Yesterday I attended Misawa's National Prayer Lunchoen. Aside from the good food and a time of fellowship with people of faith from across the base, it was a significant event because our guest speaker was a Japanese pastor speaking about the mission, "One Year Later".
Before his speech, representatives from the different faith groups read from their holy scriptures, and then we read part of Lincoln's call for a national day of prayer in 1863. His words were eloquent and challenging, as ever. It's too bad politicians can't speak this way anymore and be respected:
We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!
It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.
Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th. day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer. And I do hereby request all the People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.
All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace.
After that, they introduced Pastor Yoshiya Kondo of Morioka Baptist Bible Church. He was a young-looking Japanese man with a great sense of humor. He had a young colleague there to help translate his message. Even though this format of speaking in Japanese and then translating each sentence made his talk twice as long as it would normally have been, no one noticed. We all hung on his every word, mourning with him as he shared his story and praying for revival in the nation of Japan. Below is a rough transcript of his speech:
March 11, 2011 was a day where over 20,000 people perished. For those who lost everything, March 11, 2011 is the day when time froze. Even though he is a pastor, he didn't even know how to begin to pray on the day of the disaster.
He is originally from Fukishima prefecture. The house he grew up in is only 5 kilometers from the power plant. When he turned on the TV that day and watched the footage of people running away from the plant, he saw friends, neighbors, friends from church. This disaster struck two places that are very close to his heart.
As he struggled to find what to speak on the Sunday after the earthquake, God drew his attention to Revelation 3:1-3. "I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. 2 Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God. 3 Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you."
As Pastor Kondo and his staff have been serving on the coat they've met so many people who are still alive on the outside, but are dead on the inside. Everyone keeps asking him how this disaster has affected the faith of the people in Japan. His answer is that they are open wide but dead inside.
Before the tsunami, the Japanese people had extremely close community in their towns. Evangelists could try to go witness there but every door would be shut tight. Even if you moved to that town for years, you would till be treated as a foreigner. But now the people gladly open their homes to them. As he and his staff have gotten to know these people, they have realized how dead they are in their hearts. Everything they had built before the earthquake has crumbled do the ground. Their homes, work, wealth and community have shattered. They keep hearing phrases from throughout Japan like "keep going!" "Never Give Up!" But they have no meaning.
Churches throughout Japan sent people to serve on the coast after the tsunami. At first, the survivors hesitated to open their doors, but now they do that openly. These days, they don't want supplies or stuff, they just want people to come down and talk with them. They have heard so many sad stories from people who have lost loved ones.
Several months ago, the coast was covered in piles of rubble. Now the rubble has been cleared away, leaving open spaces of nothing. They are not able to rebuild yet so the land is empty, just like the hearts of these people.
Pastor Kondo had the opportunity to return to his house in Fukishima. He had to wear a protective suit and couldn't stay for more than four hours. It was strange because everything looked exactly the same, but there was no sound. The house was still standing but it was empty. Just like the land and his old home, the people of Japan may still be standing but their hearts are full of rubble and fear and they don't know how to find hope. He sometimes feels like all of the volunteers have made very little progress.
Every week he prays that God will guide them to those He wants them to meet, who need them. One staff member met an old grandma who was considering committing suicide. She had lost everything and couldn't find a reason to prolong her life. But the staff worker keeps returning to visit her and has built a relationship with her.
There is one area they visit frequently. The people have come to know that they represent a Christian church. It's kind of funny because every time they pull up the little Japanese kids run out yelling: "Christ has come!"
This Sunday marks the one year aniversary of the disaster. How should we pray? There is one word that God has drawn his attention to through Isaiah 49:15, which says:
"Can a mother forget the baby at her breast
and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget,
I will not forget you!"
He tries to encourage the people he's serving that while he promises never to forget them, God will also never forget them.
Pastor Kondo's wife gave birth to a new baby boy in January. With the birth of his son, the word "life" has really been on his heart. While the boy was in his mother's womb, the world around him was broken and confused. They named him a greek word I can't remember, but it means "to flow in". In scripture it describes how receiving salvation is signalled by the holy spirit flowing into our hearts. When the waters of the tsunami flowed into Japan, their hope flowed out with it. So his prayer is that the victims living along the coast, as well as the entire nation of Japan, will experience revival as the holy spirit flows into their lives and gives them hope.
