(the voice of Sehyung Lee)

At the bottom of the abyss,
where all names fall silent
and life leans toward death,
I saw two hands—

one descending
like a leaf released by autumn,
the other rising
like a small flame
searching for the dawn.

Between them
was almost nothing—

only a trembling space
where grief became prayer,
where sorrow,
having nowhere else to go,
began to open
into blessing.

My friend, JongSu,
has gone beyond us.

And suddenly
the world is changed.

The birds still cross the morning.
The river still carries the sky.
The wind still moves
through the trees.

Yet something has become quieter—

as though one voice
has entered
the great silence.

He walked among us
with a clear mind,
a humble spirit,
and an honesty
that needed no witness.

He did not measure his life
by the height of achievement
but by the depth
of a faithful heart.

We studied together.
We laughed.
We traveled through long nights,
with river wind against the windows
and hope somewhere ahead of us.

Those years remain—

not as photographs,
but as light
held quietly
inside the soul.

His spirit was like hammered silver—
shaped by fire,
made luminous by endurance,
simple enough
to reflect the face of God.

Then illness came.

But suffering
did not diminish him.

It seemed instead
to uncover something
that had always been there—

a deeper courage,
a gentler light,

like a candle
that burns more faithfully
when it knows
the night is near its end.

Now
the two hands meet.

The hand we release
is not falling
into emptiness.

It is falling
into the Hand
that has been reaching for it
from the beginning.

Perhaps death
is not the closing
of a door,

but the moment
when we discover
that the distance
between heaven and earth
was never as wide
as we imagined.

Rest, dear JongSu,

in the country without pain,
where no body grows weary,
where no goodbye
needs to be spoken,

where the soul
returns to the music
it heard
before it knew its own name.

And when, one day,
my own hand
rises toward
the final horizon,

if there is a place
where the living
and the departed
can still recognize one another,

may you be there—

smiling,

your hand extended,

waiting for mine.

And perhaps
we will say nothing.

Perhaps
our hands will speak
what words could never say:

You were here.
I was here.
We walked together.
And love did not end.

Amor fati.

To love even this—
the leaving,
the silence,
the unknown.

To trust
that the hand we must release
is already held
by the Hand
that never lets go.

And to believe,

at the very edge
of the horizon,

that no beloved soul
ever truly disappears—

it only passes
from our hands
into God’s.

Note: Rev. Dr. Sehyoung Lee created this image of two hands upon hearing that his dearest friend, the late Rev. Dr. JongSu Park, had passed away on August 18, 2026