Sunday, 4/20/14
I have an old Korean story for symbolizing
Easter. Just fifty years ago, during the spring of 1964, I was serving my tenth
year as pastor of Yang Yang, a town of mud walls and thatched roofs.
We‘d had the worst winter ever,
and with people running out of fire wood and rice, the winter hung on forever. It
was good for the dealers who were boosting prices out of sight.
Our church sat atop a steep hill
overlooking the public school yard. Coming out from our 6:30 Mass every
morning, I had made a habit of watching the struggles of a nine-year-old
student with his book bag strapped to his back. While all the other kids
plodded the path around our hill to the school, that little boy felt the need to
climb up one side of our hill, then carefully step down the path on the other
side.
One morning, I was watching the
kid making his quick passage across to the down path, when I was surprised to see him stop and hunker for a bit at
the edge of our yard. He then went on his way, and I went in for breakfast.
Then, at ten o’clock I had another
surprise. I happened to glance out at the mailman making his passage across our
yard. When I saw him stop and bend down at the spot where the little boy had
stopped I walked out. He was a friendly fellow, so I asked what had caught his attention.
Running the yard’s rim there were
the frozen remains of what thr year before we had dug up for a flower bed. Standing next to the mailman,
I looked down on a single green sprout. It was like a single spike of
asparagus, and the mailman said, “Paikhwa
gotchida.” Or, “It’s a paik-hwa flower.”
Going into the house, and looking paik-hwa up in the dictionary, I found that it was a lily.
Then, through the day I saw one
person after another stopping to look at the lily. They were not so much joyous
over that single lily, as over the promise it gave that all of nature would
come back to life.
2 comments:
Happy Faster Father and God Bless. May the blessings of Easter remain with you always.. "Your Favorite Student"
This is a lovely story with a great reminder to count our blessings. The Lord works in mysterious ways. God bless you, and I hope every Easter is as happy as the little lily made the little village.
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