Finding God in Unexpected Ways

In Jin Nim
June 24, 2012

Good morning, brothers and sisters. How is everyone this morning? I bring you greetings from our True Parents in Korea, where I had the great fortune to spend Day of All Things with them. Whenever I see our True Father and True Mother, a lot of emotions run through my body and my memory banks. It makes me realize how incredibly lucky I am to be living at this time with True Parents, who are really the Second Coming and who have come as a representative of our Heavenly Parent to share with us the breaking news and the gift of this wonderful thing called the Blessing, through which we can change our lineage from satanic to God’s lineage.

A s I was looking at my father while we were having the event, I realized that even though he’s 90-some years old, he is still that ever-consistent, never-changing, unique, eternal son of God. H e gazes upon all his children with great love and affection. Certainly we’ve come to— we, meaning my brothers and sisters— experience a lot more parental love in his later years than when he was a young, robust man, because he was always so busy with mission work and so busy pushing forward the providence at hand.

“Moments with My Father”

Sometimes he’s quite cute. He will say things that I wish I could have heard 30 years ago, but now it’s being said and it’s being shared. I realized that life really is a journey and the life that we have with our parents, the life that we have with our family, is a journey in that you never know what lies around the corner. Y ou never know when you’re going to hear those beautiful words, and you never know when you’re going to have that experience that you’ve just been waiting for.

I find myself sharing those lovely and surprise-ridden moments with my father and mother, and I am so grateful to have them in my life. I think we all feel so grateful to have them in our lives.

Of course, my father cannot finish an event without a song, so when he starts pulling different people up to sing, it gets a little bit daunting for me because I’m sitting in the front row, and Father keeps on looking at me as he’s pulling out different people to sing. He keeps on looking at me, and it’s early in the morning ; I really don’t feel like singing. But nevertheless, after asking different leaders to sing he asked my younger brother to get up and sing, so I thought I was off the hook.

But when Lovey got up to sing, he, Lovey, looked around and said, “Y ou.” So I was called forward, and even though I was in no mood to sing, Lovey helped me to share a rendition of some of my father’s favorites. I thought to myself, “M usic is everywhere in our lives and in our church.” I don’t know if some of you have visited the old home [in Korea] where I grew up, but it was basically a church. It was the second floor of a church where my brothers and I grew up. We basically woke up to singing and praying, and we fell asleep to singing and praying. And now I find myself in the presence of my father and mother, and they’re always singing and they’re always praying.

This music ministry of Lovin’ Life is extremely important to me because here we delight in, we experience, and we share in the universal language. It becomes a kind of conduit through which we can experience God’s love for us, and we can experience our own divinity, and feel supremely inspired and empowered to do something about our lives.

An Unlikely Image of the Messiah

A s I bid my farewell to my father, I found him seated on a tiny chair in front of a little pond down by the training center at Cheongpyeong. He had five fishing poles out on this tiny pond, and he was manning these five fishing poles. I came to say my good-bye, and Father said, “S it, sit.” So I sat behind him and he wanted to catch a fish. Father had quite a few grandchildren around him and some people who were taking care of him. Lovey and his wife were there, and Father was saying, “S hh, shhh. Be quiet.”

So all of us sat there quietly, waiting. But then Mother said, “Father, why don’t you say good-bye to your daughter because she really needs to get going.” Once my Father starts sitting and fishing, there’s really no end. I think my mom was little bit afraid that I might miss some of the meetings that I had back in Seoul. So my mother said, “Father, please, please get up, let’s wave good-bye to our daughter and let’s get on our way.”

As you know Cheongpyeong is on a hill, so the roads are really quite wind y. But in this fishing area that they created for my father, he doesn’t like to take a car because he likes to feel the nature— to feel the wind in his hair, so to speak. So he rides a golf cart down these winding roads. When he said good-bye, he got into his golf cart and said, “O h, have a good trip. Where are you going?” I said, “Father, I’m going to Seoul.” Father said, “Seo-ul . Seo-ul.”

You know, Seoul is the capital of Korea, and it kind of sounds like soul in English, does it not? But when you say “Seoul ha da,” when you make it into an active verb, it means “I’m sad.” So Father was saying, “Ohh, Seoul lo-kan-i-ka (ph). That means, “Y ou’re going to Seoul, but somehow I feel sad.” And I said, “Y es, Father, but I will see you shortly because you’re coming back to Las Vegas.” Father said, “ Ku-re, ku-re,” which means, “ That’s right.”

