I had the time to meditate deeply on life on the plane heading towards Korea, the motherland. When you travel on an airplane, you sometimes would face bad air turbulence. During these times, we experience the plane wavering. I have never had air travel without its wavering. Wavering is a process that we must go through in air travel. This time around, the airplane was wavering a few times when the air currents were not good. I experienced a pretty violent wavering, which went on for a while. At that time, the captain stopped everyone from moving. He made us fasten seat belts and withhold from going to the bathroom. At that moment, all crewmembers also stopped moving for a while.
You must stop for a while when you experience violent wavering in your life. When you are violently wavering, you must follow God’s guidance as if you were following the instructions of the captain on an airplane. Just as you leave everything to the captain on the plane, you must leave everything to God. I learn how to leave everything every time I ride an airplane. Air travel allows us to surrender our life with our hands open. We also need to train ourselves to surrender everything to God in our pilgrimage. There are many times in which life is not smooth. There is a time when everything wavers no matter how much we try. At that time, we must open our hands and leave everything to God. We must switch from the life of activity to passivity. Through that process we become deeply rooted in God.
A tree deepens its roots while it wavers. Therefore, the wavering is not just bad. Through wavering, we grow inward like a tree that grows even further down. There is another lesson I learned from the wavering on the plane. It is the fact that the wavering does not lasts forever. If you wait a little, the wavering stops, and the airplane calms back down and flies to the destination. Just like a shower that passes, the wavering always stops. Life does not end when it wavers. Through the wavering, we grow more and more. We learn how to live in the midst of wavering. You will learn how to live embracing some problems. I thought about what was the most important thing in a wavering plane. It was love.
To live is to love. There is no beautiful, holy, and noble word like “love.” Love is a great power. We endure anything because of love. We overcome everything because of love. We endure all the pain because of love. The happiness of life is in loving and being loved. God is love. God sacrificed His only Son for us because of His love. Jesus sacrificed everything for us because of His love. Love is a sacrifice. The way to know how much we love someone is to see how much we sacrificed for them. Jesus sacrificed everything because He loved us. Jesus lived a wavering life for us. For this reason, He understands us who live a wavering life. He understands our suffering, agony, and pain. We understand others as much as we love. The more you love, the more you understand.
We had arrived at Incheon Airport early in the morning and waited for another flight to Busan. It was a long journey. After arriving in Busan, we took a break and then attended the R & R Global Leadership Forum. On the first evening, we watched a movie on the late Rev. Ok Han-heum’s discipleship and shared a serious conversation about discipleship. We had time to pray for the Korean and the immigrant church, as well as reflect on the way of discipleship and discipleship training. The late Rev. Ok Han-heum was a wonderful pastor who devoted his whole life to the ministry of making disciples. While recalling his life, I had a precious time of looking back at my own life and my pastoring.
Every time I visit my motherland, I learn many things. On the first night, Pastor Cho Bong-hee of Mokdong Global Church gave me a gift, “How to Survive and How to Grow,” written by Kim Hyun-joong. It was a good book that explained how to survive and grow in a difficult time. One night passed, but I learned a lot during the day. Travel always gives me the gift of precious learning. So even though it is difficult, traveling is a great pleasure for me. Today early in the morning, my wife and I got up and spent time together with meditation on the Word and prayer. I interceded for you and especially for those who are having difficulties. I visited the motherland with cautions about a potential war, but the motherland seems surprisingly peaceful. Please continue to intercede for our homeland and the ministry of this insufficient servant.
Reverend Joshua Choon-Min Kang is the senior pastor of New Life Vision Church, located in Los Angeles. This is one of the weekly letters he writes to his congregation. For the original, visit www.nlvc.org.
