Craving Communion

I tell her I'm thinking baguettes. She says no, Koreans don't really like them. How about something else from the bakery and some milk? I say that will be fine. We get on the bus and head downtown. It's Sunday evening and I'm craving communion.

That afternoon, I'd been reading in Brother Yun's Living Water, when the ache suddenly arose. That desire to have soul communion with other believers, the kind of communion that happens rather spontaneously, in deep, peaceful silence, in candlelight fellowship, in the washing of feet, in earnest prayer. A few days earlier, I'd known it at the lunch table, sitting between Karen and Juhee, when Juhee finished giving grace, “in Jesus' name.” Yes, Jesus was there, and I could feel the delight of his presence, the grace of him bringing us together. Suddenly I yearned to break bread and share the cup, but Karen and Juhee were hours away and there was no one for me to ask in the community. And that's when I thought of the poor. Jesus is in the poor. Could I share communion with him there? In loaves of bread? I call Mi-hyang and ask if she'd like to go with me. She loves the poor, and she said yes!

We arrive at Uijeongbu Station, where I've often seen old, weathered men begging for change or sleeping on cardboard mats. But today we can't find anyone who fits the picture. I joke, “Maybe the economy's improved and there are no poor?” We look in front of the station, behind the station, walk around the neighborhood, check the unemployment office, and, after striking out everywhere, we finally find a place to eat dinner.

I'm embarrassed and confused, and I feel pressure to either explain away or ignore my failed plan, or else account for it. I swallow a bite of spaghetti and blurt out what I've been afraid to say: “When this kind of situation arises, when you thought you were supposed to do something but then the pieces don't fit together, what do you think the reason is? Was the Holy Spirit not behind it? And if the Holy Spirit wasn't behind it, can I not hear his voice? Did I mistake my own plan for His?”

Mi-hyang isn't at all upset that we haven't found anyone to share food with; she's just thankful for the time we can spend together. I'm glad for that too, but I still feel something's missing. I bite back the tears and dare another confession: “I think my heart is good, but my ears are bad.” I appreciate the way she neither condemns me nor denies it.

We finish our ice cream and are walking around the market, when suddenly we spot a commotion on the left. There are two middle-aged woman pushing and shoving each other in front of a comforter shop. A man emerges from the shop and tries to restrain the woman closest to us, but she carries on with surprising strength. As she flails her arms wildly, throws herself on the ground, kicks her legs, and refuses to be restrained or consoled, it becomes apparent that she may not only be drunk but also mentally ill.

We stare with the other onlookers, and Mi-hyang asks me what I think we should do. I tell her I don't know, but we should pray. I pray for peace, but the peace isn't coming. In the fighting, the woman's shirt has come up and the man considerately yanks it back down. The crowd stares on. The woman falls to the ground again and she has wet her khaki pants clear through. She's crying as she gets up and staggers away, toward the sidewalk where she kneels down and hangs her head in the nook of a wall. I stare after her and it hits me that she is the most broken person we've seen all evening. Just the kind Jesus would go after. Despite her nice clothes, handbag, and shiny watch, she is the poorest of the poor.

Mi-hyang and I walk over to her, and my only thought is to pray. But I think it's impossible to pray for someone so desperate without touching them, too. I reach out and timidly pat her back, afraid she might recoil or lash back violently, but she doesn't and so I rub her back with sure, wide strokes and try to brush off the dirt and litter bits from the street (this only by God's grace, given my aversion to germs^^).

We help her to her feet and walk her across the street to a little restaurant. The handful of patrons stare wide-eyed as we enter and sit down, and I can't blame them; we must be quite the sight. In between dozens of attempts to call her son, the woman wails on and on about the terrible shopkeeper and his wife, how she'd thought they were her friends but they'd betrayed her. I get very little of what she says, but Mi-hyang paraphrases later, and what I do piece together makes it harder for me to love her. Gulp. It's easy to love a poor, helpless woman, much harder to love a poor, guilty one.