Then Mother said, “S hall we go?” So the person seated next to Father stepped on the gas pedal, but Father stopped the guy : “W ait.” He looked at me and broke into a song. In Korean arum-dap-da means you’re beautiful. And he started singing, “Y ou’re beautiful, you’re beautiful.” I don’t know what melody he was singing to, but he was singing. He was waving, and he was saying, “Y ou’re beautiful, you’re beautiful.” Then he kicked the guy to step on the pedal, so the guy hit the pedal, and off they went.

I saw my father disappear into the distance, into the mountains of Cheongpyeong, but he was singing, “Arum-dap-da, arum-dap-da. You’re beautiful. Everything is beautiful.” Then he launched into one of his favorite Korean songs.

So my vision of my father as I bid farewell is of this cute little old man seated with his wife in a golf cart, disappearing into the mountains. I said, “W ow ! I wonder what people would say if I told them, ‘T here goes the messiah. There go True Parents.’” I realized again that God works in mysterious ways. That vision of an old man together with his lovely wife, riding off into the sunset in a golf cart, might not be the likely image or vision that we might have of what a messiah would be like, or what a True Parent would be like.

Overcoming Expectations

We have learned that the Israelites were expecting the Son of God to come descending from the heavens accompanied by a band of angels with trumpets blaring everywhere— all majestic, grand, loud, and big— but that is not the way Jesus Christ came . He came very humbly, in the natural way— in a barn somewhere, full of dung and not the most holy of places .

Similar to the Israelites 2000 years ago, we today as children of God have a lot of expectations about different things in life, and certainly there may be a lot of people holding an idea about what a messiah should be or what a True Parent should be that may not quite fit with what has been given to us. Perhaps they do not expect a man from North Korea. Perhaps they expected a white man. Perhaps they expected a white man with blue eyes and blonde hair, as Hollywood has led us to believe .

But here come our True Parents, quite different from what we expected. They continue to intrigue and inspire , and sometimes to mystify us, leav ing us dumbfounded. But nevertheless they are who they are, and they have come to share with us in the breaking news.

We often have our own expectation or vision of what something should be, but in reality it is not so. And often reality plays tricks on us, mak ing us feel ungrateful, unappreciated, or lost. But nevertheless, it’s God’s way of reminding us that he and she do work in mysterious ways. It’s an opportunity for us not to heap our own expectations on things and not always to demand things of life and of our Heavenly Parent, but to sit back, relax, and remain open and sensitive to the voices that are speaking to us in many different ways.

This reminds me of a passage in the Bible, I Kings 19:11 –12. The Bible says that the Lord was not found in the powerful winds. Nor was the Lord found in the horrendously fearful earthquake or th e all-consuming, blazing fire. Instead it says in I Kings that God was found in a “still, small voice.”

The Bee Gees’ “How Deep Is Your Love?”

When I was going through my adolescence I wrestled with the issue of my own identity— finding my own identity, figur ing out who I wanted to be, deciding whether or not I wanted to believe the Divine Principle, and believe in who my parents were. Like anybody else, I went through a lot of searching and praying— and a lot of crying. But at the same time I was always hoping to hear the words of God.

I said to God, “If you exist, I want to see you, I want to hear you, I want to smell you . I want to feel you. I want to know you, so answer me.” This is the kind of passion that I had. We often find that life is difficult, and we just want God to say something. We just want to hear God in that all-powerful, consuming voice from the heavens, saying, “T his is what I want you to do.”

I wanted somebody to tell me that everything was going to be all right. I wanted somebody to tell me, “T his is what you should do with your life.” I wanted somebody to say, “I am here; I exist ; and therefore you can believe in me because you know that I’m here.” I wanted some kind of a sign . I don’t know how many times I yelled out in my prayers, “I want to see you ; I want to hear you.”

On one occasion in my life when I was really struggling with the ever-present temptations and opportunities that were put before me, I wanted God to appear to me and tell me, “D on’t do it.” Or, “J ust believe in me.” Or, “J ust do this a little bit longer, and I will have a solution for you.” I wanted God to fix my problem. I wanted God to give me the strength to do the right thing. I wanted God to be there for me, to hold my hand.

