Heroes come in all sizes. I find them in books, and I meet them in everyday places. It’s not their dazzle or perfection that inspires me as much as their ability to lay hold of a tenacious faith that is larger than themselves. Elli became a hero like that to me when I met her in 1994.
“I just prayed that Jesus would make my faith as strong as that tooth.”
That’s how Elli summarized the ordeal of a difficult wisdom-tooth extraction from two days earlier that left her with a broken jaw.
The setting was newly post-Communist Kyrgyzstan. At the time you couldn’t even buy toothpaste. There had certainly been no anesthesia involved. I cringed just thinking about it.
Yet Elli had not prayed for pain relief. She had prayed that God would give her a faith that held on to Him like a stubbornly rooted tooth, that would more easily break the bones around it than yield to an external force.
Elli and I, both in our mid-20’s at the time, had found an easy, spirit-to-spirit connection that surmounted our limited language skills, cultural differences, and short time together. She had been among the first to find new life in Christ when the Iron Curtain fell and the doors of Soviet Central Asia opened anew to the gospel. Now two years later, she had graciously befriended me during my summer stay in her country.
And I mean graciously to the point of sacrifice.
Her resolve in the midst of pain could have stood alone as a faith lesson all by itself to this American who had lived a relatively comfortable life. But the story of her dental disaster was coming out through a swollen face as she was presenting me with a birthday cake.
If I had known about her condition, I should have been finding a way to make soup and deliver it. But she was at my door.
I was so humbled I could hardly receive this extravagance. Who remembers a new friend’s birthday in that kind of pain? Who gets up anyway and bakes a cake from scratch with limited resources, stencils it with powdered sugar, takes a bus across town, and knocks on the door?
I wasn’t worthy of this. This must be how David felt when his men brought him water from Bethlehem and he poured it on the ground. This cake represented more selflessness, more commitment to priorities beyond the here-and-now, more gracious love than I could hold. I almost couldn’t eat it.
The gift was beautiful, but I was simply overwhelmed by the giver.
Decades have passed, and I am still shaped by Elli and her cake.
I don’t know any more of her story, but I imagine that she has led many in her country to follow Jesus with her same passionate faith. Perhaps she has suffered for it as well.
We likely won’t meet again until heaven. But I have designs on baking her a beautiful cake then. And we will sit down at the table together and celebrate faith fulfilled.
In the meantime, I ask Jesus to give me a loving heart like Elli’s and faith like a stubborn tooth.
This is so beautiful!
A stunning example of a hero!!!