She dying for revenge and can't stop crying. When the woman can't reach her son by phone, Mi-hyang starts calling with her own phone, and feeds the weeping woman by hand, one spoonful at a time. I see a new dimension of love. I take over the feeding while Mi-hyang goes out to make some more calls. The woman reeks of street and urine, and I can't eat for the stench. I recognize pride growing up among the good things in my heart. This is dangerous ground. How to keep the left hand from knowing what the right is doing.

The woman's son finally answers and gives us directions, and we get a taxi and drive across town. I smile and tell Mi-hyang now I know why we came. This was God's good purpose for us. But if we hadn't been looking? Oh, the things you see when your eyes are peeled for opportunities to serve and love. We arrive at the son's apartment, but he doesn't come out to meet her. He says she does this all the time; he's not a bad son, he's just tired of it. Mi-hyang tells me more about the situation on our way back home. Apparently, the woman and shopkeeper were part of a love triangle, and the woman was hysterical because he had betrayed her. As the ugliness and unworthiness of the situation sink in, the glory of loving the broken slowly fades out and contemplation takes over.

Mi-hyang asks if I'm okay, and I say yes. I tell her thank you and I'm sorry.

Thankful for what, and sorry for what? she laughs. Thankful for all you did, and sorry the problem got so big.

She says she had several experiences helping people like that in college, but now she avoids them. I feel a bit foolish, like she's discovered something I haven't. We both realize we wouldn't have gotten involved without the other. I tell her now I understand why Jesus sent the disciples out in pairs of two. And there it is, the same communion I'd felt in the restaurant, it swells between us, and I reach over and pat her leg. God satisfied my craving indeed.

This weekend, Christians all around the world will share the Lord's Supper together for World Communion Sunday. How might we also share that communion outside the church walls, in hearts sharing a common brokenness and surrender, a common pouring out and gain?

Jirisan

Sitting here at Cafe Lu with a warm glass of sweet lemon citron tea is Part One of my treat for finishing the backpacking trip at Jirisan yesterday. Part Two will be at Burger King this evening when I use the gift certificate I've been holding on to since April. (Yay for finding long-forgotten birthday gifts!)

Three years ago on our school trip to Jirisan, we took the “easy” course and it about killed me. The second day, my legs were sore and the third day they were searing. I didn't know how I could keep climbing. This time we were supposed to take the “hard” course, which I heard even professional hikers stay away from. (What classifies a 'professional' hiker, anyway?) Anyway, I was pretty worried.

Each teacher was assigned to a group of eight or so students to hike and eat meals with. They assigned the best English speakers to my group, and the two girls did a great job keeping us on schedule and preparing the food, which consisted of rice and side dishes which the students brought with them. The choice side dishes for hikers here are SPAM, dried seaweed laver, and tuna. Entrees were instant you-name-it: curry, hamburger, teriyaki chicken, meatballs—and dry, pressed soup cubes that unraveled into seaweed strips or broke off into fish bits and were really the most real thing we ate besides the rice. For snacks and boosts of energy, we each had a bag of assorted candy and chocolate. I never thought I'd tire of sugar, but I was surprisingly envious of the man I saw eating a cucumber on day three. “Oh, to eat a real vegetable!”

Well, it turns out the “hard” course differed from the “easy” course only on day one, and only in that we hiked up to the trail head instead of driving to it. It was four strenuous hours of climbing rocks, sweating profusely, and breathing in noisy whooshes of hot air. But there was nothing about it that required professional skill, only perseverance and muscle.

The second and third days we followed the same course as a few years ago. It was fun to recognize all the lodges where we had previously eaten and slept.

On the fourth day, we got up bright and early at 4:30am, in time to see the sunrise over Cheonwangbong (천왕봉), the highest peak on the South Korean peninsula. It was hard climbing and I'd forgotten my flashlight so had to keep pace with the students ahead of me. The wind picked up when we got to the summit, so it was very cold but exciting to see the sunrise. Usually it's too cloudy to see it, but both years we were blessed with clear skies.