I was desperately searching and struggling, and I was almost at wit’s end— to the extent that I was asking myself, “I s life really worth it? Because what I see before me and around me is quite miserable.” I couldn’t get a sense that there was hope around the corner. I couldn’t feel like there was something that I could look forward to.

I said, “God, just give me a sign. Just give me a sign. Just let me know that you are there. Let me know that I can feel you, that I can hear you. I just want to see you.” I was saying these things over and over and over again in my struggles. T here was a time when I was so desperate that I refused to come out of my room. I didn’t want to come out until I got some kind of an answer.

Then something really interesting happened to me. I was waiting to have a vision or a revelation. I was waiting for God to appear before me on a cloud, looking like the picture of a big, burly grandmother , or almost like a Santa Claus figure. I wanted him to come and embrace me. I wanted him to tell me, “E verything is all right. I love you and you’re going to do many great things.” I wanted this commanding presence of a voice, and I wanted to hear certain commandments from him, telling me exactly what to do in order to solve my problem.

I was waiting and waiting, desperately and desperately. I waited for many days, but I didn’t hear anything . I didn’t see this Santa Claus figure come down from the clouds with this all-consuming voice to tell me that everything was going to be all right. I remember coming out of my room, being just so despondent and terribly hungry because I had not eaten because I wanted to find God. I wanted to feel, I wanted to see, I wanted to hear God. I was just so beaten and so crushed, and I was saying to myself, “I guess God does not care for me.” I wanted to hear that resounding, commanding voice telling me that everything is going to be all right, but he didn’t come.

But because I was so hungry, I walked down to the kitchen and started to fix something for myself. Then my younger brother came in to the kitchen, and he had a tiny radio that he carried around. A certain song was playing, and in the beginning I wasn’t really listening to it. When my brother said, “H i,” I simply ignored him because I was so angry that God did not appear in front of me. He set that radio down on the island of the kitchen where we sat around many times and ate.

As I brought my plate full of food and sat down, totally devastated, totally crushed, I started to hear th e song that was playing. At first I just wanted to get rid of any sound. I just wanted to turn it off, and I was almost on the brink of telling my brother, “T urn the darned thing off.” But then the song got to the chorus and it was “How Deep is Your Love,” by the Bee Gees. T he song hit off on the chorus, saying, “H ow deep is your love? How deep is your love?”

At that moment I realized, “H ere I am. I wanted to hear God loud and clear, and I was expecting some kind of mystical manifestation to appear in front of my eyes. I was expecting something big, something majestic, something all-consuming.” But I realized that God was speaking to me in the very gentle and small voice of the Bee Gees. I didn ’t expect God to sound like that. I did n’t expect God to be coming through a radio, being sung by the Bee Gees, the three brothers. I was kind of expecting a band of angels like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, set to some kind of a band or something. I was expecting something loud and big.

But he had this radio set to a very low volume. “How deep is your love, is your love? How deep is your love ?” And then I was thinking, “I s this the way God is talking to me? Is that God?” They just kept on singing. And I said to myself, “T his is not God. It can’t possibly be God because it’s the Bee Gees.” But guess what? In my devastation and in my moment of utter obliteration and destruction, God spoke to me in that still, small voice , instead of giving me commandments like, “In Jin, I will solve your problems”— like the Ten Commandments God gave to Moses.

I wanted my ten commandments that were going to solve all my problems. But instead of giving me powerful, commanding commandments, he gave me the Bee Gees. And instead of a commandment, he gave me a question. He asked me a question. He asked me, “H ow deep is your love?” Meaning, “W hat is your capacity to love? What is your capacity or the depth or the width or the magnitude through which you will journey on through life and experience this thing called love in its multi faceted ways?”

Many times when we think of love, we think it’s all lovely and beautiful. But love can be experienced in many different ways. Sometimes love can be experienced in the most bizarre or the most ugly situations, or sometimes in the holiest ways, the most jubilant ways, or even the saddest ways. Love is multi faceted, and that is why it intrigues and compels us to learn more and more about it each day and each moment of our lives.

