Category: Travel

It’s More Blessed to Rescue Than to Be Rescued

A woman weeping on the sidewalk taught me something about God.

If you haven’t read the previous postmore blessed to rescue, how we came across a desolate, helpless stranger in the Seoul airport and what happened, you should go there first. This is part two.

Like I said at the end of that post, I learned something about God that day.

I’d known God for a long time. By the immeasurable grace of Christ, I heard the gospel as a young child and responded in repentance and faith. Very early I learned that God is the cosmic rescuer and we’re the rescued. Yes! Hallelujah! Thank you, Father.

But one day I read Ephesians 1 where Paul obsesses about God getting blessed as He rescues sinners. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,” (Ephesians 1:3 ESV).

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What Do You Say to a Weeping Stranger?

In September 2000 Valerie and I, with a friend, June, flew to Seoul, South Korea, the first leg of a trip to Siberia.  We spent the night on the campus of the Yoido Full Gospel Church, at 700,000 the largest church in the world. It was Saturday evening and a loud, all-night prayer meeting was going on in the sanctuary next door to the dorm. We slept, but not much. And watched a Nebraska University football game live!

Worshippers entering Yoido Full Gospel Church

After the early service Sunday morning, a hospitable young man from the church showed us around the city for a couple of hours before we took a taxi back to the airport to go on to Khabarovsk, Russia.

When we arrived at the terminal and got out at the curb we saw something curious. A young woman, surrounded by luggage and holding her baby, stood on the sidewalk, quietly weeping as crowds of travelers hurried by. No one seemed to notice her. But we were drawn to her.

“Are you okay?” June asked. And she told us her story, speaking in English with a Russian accent.

She and her husband, their twelve-year-old daughter and baby had flown all night from Moscow to Seoul. The family was moving to Korea where he had a job waiting. They had arrived at the other terminal, visible some distance away. They collected their luggage and went to the taxi stand to come to this terminal to catch their domestic flight.

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