The Virtues of God’s Chosen People

By: Nichole Stratton, former Doulos member (Class of 2010)

Read: Colossians 3:12

In this passage, Paul is imploring the church in Colossae to treat each other the way children of God should and exhibit the kind of love and care for one another that God shows to us. Paul served as a messenger of God for the people of Colossae, and while we can still read what he wrote today, I think that Pastor Ben has served as an excellent real-life role model for the youth at WCAC. Because even though his actions outside of work (the church) were honorable, I think we could see Ben’s true commitment to being a servant of Christ through how he treated everyone in church on a daily/weekly basis. He certainly showed a great amount of patience in dealing with a group of roughly 50 kids every Saturday night. And when he asked us to leave after youth group was over so he could go home, or every time he asked us to clean something up, or write something for the youth group, he would exhibit enormous patience in receiving our cooperation.

I think oftentimes this patience was taken advantage of, but I think that ultimately, Ben gave us space in completing our tasks to teach us that we should do inconvenient things for others; that we should want to sacrifice our time to be more like the Savior who sacrificed everything for us. Pastor Ben sacrificed so much for us, but– learning from Jesus– did so humbly. In all the time, effort, and money he spent on WCAC’s youth group, he never once mentioned what he was giving up. He admitted his mistakes to his students– like how at one point he was impatient to meet a future wife, and how he felt he wasn’t friendly enough towards strangers– and made it so that we knew he wasn’t perfect, but that he was trying to make himself the best he could be.
He made himself approachable and made it clear that he cared about us– our walks with Christ, our families, and our school lives. Before I was baptized, Ben asked me if we could meet and talk about my life. I was inspired by the compassion he had for family members I told him about, the patience he had to listen to basically my whole life story, and the kindness he had to pray for me.

One of Ben’s best qualities, though, is his ability to forgive– he always maintained a caring relationship with every student, no matter if they had turned something in way past a deadline, were sleeping during Sunday School, or didn’t clean what he had asked them to clean. Just as Paul instructed, Ben forgave whatever grievances he had against us, and I think there’s something to be learned from that. And over all these virtues, I see Ben’s capacity for love as the greatest, and the love he shows for Annie, Emmaus, his parents, and the rest of the congregation is a great example for all of us. Let us not forget what a huge blessing Ben Tzeng has been for us, and let us pray for his successful continuation of God’s work in St. Louis.