I realized that God was speaking to me. He was not giving me an answer ; he was asking me a simple question, “H ow deep is your love?” Instead of a band of angels, I got three brothers : “H ow deep is your love ?” They were asking me this question that really made me think, “W ell, how deep is my love? “Do I really love the people that I profess that I’m loving? Do I really care about the people who mean something to me? And if I do, how do I express this love?”

So I realized at that moment, just as the Bible says, it’s not the earthquakes or the wind or the fire that’s going to reveal to us the power, the magnitude, and the majesty of God ; sometimes it’s in the small, quiet voice. And sometimes it’s in a way that we least expect it. I did not expect to meet God through the Bee Gees . But in that moment of my life, when I was utterly desperate, utterly searching, utterly in need of some kind of a sign, I got a sign from God. I got the voice of God in the most unexpected of ways.

That’s the beauty of life . God continues to mystify us and be mysterious, but nevertheless finds ways of letting us know that he and she loves us, cares about us, and wants the best for us.

I experienced God for the first time through the small, still voice of a song that was coming out of my younger brother’s radio. Often when we least expect things, that’s when God reveals him or herself to us.

Chris Cornell’s “When I’m Down”

When God asked me, “H ow deep is your love,” he was asking me this question in the context of my all-consuming expectation of what I wanted God to do . I now know that God has touched me, continues to touch me, and will in the future touch me in ways that sometimes I least expect. Music has been such an amazing and important part of my life and just recently when I was thinking about this sermon topic, I realized, “W ow, at crucial moments of my life, God has spoken to me through songs.” It’s quite astonishing . In my first desperate attempt to see God, to feel God, to hear God, out c ame the Bee Gees . And out came this question, “H ow deep is your love?”

When I experienced God with the Bee Gees, I was single. The next time in my life when I was struggling because it felt like my whole world was coming to an end, I was in the throes of my marriage, the throes of the next level of my life. Everybody knows that building an ideal family is not automatic. It’s not a natural process. A great deal of effort needs to go into it, and certainly I am no different. So in dealing with all the things that I had to deal with, I was just ready to give up again and was not looking forward to the next sunrise. I was really down. I just felt overwhelmingly down.

I remember when I first heard Chris Cornell sing this song that we just heard. I was, like, “W ow, that is exactly what I feel like . Right now I’m in the throes of feeling like ‘ I’m down all the time. ’ I can’t possibly shake this burden, shake this responsibility. It’s just crushing me. I feel like I’m just down. There’s no up in sight anywhere. How am I going to get through another day?”

And again I was praying and talking to God, saying, “ I just wish, I just wish I can find the strength to go on. I just wish that there was something that I can cling onto.” Then this song came on. It just hit me and got to me, and I just couldn’t stop crying. I was thinking, “I’ve often felt that God is a musician, and if God is a musician, he’s probably the world’s best— the universe’s, the cosmos’— best blues singer or player.

You sing the blues because you’ve suffered and your life is miserable . A lot of difficulty has hit you and smacked you in the face, but you have the strength to sing about it. B y singing about it, you’re sharing with everybody what you’ve been going through ; in singing about it, you’re saying, “B ut I’ve got to go on . I’m going to make it through with my buddies in the band here.” Or, “I’m going to make it through because this song makes me feel so good. I’m going to sing me another blues .”

I felt that if God were given a musician’s chair, he’d probably be the greatest blues singer. He’d probably be singing about how he’s lost his children, how he lost his son and daughter, and all those years of waiting and suffering, trying to prepare the way for the Son of God to appear— a nd then having to wait another 2,000 years before enough preparation could be made to invite the Second Coming or the messiah to take up the mission of being a victorious son and daughter of God. God has been singing the blues for an awful long time.

I’m sure many times Jesus Christ sang the blues. We don’t know what music was playing in his head when he was being crucified on the cross. When I have those visions, when I see like a movie of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, of him dying on the cross alone, with no disciples anywhere in sight, I’ve asked myself, “I f one disciple stood by his side and said, ‘ Crucify me instead,’ what would have happened? How would Jesus have felt?” But not one volunteered to take Jesus’ place. They all disappeared. They all ran away, and Jesus was left to die on the cross alone.

