is a small person but strong and in this moment she has to take charge. We gather and she finds us, counting us. And we turn and we watch.

It feels excruciating. I can’t just stand there.

I can’t stand there with all those flames and all that heat and smoke and how it is engulfing, consuming.

Everything in me writhes just standing there.

She, she is in there.

My team leader, she says we covered every floor.

She says we had yelled and we had screamed and we had pounded and if anyone was left, they would have heard us.

She tries to console me but she doesn’t know about her. About my neighbor—the Japanese student, the tired and confused girl in her pajamas. She wasn’t there when I saw her close the door on us.

I’m not sure of all the other silent doors but I am sure of hers.

She is still in there.

And the thought—this thought—that maybe there are others like her, others who, for some reason, refuse to come.

The people. They’re still inside. Souls—eternal souls—are still inside.

And don’t they know by now the building is on fire?

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I moan to Ana, "What if there are others like her?" Others who refused to come?

What if there are others still in there?

And I plead, beg. They’re still inside. Can’t we try again?

I have to go back in. I have to.

The flames don’t touch the stairwells yet. Smoke billows out, pouring out onto my floor, the sixth floor.

I can’t just stand there. So I turn, going back in.

I run up that stairwell, to my floor, and I know exactly which door is hers.

On my way up the stairs, I run through every floor, pounding on every door. I pound hard on every door. Down my hall, the Korean students alternate turns trying to put out the fire. They chuckle at me as I bang on doors to apparently empty apartments. They try to tell me no one lived there.

But I can’t believe anything unless I experience it to be true for myself and so I ignore them, continue banging and pounding.

I have to be sure. Every door. Have we tried every door?

Who is still in this building?

And I come to her door again and I wasn’t leaving without her.

I knock and I knock and I keep knocking. And a Korean boy who earlier saw her close the door on us—he tries to assure me I had knocked enough, that I just don’t understand, that some people just won’t come and so we forget them.

But I wasn’t leaving without her.

I keep knocking and she quietly, sheepishly, and only slightly pulls the door open again.

She is looking at me and this time she is listening.

My hands point. I don’t know the word fire in Chinese. I motion toward stairs and my eyes plead.

And I wasn’t leaving without her. I think she can see that and so, slippers on, she comes.

She shuffles, slow and uncertain. She holds on to me, holds on to my arm to support herself down the dimly lit stairwell.

She never lets go of my arm.

We shuffle outside, and her eyes widen as she sees students from all over campus standing outside Dormitory Four, watching mesmerized, talking and whispering to each other.

In all this, this, one of our first nights on campus, the spotlight suddenly shifts to the newly arrived foreign teachers, to how their building is burning.

She, my neighbor, her eyes widen as the fire truck pulls up outside our dorm.

Her eyes widen and she sees.

She huddles in close to our group, turning to look at me. She just stares at me for a long time. As the year unfolds, I admit, I sometimes don’t remember her name or her face, but she never once forgets mine. She would remind me of this night every time I see her.

In timid English she turns to tell me Thank you, that she didn’t understand all that had happened earlier.

We knew it was no one’s fault—that there had been an accident.

Really, there had been an explosion.

We learn the next day