June 9, 2008

The most haunting things that I have experienced, are, surprisingly not my own horror at my helplessness, but rather, the helplessness of others. For some odd reason, I connect with the grief of the fathers who have lost someone close to them more than I have with anyone else. This man on my left was a South Korean fisherman who had been abducted by the North. He fled from North Korea, but left behind his wife and his 25 year old daughter in North Korea. That is the face of a father who had lost his family. Their family is being, undoubtedly, tortured at this very moment. Look at this face clearly and recognize it, it is the face of a father, your father.

I thought I was in the clear during Sonia's funeral. Usually, to be honest, I don't know how to react. There is all this Hollywood bull that makes you think that you should react in a particular manner. I will tell you something though; the first pain that you feel when you lose someone is not sorrow, your automatic reaction is not crying. It is numbness, an automatic soul reaction, like you're bracing yourself for the worst when it's is already over. During the funeral, we all lined up to see Sonia and pay our respects. I was ready as the man before me stepped to offer his condolences to Sonia's father. But, I broke down, when Sonia's father collapsed on the neck of that man, not crying picturesque tears of long-partings, but deepened unabashed weepings, mournings of frustration of his helplessness. He collapsed, as that man in the picture had collapsed, from grief.

My grandmother (on my mother's side) is the one whom I most vividly remember during my mother's funeral. I had come up to the edge of the coffin; her skin had an unnatural hue, and I touched her face. It felt like exactly like the hardened shell of orange grinds, but there was no heat, not reaction. As I stepped off to the side, I heard the moans of my grandmother, "In-Sook, ah! My baby! What are you doing in that coffin? I'm supposed to die first! In-Sook, ah!" While walking to the coffin, her entire gait had shifted into a grotesque posturing of half-collapsing and, and if sorrow could could be translated into movement, great dramatic swoops and halts. It was a most unnatural movement. I had been repulsed by the deadness of my mother's face, but my grandmother, she adoringly tried to hug In-Sook, her daughter. Once again, her laments, her collapsing.

Now, imagine, this is the depth of grief at human level. But, surely, the things of man are not like the things of God! If this is true, then surely, the grief of man, this entire consummation of a person's nefes, is nothing compared to the grief of a God who had loosened death upon his own son! If human grief consumes an entire person, how much more heightened and emboldened is grief when forcibly yoked unto an eternal God, a God not of lukewarmness, but of radicalness? The grief that God the Father must have felt, which correlates to the wrath that Jesus, the Son, must have been nothing less than infinite. God felt infinite sorrow as Jesus bore infinite wrath.

I wonder though, can we accuse God of filicide, and even, in sense, suicide? Yes! What can be the only explanation then? That God loved you/me more than he loved his own son, his own spirit? Isn't that the logical explanation? Surely then, God is love! Scriptures clearly say, "The one who finds his life will lose it, but he who loses his life for my sake will find it" and also, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

Now, I ask, is it possible to talk about something else?

Thank God that our Jesus has defeated death and sin, and that He is faithful, and we are his and he is mine forever.

Also, that Jesus does not call us to be good, but to do good. We can only be good by doing good, with the Love of God. Just as Jesus says, "Is not the gold in the temple made sacred by the holiness of the temple?" Surely, are we not made good by the goodness of our actions, empowered by God?

I don't know, maybe we should talk about something else.

Jae Han