I’ve often asked myself the question, “When Father first realized the magnitude of the mission at hand, how many times must he have cried the blues because the people did not understand him or did not realize who he was and what he came to do?”

I’ve often felt kind of like this Chris Cornell song, “When I’m Down , ” b ecause sometimes in the context of this community wherein our goal is to build ideal families there’s so much suffering, pain, and misery . You sometimes have to wonder, “Is there really going to be a tomorrow? Is there really going to be an opportunity for me to finally accomplish what I would like to accomplish?” I’ve often found myself singing the blues, too.

When I heard this song, God spoke to me again in this still, small voice, in the small voice of a song— but it was God nonetheless. And it was a message that I needed to hear, because the song goes on, “I only love you when I’m down, but I’m down all the time.” At that moment in my life, I felt like there was nothing but down. But in a way God was telling me, “W hether you are down or feeling like you’re floating in this perpetual sea of down-ness, I’m still going to be there. Because even when you’re feeling like you’re in this universe feeling down, I’m still a part of your universe, because I’m your parent. And guess what? I love you? You think I only love you when I’m down, but I really love you— all the time— because I’m down all the time.”

God is taking the unexpected way. I want God to tell me that he loves me and show that to me in the ways that I expect a loving gesture to be. Perhaps he loves me when I’m feeling jubilant, when I feel really great about myself. But in this least expected or unexpected way, God was playing word tricks on me, but God was saying, “I love you all the time.”

John Lennon wrote a song in which one of the lyrics says, “ Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.” Many times our life is kind of like that. W e’re constantly making plans for our children or for our family. There are all these wonderful things that we’d like to accomplish, but then life happens . Things go wrong. Our children are led astray. Our children fall down and nick their knees. Things that are unexpected fall by the wayside, and we’re left wondering, “ Where is God ?”

In the depth of my despair God again was telling me through a song, “L ook, I am here, and the real question that you need to be asking yourself , instead of just being crushed by the sheer weight of life as it happens, is, ‘ W hat are you going to do about it? ’ In other words, how are you going to love? You need to take yourself out of this misery by pulling yourself up by the bootstraps. Be your own agent of change.” That’s the message that God said to me.

I n hindsight I can realize that sometimes God pushes us to our limit. Sometimes God forces us or compels us to experience what we really don’t like to experience because through that experience comes a newfound understanding of how better to love somebody.

The founder of a TV program called America’s Most Wanted became the spokesperson for this program because he suffered the brutal death of his child. But he wasn’t devastated, destroyed, and obliterated by life as it happened to him while he was making other plans. I’m sure he had plans for this child to go on to a fantastic school, perhaps be a fantastic musician, perhaps be a fantastic professor or an artist. I’m sure he had other plans.

But his child was murdered, and he had to ask himself the question, “I’m really down and I’m not feeling the love, but am I going to be crushed or am I going to be my own agent of change and create something beautiful out of my suffering? Perhaps because I have suffered this horrific, brutal murder of my child, maybe I can help other people in similar situations.” One man’s misery has turned into a life giving hope for a lot of parents in similar situations.

When God spoke to me through Chris Cornell’s song, “When I’m Down,” I realized that whenever I wanted God to solve something for me, to fix something, he always pushes back, or she always pushes back, with a question that makes me think about how I can be the contributing factor to make things better. Perhaps I suffered what I’ve suffered or I’ve dealt with what I’ve dealt with because in the experience of going through those throes of pain and suffering, perhaps it puts me in a better situation to help other people.

The Bee Gees, Chris Cornell and U2

Certainly in the course of my life, I never had dreams of being a senior pastor or being put in the situation to help a lot of people. But today as senior pastor I find myself tapping in to all those times when I’ve suffered, when I’ve felt like I just couldn’t go on any more, when I felt totally hopeless. But somehow God has helped me along the way so that I can last long enough to help other people who might be in similar situations. It has become so clear to me that God doesn’t come riding on a brilliant white horse like a prince who just sweeps me off my feet. God really expects me to deal with my problems, with my life, but at the same time God lets me know in many different ways, in these still small voices that he and she are there always, helping me and guiding me.

Because I came from a Korean background and then learned English, words are utterly fascinating for me. So I like to look at words and maybe turn them around. Sometimes I reverse a letter ; sometimes I use the words and letters as an acronym. So when I heard “How Deep is Your Love” and saw the word Bee Gees, at a time when I was suffering and doubting God, it was kind of a reminder for me, continue to Believe in God, Believe in God.