We came down by a steep route of rocks and boulders that looked like dirt-covered potatoes, some still half-buried and others fully snatched from the ground. If you see any photos of Jirisan trails that are not COMPLETELY covered with rocks, those photos are not representative. Here are a few, and you can find more on Facebook. Enjoy!

  

 

My favorite flower at Jirisan (지리바꽃, or Aconitum chiisanense Nakai)



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If you've still got some time, scroll on down for an embarrassing story and some reflection. :-)

I have no idea how it happened—stepping from one rock, over an eighteen-inch gap, to another—did I look up and miss the second rock completely, or did I just step awkwardly, teeter and then fall? Anyway, I very suddenly found myself leaning backwards over a rock, facing the way I'd come, on my back, upside-down, with my legs straight up and my feet swinging aimlessly above my head. I let out a cry of surprise and started laughing from embarrassment and confusion, when Bom Jun, a boy ahead of me (fortunately, there was no one behind me!) ran back, yelling, “Teacher! Teacher! Are you OK?” I quickly sat up, relieving my backpack from its suffocating position between me and the rock. Bom Jun picked my Nalgene bottle up off the ground and wedged it back into the pouch on my pack and then handed me my hat, which had also fallen on the ground. After making sure I was OK, he started to hike on and then turned back and said, “Teacher, your bag is life.” I thought he meant it was like a good luck charm that had kept me from getting hurt and I chuckled agreeably. But when I replayed the incident, remembering me lying backwards over an unyielding rock, ponytail touching the ground, feet in the air, backpacking smashed beneath me, I realized what he meant—my backpack had greatly cushioned my fall and kept my back from being hurt. Even today it's not a bit sore.

As I mentioned in the last post, I've been reading this book, One Thousand Gifts, about being joyful in the grace all around you, and like the author, I tried to thank God for everything about the situation, believing it all to be grace, and mindful that it had all passed through God's hands before I experienced it. Thank you for my backpack, and for Bom Jun, and even for that embarrassing fall—Why not? It all turned out okay. And I was thankful and felt loved and blessed, knowing I'd been spared great injury. It all ended well and, yes, God is good. But then I questioned, as the author and so many others have, What if it hadn't been OK? What if I had not been spared? What if in a freak fall over a rock, I had cracked a vertebrae and been paralyzed? Would that still have been grace? What of God then? Is God still good? Is God still Love? These are not just hypothetical questions. It's easy to say God is good when things work out. But what about when they don't?

Perhaps it's like Bom Jun said: “Your bag is life.” That bag I'd carried over 6,283 feet of rocks and bridges to the top of a mountain and back down, that bag that made my shoulders ache with tension and my abs with strain, that bag that had been a burden to me, which I had so eagerly shrugged off at every chance, that very bag had saved me from much greater harm. It was God's grace to me for my journey.

I'm not sure just how that metaphor fits with the theology of laying your burdens down, but I believe the hard things we have to bear in this life—the things we have little, if any, control over—are opportunities for God to be glorified and us drawn closer to Him. That bitter weight hanging around your neck, the one that's bent your head heavy toward the ground, sling it around behind you, and let it be the weight that pulls your head up toward heaven.

Not What I Want

Back in Korea! It's hard to believe I'm into my fourth year already. Sometimes I'm surprised by how comfortable and well-adapted I feel here, but other times I'm back at square one, lonely and doubtful of my purpose here. But I know this is where God has led me, and I have hope that through this experience He is training and shaping me for something more down the road. Someone said recently, "Everyone thinks their current situation is training for something more; but I think our whole life is training for eternity." I guess that's right; we are always in training.

I was talking with a missionary yesterday, and she said she and her family are going to New Zealand soon, as her husband has been asked to coordinate the Korean mission work there. I asked her if she was happy about that or disappointed, and she paused as if she'd never stopped to consider. "Mm, I'm not disappointed, but I'm not happy either; I'm just a missionary, so I go. I do worry about my parents though, as they're getting along in age..." Her answer surprised me, and yet I could relate (not that my parents are old!).

