This Way To Heaven

I don’t know how many times I came to you whenever I didn’t see you at church for a couple of weeks. Hey, where have you been? Is everything okay? Long time no see! Man, I miss you! etc. I called you or texted but lately I’ve been using Facebook. It seems like I am chasing you around and not willing to let you go. You probably feel annoyed by me and perhaps ask yourself a question: Why is this Asian guy so persistent in taking me back to church? Is he stalking me? ... Truly, it is not just that I'm doing my job. But there is something inside my heart that immediately feels empty whenever I don’t see an individual that I care so much about that day. The result of that feeling is to chase you around asking where you have been. Many people, especially young people, don’t feel that going to church is necessary anymore. They usually have a group of people that’s more fun to hang out with. But maybe you should give the church a chance. It is a community, a family that I’ve been trying to raise. But think about it: hanging out every day with a bunch of fun people does not make us a community. People live together in armies and prisons and college dorms and they are not communities unless they live out the same values and the same center of love. We have to share a common vision. We have to want good for one another. We have to be able to draw from the same well together. What makes us one community and one family is that we have to be committed to the same eternal things together. That’s really what I want to see happen in our church. Life would be so lonely if we didn’t have a support system that cares about our life. Life would be so difficult if we decided to hang out with people who just want to have fun all the time but refuse to be the shoulder to cry on whenever we experience misery. In church, we have a space to laugh and to cry. It is a safe environment to cherish our friendship and to weep over our brokenness as human beings. I am totally aware that the church is not always a happy place to be. There are many "crappy" churches where a bunch of hypocrites live and thrive. But surely, I can tell you otherwise. I find the life at church empowering. I grew up within it. Both my parents were ministers all their lives. If you ask me whether they ever pushed me to attend the church, my answer is no! They gave me enough freedom despite their status. I could choose to go away completely without any resistance. But the church keeps calling me back. For me the church is home. I met my wife and many wonderful friends, like you, all at church. And believe me, I want to spend the rest of my life hanging out with wonderful people like you. Maybe we don’t have that beautiful community just yet, that’s why you stop coming and some of you decided to leave the church. I don’t blame you. But if I ask you to help raising this family together, will you help me? Vincent

During four hours drive from our camping spot at Sly Park back to San Jose, Arthur, one of our college friend proposed a game to kill the boredom. The game was simple: everybody in the car must compete by finding and calling out loud words in cars, traffic signs, or billboard signs along the road that we pass starting with the alphabet A to Z. The first person who completes it to letter Z wins. For example if you are on letter E then if you we the ‘Exit sign, you may call it...: E, for Exit! then you move on to the next letter. Filling words from A all the way to P was easy. But when we all came to Q, everybody had to stop and look very hard. Nobody could find a word starting with letter Q for almost an hour, when finally I saw a huge truck bearing a big sign: ‘Quality Cleaner’ coming from the right side of the car, and of course I shouted: ‘Q, for Quality!!!’ I never played this game before, but it’s very exciting and surely killed the boredom out of us. Words are everywhere but not until us intentionally looking that we realize that some of interesting words do exist. The same happens with God. God is everywhere, but so often we ignore his presence with our cluttered minds. Sometimes it takes us to intentionally stop and look carefully to finally find that He is always with us, along the way. -Vinny-