And when Chris Cornell was singing, “I only love you when I’m down,” for me Chris Cornell was a nice reminder : “C enter your core. No matter what you’re going, center and be true to your core.”

And the next song, “I n the Name of love,” helped me a great deal in terms of dealing with some of the things that I’ve had to deal with. It was sung by U2. God was telling me, “B elieve in God; center your core; then you too can experience the Kingdom of Heaven by building this ideal family, or One Family Under God.”

That song, “In the Name of love,” spoke to me when I was at another level in my life. Now it wasn’t just marriage ; it was kids. As mothers, we want to create a supremely wonderful environment for the kids; we want the best for my kids. So I look at each of my kids as a precious diamond deep beneath the earth’s surface. When you first take out a chunk of diamond, it’s encrusted with a lot of other things, and in order for you to reveal the brilliance of the diamond, it has to be cleaned, cut, and polished. It’s a long process .

Similarly a child, in realizing his or her true value or divine value, is going to take some time. No matter how quickly you want it to happen, every child has his or her own time, just like corn, when you plant it, has its own time. You plant corn in the spring, but no matter how much you want to eat it in the spring, you have to wait for the harvest in the fall. Everything has its own time, and all people are different in that they have a different time or a cycle in which they come to realize who they are, and that, “Y eah, I am that marvelous diamond and it’s my duty to share my brilliant light with the rest of the world and not just keep it for myself. ”

The Courage To Love

O ne of the things that I was struggling with in raising my children was, “H ow do I educate my kids to want to have this thing called the Blessing— to really want to dedicate themselves to one eternal spouse ? It’s so beautiful, but how do I get them to prepare and wait for something good? There’s just so much temptation all around, so much static in the air, saying, “W hy wait? Experiment. Enjoy yourself. Go through different processes, and sooner or later, if you want the Blessing, then go to the Blessing.”

A lot of people are saying a lot of things. In their age group, some kids might be good, but some kids might be saying, “Blessing, why is that important? Maybe it’s not that important. We should just take in whatever we can at the moment.”

A mother wants her child to have the best in life. I know that when you ask somebody, “W hat is the most important thing for you,” it boils down most of the time in conversations to that person’s desire to love and to be loved. Everybody wants to love and to be loved. Everybody wants to experience true love. Everybody wants to be appreciated, respected, adored— loved.

Nobody wants to be hurt. Nobody wants to suffer the pain of people not treating you in the best of ways when it comes to the subject of love. And I certainly don’t want my children to have numerous relationships and go through the throes of different things that a lot of young people just throw themselves into. I don’t want my kids to throw themselves to the wind. I want them to wait and prepare themselves for that special someone so that something precious is shared on the first night that they’re together. I want my kids to have that.

So when I thought about, “H ow do I inspire my child to want that ?” I recalled one thing that I learned in the course of my growing up in the movement. T hat is, “I n order to love somebody, you need to have the courage to love.” Life is so difficult for young people because your friends are telling you, “D o this, do that. Do drugs, have sex, have numerous relationships, love doesn’t matter.” M agazines are telling you that. Your friends are telling you that. Sometimes people in your family are you telling you that. This all makes it difficult to love.

But if you want to create an ideal family or finally substantiate something beautiful at hand, you really have to be courageous. You have to be courageous enough to say, “N o, I am not going to throw my life to the wind because I want something better. Y es, you’re telling me all these things, ‘L et’s go do this, let’s go do that.’ But I need to be courageous enough to stand up for what I believe in, for what I want to accomplish in my life. I need to remain steadfast in my desire or in my dream to accomplish what I want to accomplish.”

Teaching Children Not To Fear, But To Dream

It takes tremendous courage to withstand all the temptation— all the winds, all the earthquake and fire— that wants to consume you, to burn you, and to wreak havoc on you. As a parent, I have realized, and I think a lot of parents in the audience have realized, that when we have kids we can easily make the same mistake that took place in the Garden of Eden.

