I went to a memorial service for my grandmother today. Or rather, yesterday since it's now well past midnight.
Thirty-two years ago, she passed away after living a long life of service to her Lord dedicated to the lives of others. She was an amazing woman, deserving of the greatest of honors for the love that she poured out to others. I don't mean that in a trite way. While I don't in any way disparage the love that people show their family members, her love was beyond that. Yes, her love was for her family, but it was who she counted in her family that's amazing.
Okie Kim (김옥이 전도사) was born in 1907 and as a young woman in colonial Korea (under Japanese occupation) went to seminary in what would later become Seoul Theological University. After graduating, she served in ministry at various churches before joining a small orphanage in war torn Korea. She raised the children in her care as her very own. Strict when she needed to be, but always loving.
You see, she's not my grandmother because she's related to me by blood. Through I won't get into too many details right now, my father ended up in her orphanage when he was around five years old. Though he would later find his biological mother after graduating from college - for all intents and purposes, Okie Kim was his mother.
She never married and never had any kids of her own; yet, the people that call her "mom" are nearly innumerable. She took in children who were rejected by the world for having lost their parents, some children even having been rejected by their parents and abandoned, and called them her own. She shared the love of Jesus with them, and through His grace and love, were able to minister to them and raise them up.
It's doubtful that my father would have been the man that he is today if not for the care, advice, counsel, and love that Okie Kim gave him as a child. He respects my biological grandmother and loves her still, but she's still not his "mom" and I can completely understand why. It's because the parenting that he received as a child, that he had as a teenager, the mom that he turned to as a young adult was Okie Kim.
Okie Kim passed away years before I was born, before my parents were even married. Still, I know her love because the love that I receive from my father is a direct reflection of her love for him, and the nurturing heart that she gave to him. In today's memorial, much of the audience at the service was made up of the children who still live in that orphanage. They've never seen her or heard her voice, let alone known her. These children were born after they first started having memorial services for her. Even then, everyone at the memorial service was impacted by the life and love that she gave. She could never have imagined her impact on people she couldn't know, but the impact on the lives that she did touch will remain long and last well after anyone has forgotten the name of Okie Kim. It will go on because those lives will impact lives in the future.
In the scheme of things, she could have been more successful, built a bigger orphanage, and become as famous as Mother Teresa for doing the same work. But she's not, nor will she ever be. And I'm fairly certain that she'd be fine with that, from everything that every one has told me. Her life brought about a change in the world, one the world might ignore in light of the horrors of the Korean war, but God used her to bring the lost to Him in relationship with Jesus. God used her to save the lives of children without parents and she became their mother for them, but then did the greater thing by showing them to their Heavenly Father who would never leave them. Some people see a disconnect between a social gospel of service and a evangelistic gospel of salvation - she didn't. She lived the gospel in her life of love, and shared that with each life she touched.
It's easy for me to be egotistical. Case in point, I can't write a memorial to this woman without referencing her impact on me. But that has to be a lesson for me. It's easy for me to forget this woman's name, but I only need to talk with my dad to know her love through his love for me. And as that love is passed on, I can't doubt the impact of the love of Jesus Christ in my life, the lives of countless others that have been impacted, and the witness that her service bears to the Kingdom of God. I can only hope that I'm as respected and loved and mourned thirty-two years after I've passed on. But my greater hope must be this: that my life, however forgotten and meaningless to history that it might become, would have both an immediate and eternal impact so that people would know Jesus Christ through His love for the world.
All of my dad's ministry, all of my ministry, and everything I could claim to be in life is a direct reflection of the love that this woman gave. And all of it points to the greater love and glory of Jesus Christ, in whose name and for whose Kingdom purposes she served. I don't know whose lives I'll impact, but that's not my concern as much as it is God's. My concern must be that my life, my greatest strengths, my every energy and effort would all be dedicated to loving people as Jesus loves them, and in so doing make Him greater in the world.
I can't imagine the sacrifices she had to make in her life to save the lives of orphans in a war torn land, but as Okie Kim became less, Jesus Christ became more. Lord allow me to be the same.
Lord, thank you for Okie Kim (1907-1978)
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