[3163] Editorial: Loving accompaniment

Editorial: Loving accompaniment

Translated by Lydia Ma

In Genesis, it is written that God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” We can gather from this that God not only gives us intimate life partners, such as a husband and a wife to accompany us through life, but also provides us with friends so that we can accomplish many things in life together with them.

German Paralympic table tennis gold medalist Rainer Schmidt was invited by the PCT to visit Taiwan this month to share his life story. He will be speaking on how he overcame many challenges and managed to live a fabulous life despite his physical disabilities. Schmidt said that many people around him are very surprised when they discover that he can practically get things done by himself. However, he underscored that “I don’t have low self-esteem. When it is necessary to ask for help, I definitely take the initiative to ask for help.” Schmidt is a living testimony that God can make all things work together for good and that love and partnership between humans are necessary for us to get through life.

Rev. Schmidt was born without his upper limbs and some color blindness and one of his legs is longer than the other. He remembers that he and his brother used to pray that he would one day wake up and find that his hands and his feet had become normal. Though this has never happened, Schmidt has learned to accept his disabilities and even to take it lightly. His change of heart came about when he finally realized that every person has limitations and he must focus on what he has instead of what he doesn’t have. Schmidt also credits his change of heart to friends who have never discriminated against disabled people.

During the summer of 1977 when Schmidt was 12-years-old, his life took a drastic turn while acting as a referee at a table tennis match. One gentleman who happened to be staying at the same hotel helped him attach a table tennis racket to his arm and spent a lot of time thinking of ways to best secure that racket. This gentleman’s actions changed Schmidt’s life and helped him become a great table tennis player later on.

Schmidt later wrote in his book that this gentleman was simply trying his best to help others to be happy. He underscored that it’s good to share good things with good friends; however, it is even more precious to support friends in their time of need because no amount of material goods can compensate for the touching presence of a friend who can accompany us through our sufferings and joys. Thus accompaniment is also one of the core values of the PCT’s “One-leads-One, New Doubling Movement”.

Schmidt also shared that one of his favorite Bible stories is the story of the paralytic and his friends. The friends of this paralytic lifted him down from a roof so that Jesus could heal him and they were not afraid of people’s criticisms. Seeing their faith, Jesus told the paralytic that his sin had been forgiven. This is a beautiful picture of what happens when we help one another and when we are willing to walk the second mile with another person because of love.