Three Cents Column by Director Bong of RGO 24! 'Although I am lacking and my writing is only worth as much as 'three cents...' I share the Sunday messages and interpret them with 'the language of the world.''
Regaining what was once lost is the ‘restoration of independence.’
The Republic of Great Han (the Republic of Korea) celebrated the 70th anniversary of the restoration of its independence. The regaining of the nation that was once lost is called the ‘restoration of independence.’ In broader terms, restoration of independence is the process of identifying what was lost and making it one’s own again. We Koreans currently have possession of our nation, and we escaped from utter poverty and became a global economic power. But then, why are we still seized with an unexplainable ‘sense of loss’?
Taegeukgi (Korean flag)
The time, thoughts, and the counterpart of love that were taken away.
If we live without knowing what we have lost, ‘the restoration of independence’ will become distant from us, as if it was somebody else’s story. For this reason, it is tremendous grace that this week’s message clearly revealed what people had lost in the course of living, as well as the fundamental cause of that unknowable sense of loss. The message precisely pointed out the sad reality that even though people keep losing ‘their time,’ ‘their thoughts,’ and ‘their counterpart of love,’ they are not even aware of the fact that they are losing them.
According to Pastor Jung Myeong Seok’s message, “A life that is like a day,” a lifetime passes by so quickly that it is like [a single] ‘a day’. Furthermore, if we deduct the time taken by sleeping, idle chit-chat, and indulging in TV or computer games, really, the time that is left for ‘life’ is not even a handful of time left. Actually, the resource of ‘time,’ which needs to be used for our own perfect salvation and success, is lost to that which has nothing to do with ‘us.’
Our ‘thoughts’ are the same. Our thoughts flow in random directions, following many meaningless forms of media, like a crazy person ‘wandering’ here and there. It makes me speechless to think that our ‘thoughts’ are not even our own in reality, but rather that we are living our lives having lost something.
Take back your ‘time’ and ‘thoughts,’ and be autonomous.
Since we keep losing our time and thoughts, we cannot find the world of the fundamental purpose of creation and the amazing love through which God makes history at a different level in every time period, and we cannot know the true counterpart of love. In other words, we are living our lives having lost these things. Restoration of independence starts from clearly recognizing what has been lost. If you realize clearly, then you have to do now what you could not do before because you were lacking what had been taken away.
Time cannot be brought back once it passes. Therefore, we should not lose our precious ‘time’ to unnecessary things but use it for ‘things that are like gold.’ If we lose our ‘thoughts,’ we cannot gain what we are suppose to gain, which God has permitted us to receive according to the right time, and so we suffer that great a loss. We should escape from this foolishness.
We should take back our ‘time’ and ‘thoughts’ so that we have control of them as autonomous beings. Furthermore, we should clearly recognize ‘the counterpart of love’ that was once lost, hold that counterpart tightly, and establish the world of true love. I am just thankful to God for giving us the time for the true ‘restoration of independence’ which individuals have to achieve and the time to shout “hooray independence!” at the top of our lungs on the street.