Once again, Advent has begun this year without fail. From the first Sunday, the church pulpit adorned in purple has seen its candles lit one by one. The purple wax, burning itself away to shine brightly, carries our tears and our pain as it melts. How mysterious and beautiful is the grace of God, who comes to us as the infant Jesus we so earnestly await? To us, frail ones who cannot even dare to entrust our hands to His saving touch, the Lord comes, proclaiming the beginning of new life.

About three years ago, on an evening two weeks before Christmas, the sky grew dark as though snow might pour down at any moment. All night long, storms raged, thunder and lightning crashing like wild beasts roaring in the mountains. Though I usually love the sound of rain, that night it chilled me with fear. By morning, as if the storm had never been, the sun shone on a clear winter’s day.

“Ring! Ring!”

It was already dusk. “Pastor, our daughter Lin… she’s gone forever!”

It was for my husband. Her trembling voice, struggling to suppress shock, reached me.

“…Gone?”

“…We went to the hospital… her body…”

She could not finish her words. I remembered Lin’s face, whom I saw once a year on Christmas Eve—her long brown hair, her slightly husky voice, a 22‑year‑old young woman. Her mother, Miruel, would sit beside her, radiant with joy. After worship, I would embrace Lin, proud and glad she had come.

“…Last night… in the storm… on the street…!”

“Miruel! We’re coming to you right away!” O God, why? Why her, of all people? The pastor sighed deeply, knowing there was no comfort left to offer, and gripped the steering wheel.

“Pastor! Even now, can you still say God is truly alive?”

Her grief had turned into a storm of rage.

She recounted how, after returning from school, she found a detective’s message on her recorder, summoning her to Queens Municipal Hospital. There she learned Lin was gone. “It’s too cruel! Too cruel! Everyone I loved has left me. My father died suddenly of a heart attack on the street. My mother passed away in the hospital. My husband perished in a fire. And now my daughter—while I, her mother, slept peacefully in bed, unaware she was dying in the rain. How can I ever ask forgiveness from Lin? How…?”

Her cries and fury left us with nothing to do but weep alongside her. Humanity boasts of conquering impossibilities, yet before the undeniable limits of life, we thrash in despair. Since moving here, Miruel’s suffering life has always pierced our hearts. Gentle, kind, beautiful—yet her very existence seemed destined for hardship. To ask what God’s plan might be was itself another despair.

She had lost her parents early, grown up with only a brother, studied special education for children with speech disorders, and married a young firefighter. Her happy newlywed life ended abruptly when, six months pregnant with Lin, her husband rushed out at dawn to answer a fire call and never returned. (Statistics show that in the U.S., about 5,000 civilians and 100 firefighters die in fires each year. N.Y. News Day, 12/5/92.)

Resolving to devote her life to her daughter, she poured all her love into Lin. When Lin asked, “Why did Dad leave without ever holding me?” Miruel would answer, “He loved you most of all. But God needed him, so he answered the call.” Yet even she did not understand the true meaning.

“Why? Why? God!”

At 28, widowed, she soaked her pillow with tears countless times, yet lived faithfully in her faith. But when Lin entered adolescence, she rebelled against her mother’s love, declared herself an atheist, wandered the streets, frequented bars, and spiraled out of control. She ran away, brought strangers home, smashed windows drunk, even started fires by tossing lit cigarettes. By 19, Lin was an alcoholic, unable to live a day without drink. Though she proclaimed freedom from God, she became enslaved to alcohol.

The pastor urged Miruel to be firm, even to force Lin into treatment. But Lin was her everything. She could not bear her daughter’s tears.

“Mom, I tried! I did my best! But I can’t anymore!”

Two days after leaving rehab together in tears, Lin escaped.

Miruel’s suffering was not only from Lin. She endured constant accidents—rear‑ended at red lights, hit by drunk drivers, breaking her arm in a fall, fracturing her pelvis in a school hallway. Yet her life was always spared.

Then came Lin’s note:

“Dear Mother, Thank you always for your love. I’m now 22. I can’t keep living like a child, troubling you. I’ve found a job as a waitress and will share a room with a friend. I’ll take some of my things today, leave the rest in the garage, and come back for them later. Love, Lin.”

Finding the note on the fridge, Miruel smiled faintly, her heart swelling with hope. Perhaps the tears of years were finally lifting.

But that night, a detective’s voice on the recorder shattered her peace. Lin had died around 3 a.m., strangled when her leather jacket caught on a fence zipper as she stumbled drunk near home.

“I never loved this house, or the furniture, or the car. I loved people! But everyone I loved has gone. I never asked God for much—only that Lin might marry someday, that I could pass this house to her, move to an apartment, and hold a grandchild once. That was my small dream. Now I will never love again. Never.”

Like a lioness who has lost her cub, she writhed in anguish. No one could approach her. She answered no calls, met no one, vanished from gatherings. Yet we believed God was still with her, comforting and healing.

“I will never celebrate Christmas again. It means nothing to me. Forgive me.” She cried this into the phone when the pastor called. Her cry was the powerless resistance of one still reaching for God. She could not forgive the God who had taken Lin. Her lament may never end.

And yet—this year again, the infant Jesus comes into our lowly places of sorrow and rage. Into the darkness where hope has sunk like an iceberg, He comes as light, as way, as life. He comes, clothing Himself in crimson, to begin anew even in our broken souls. Through Moses’ trials in the Exodus, through Job’s suffering, God worked all things together for good (Romans 8:28).

On Christmas morning, Miruel, who had crouched in darkness rejecting new life, quietly appeared at Sunday worship once more. And we saw—the Lord was with her life.

Ah! Now is the time to awaken, to wipe away tears, to rejoice and dance on Christmas Day!

The Lord is coming to find you and me!

© Wan-Hee Yoon, Faith Column #37, 1993