Most of the time I'm very happy and content to be in Korea, but on gloomy days I bewail my loneliness and limitations and wonder what I'm still doing here. Neither my career nor my education are advancing, I'm not building up savings or starting to pay off a house, my relationships have seemingly maxed-out in this community, and my Korean is still halting. There are reasons to feel discouraged.

And yet... I'm so glad I haven't quit because of those feelings. As much as I have yet to learn here, I've already grown so much. I've learned about giving and sharing and teaching and loving and persevering--especially persevering--and trusting God for situations out of my control, and yielding my will to another's, and trusting God to provide and be faithful and finish His work in me.

So whether I say it aloud or not, this is my urgent plea: "God, don't let me get in my own way!" In any season of life--moreover, on any given day--if I asked myself what would make me happy, my answer would vary according to my narrow scope of vision. Happiness--as well as sadness, thank goodness--are just temporal, rather fleshy feelings. But true and enduring happiness, which is really joy, is rooted in trust* and grown by obedience. We trust that God is good and faithful and has our best and His glory in mind, and we act out our trust by walking with Him where He leads.

I fear we too often miss the point--and the Way--by asking ourselves what we want, when what will really bring us joy is following our Father like a child walking through a frenzied crowd latches on to his mother's hand and stays close at her heels. "Do you want to stay in Korea or move back to the U.S.?" "Do you want to work at a Christian school or a public school, or maybe a private academy?" "Do you want to live in the city or the country?" These questions aren't bad, but I find them a bit irrelevant, as the missionary did whom I questioned yesterday. I think we focus too much energy directing ourselves in the ways we want to go and assessing how much we like different options (or pseudo-options, as we often don't have the control we think we do), at the expense of missing the way God is calling us and adjusting our steps to fall gracefully and nimbly on the terrain He leads us through. We are the musicians, not the Composer, and not the Conductor. Usually when I'm frustrated, complaining, or plain discontent, it's because I've confused my role and measured a situation according to my plan or my preferences. If I were to give any advice, it would be to not have too many preferences or be closed off to too many possibilities, because in whatever area you are closed off, that is where God likes to teach surrender. :-)

We can have thrills and shallow, fleeting happiness, and even believe we are enjoying God's best in our life. But in the end we will see what is real gold and what is fool's gold. Fool's gold can be awfully deceiving. As we continue to build our houses--on the Rock, that is--let us continue to consult the Blueprint, keep going back to the Designer, keep checking in with the Architect, to make sure its done according to the Plan and not by our own fancies. And really, why would we want to tweak the original, when it was made by the One who choreographed dancing colors for the Northern Lights, put the pulse in the ocean, and made each of the 30,000 lenses in a dragonfly eye.** How could our best masterpieces ever exceed the Great Creator's? And the house we build is not for our own glory, our own mortal preferences and will, but for the eternal soul, the place where God lives, a house for His glory.

*As Ann Voskamp (a fabulous writer--check out her blog) unveils in her book One Thousand Gifts, the Greek word pisteuo which appears 220 times in the New Testament, most often translated as "belief," really means "to put one's faith in; to trust." As she figures then, "authentic, saving belief" is the "very real, everyday action of trusting."

**In researching this fact on dragonflys, I found another that could be the foundation for an entirely new blog post. Get this: "Most of the dragonfly life span is spent in the water as a nymph. During this period, which can last up to a couple of years, it sheds its skin many times. Finally it crawls onto land to break out of its skin as a full fledged dragonfly." Is this not an allegory for our earthly Christian life?! Most of the earthly Christian life is spent in a blurred reflection of the Glory. During this period, which can last up to 80 or 90 years, the Christian shares in Christ's death and resurrection at many intervals along the way. Finally the Christian dies a final death, breaking out of its mortal body to join Christ in heaven as a full-fledged co-heir of God.