（一位朋友建议我把这则故事翻译成中文，于是我……）

 

那天上午的课结束以后，我开车回家的路上，出现了一个小小的奇迹。我太太坐在我身旁。她告诉我说，她原来打算，到星期三才向学生公布考试成绩。可是有几名学生一再要求她那天（即星期二）公布。最后她同意了。“你想要什么，得主动提出，”她说。“如果你不主动提出，那就永远也得不到。这就是美国文化。”她还把“美国文化”这四个字重复了一遍，以示强调。

“你知道这‘文化’是从哪里来的吗？”我问我太太。她似乎并不知道。于是我说，“是从《圣经》来的，出自‘马太福音’”。接着我告诉她，我在我班上所作的正好就是她在她班上所作的。

我班上有个名叫安德里亚的墨西哥女学生。那天一走进教室，她就要我公布考试成绩。我的课上了一半，她又再次提出这一要求。我作出了让步，很快把成绩计算出来，向全班公布。

接着，我向班上讲解了“ASK”这三个英文字母所代表的意思。“A”表示 “Ask”；“S”表示 “seek”；“K”表示 “knock”。我告诉学生说，这是《圣经》马太福音中的教导。随后我在黑板上写下了三句话：

“提出要求，你便会得到；

    进行寻找，你就会找到；

    敲门，门就会为你打开。”

后来，我还给学生见了一个亲身经历的真实故事。那是1985年，我当时在浙江省人民政府外事办公室担任接待处长。应美国新闻总署的邀请，我和我的顶头上司、省外办副主任蔡舜先生一起到美国做一个月的访问。在波士顿访问Houghton Mifflin出版公司时，我们见到了该公司首席执行官。他的办公室书架上放满了各种各样该公司出版的书籍。我瞧上一眼，立即注意到一本新出版的大型儿童英语辞典。我真想要这本辞典。但是我跟大多数中国人一样，觉得不好意思开口要。直到会见即将结束，我才突然想起我太太所谓的“美国文化”：只有你主动提出，才能得到你想要的东西。[1]在告别主人前的一刻，我鼓足勇气向他提出了要求。他爽快地答应了我的要求，把词典送给了我。

我太太平时不喜欢听我说到《圣经》。可是这一天却不同，她没有打断我的话，听我把话讲完。这是一个小小的奇迹。

我知道是谁让这个奇迹发生。不是别人，正是上帝。感谢主！

 

An ordinary miracle happened when I was driving home after class, my wife sitting next to me. She told me – for the second time – that she had planned not to tell the students the results of their exit test until Wednesday, but that some students urged her again and again to do that on Tuesday. She acquiesced in the end. “You have to ask to get what you want,” she said to me. “You will never get what you want if you don’t ask. That’s American culture.” She repeated the two words “American culture” for emphasis.

“Do you know where that ‘culture’ is from?” I asked my wife. She didn’t seem to know. “It’s from the Bible, the Book of Matthew, to be more exact,” I said. And I went on to tell her that I did exactly the same thing in my class that she had done in her class.

Andrea, a student form Mexico, wanted me to tell the class the test results the moment she stepped into the classroom, and she did it again when we were midway through the class. I relented and did some quick calculation [2] before I announced the scores.

Then I told the class about the acronym “ASK,” which stands for ask, seek, and knock, a basic teaching of the Bible. On the blackboard I wrote:

 

“Ask, and you’ll be given;

Seek, and you’ll find;

Knock, and the door will open for you.”[3]　

 

Additionally, I told a true story out of my own experience. Back in 1985, when I was working in Zhejiang Provincial Foreign Affairs Office (ZJPFAO) as a department chief, I was invited by the US Information Agency (USIA) to visit the US for one month together with my superior Mr. Cai Shun (蔡舜), [4] the then deputy director of the ZJPFAO. During a visit to Houghton Mifflin in Boston, we had a chance to visit the CEO in his office, whose book shelves were filled with all kinds of books HM had published. When I took a quick look, I was attracted by a newly published American Heritage Dictionary for children. I would love to have it, but like most Chinese, I was not bold enough to make my desire known to my host explicitly. It was not until the end of the visit that I thought of what my wife called “American culture” – you will get what you want if only you ask for it [5]– and thereby I plucked up my courage to make the request. Sure enough, my host gladly made a gift of the dictionary to me.

The day’s second ordinary miracle, however, was that my wife, who usually doesn’t want to hear me talk about the Bible, heard me through when I explained the acronym “ASK.” This, indeed, was the first time in years when she had the patience to hear me through.

 

I know who made the two miracles happen to me. Thank God for all this.

 

 

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