It was an early morning in Lent. The dawn moon still hung high in the sky, and I drove through a town wrapped in unshaken silence, heading toward the Grand Central Parkway. After taking the exit at Hoyt Ave, I would always see the same car waiting at the traffic light.

It was a gray sedan pulling a small trailer with a sign that read, “Coffee and Donuts for Sale.” Inside the trailer, aluminum shelves held small glowing bulbs that made one instantly think of hot coffee and warm donuts.

I don’t remember when it first began catching my eye, but on my way to pick up the sisters who wished to attend the Lenten dawn prayer service, that car was always there. I could never see who was driving—it was too dark—and I didn’t need to know. I simply imagined someone stopping in the busy streets of Manhattan, selling coffee and donuts to those rushing to work without even a moment for breakfast.

Following behind, I would pray for him for a brief moment:

“Lord, when he returns home at dusk, please let his nets be full. I worry that he may return empty‑handed again today. Lord, please find him.”

Then the car would disappear somewhere in a hurry, and my eyes would catch the pigeons spreading their wings and rising toward the morning.

Everyone runs hard to live well. We run and run, hoping for a life more comfortable, more spacious, more abundant than now. If there is a chronic illness of city life, it is that people know how to work but not how to rest. In our busyness, we lose our neighbors, lose ourselves, and—intoxicated by blind self‑love—row through the night trying to fill the empty nets at the center of our lives.

Even when fierce waves rise and the cries of lost boats echo across the waters, we turn away as though we cannot stop even for a moment. And in the morning, we haul up our empty nets once more and gaze out over the vast ocean with a long sigh.

How moving it is—how it makes the whole body tremble with joy—to see a soul stand humbly before the presence of God. How precious and valuable the gospel is to us.

Long before my life began, someone sowed seeds, tended them, and watered them daily with tears of prayer so that I might have life within the household of faith. Before my soul opened its eyes, someone prayed for my desolate spirit until their voice broke, loved me fervently, and did not give up until I experienced the suffering and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The many Christians who passed through my life— they were people who had met the risen Lord, living witnesses of Jesus. Only later did I come to give thanks for the passionate preaching, the hymn‑leading, and the teaching of my childhood Sunday School teachers. I remember gazing with wonder at the small gospel booklet I received back then.

Behind that little booklet were the cries of prayer from people across the sea—people whose faces I would never know.

Through the hardships and pains of life, we finally discover that we are adrift in the middle of the sea. The nets in the center of our hearts—covered with moss from long years—must first be washed clean in Christ. Even when it hurts to cut away the torn and broken parts, we must mend them firmly. What humans can do is simply this: with humility and tears, clean and prepare the nets, and in a spirit of surrender, obey the Lord’s word.

**“How was yesterday? Did your net fill as you cast it deep into the sunlit streets of Manhattan? Was it empty again? Yes, life is said to begin empty‑handed and end empty‑handed. No matter how much coffee we drink to stay alert, no matter how many donuts we eat to fill our hunger, how can we escape our eternal emptiness?

But He spoke to us. The Risen One Himself stepped into my boat and said, ‘Cast your net on the right side, and you will find.’

It is not easy to move the net to the right side. No, it is not easy. But how long will you keep hauling up the empty nets of sorrow and despair?”**

On this morning when our Lord rose, breaking the power of death, I suddenly remember the gray sedan with the sign “Coffee and Donuts for Sale,” the car I used to see at the red light, rushing off to somewhere unknown.

— Yoon WanHee, (For the Sake of Beauty, 2001)