When we think about the Fall, we remember about Adam and Eve being led astray after God gave them a fearful commandment. God said, “I f you eat of the fruit of the tree, you will die.” That’s like telling your kids, “I f you have sex, you’re going to have cancer.” You know, it’s pretty scary. God wanted to scare them , and many times we as parents want to scare our kids into obedience.

But guess what? Trying to scare our kids into obedience doesn’t work. Telling them all the things that they cannot do because all these horrible things will happen to them is not inspiring. When I look at my own life and ask myself the honest question, “W hy did I wait for the Blessing? Why did I want to wait ?” it’s not that there wasn’t opportunity. Of course there was opportunity. It’s not that there wasn’t temptation. Of course there was temptation.

But it’s not the fear of getting in trouble that kept me away. It’s not the fear of going to hell. When you’re an adolescent, you think hell is kind of cool. You think life really is bad, so maybe you should try out hell. Young people want to test the extreme frontier, and for a lot of religious-minded community settings like ours, hell is th e extreme frontier that adolescents will test time and time again. Fear is not going to protect our kids. The fear of hell, everlasting fire burning, is not going to scare our kids. It certainly didn’t scare me. I thought, I’m living in hell, so it can’t be that much worse . And I’m sure a lot of young people feel that way.

What really inspired me, what kept me empowered in the courage to love is this dream that I had. I f I were to honestly ask myself, I would have to answer that, “Y eah, I could do those things. I could do everything that everyone else was doing .” But if asked myself, “W hat is the most important thing that I want for my life,” I honestly had to say that the most important thing in my life was and is to be loved and to love, and to have a beautiful family. I wanted an It’s a Wonderful Life kind of family. I wanted a family in which everybody is happy to see each other— at Thanksgiving and at Christmas. And I wanted a family in which my parents would be there, because they were never there. They were so busy. I wanted an intimate setting, a nice quiet setting filled with small and lovely voices. That’s what I wanted.

So it’s the dream of wanting something, the vision of what I wanted to accomplish in my life that kept me waiting, that kept me hopeful and wanting to prepare for that big day. I didn’t wait because of the fear of being condemned to hell. I realize that this is like Adam and Eve, who were not consumed by fear of dying. In fact, fear didn’t really hold water to the kind of things or the kind of promise that Lucifer painted for Eve.

Lucifer said to Eve , “Y ou will be as powerful as God. You will be knowledgeable as God. You will be omniscient, omnipotent.” It’s this vision or the dream of being like God that gave Eve— almost like the courage to love— the courage to do what she should not have done. It’s the act of being inspired that caused Eve to follow Lucifer. But he inspired her in the wrong way.

So, if fear of dying did not deter Eve and Adam from falling, what makes us as parents think that it’s going to work with our kids? Here at Lovin’ Life I’ve encouraged the parents not to give your kids a list of things they cannot do, because the list is really long. But give them a dream. Give them a vision of what they can be, what they can have, what they can accomplish in the name of love— l iving a life of sacrifice, living a life for the sake of others, and in this way preparing their life for the sake of the other who is going to be their partner for the rest of their eternal life.

Gee, that’s kind of romantic, isn’t it? E verybody wants a great romance. Well, Heavenly Father has given it to us, so how about it? Even with my own children, I noticed that the minute I gave them a list of things they could not do, the next thing I knew they’d done them and they will do them. So I’ve had to take a different approach. Instead of surrounding them with fear and all the horrible things that were going to happen in their life, I’ve decided to paint a vision or a picture of all that they can have in their life if they learn to wait and develop the courage to love. It takes courage because it’s hard. It’s hard to stand up for what you believe in and to fight for what you want out of life.

When I was confronted with my own maternal duties and how to deal with and raise my kids, this song came into my mind and my heart. And again, it kind of reminded me that God is in all the small things— the things that sometimes we don’t listen to because we haven’t trained ourselves to be open and sensitive.

Listening with the “Reining Ear”

My younger sister is an equestrian sportswoman, and because she was so into riding, we all grew up riding horses. Through that experience one of the things I learned about horses is that they are controlled by a bit and a bridle and also by the way you flex and the way you pressure your feet into the horse, in the different directions you want it to go. There are a lot of command centers on the horse that are operating at the same time.

The horses that do extremely well or that have an uncanny unity with the rider have what we call the reining ear. To the riders this term means that, “Y es, the horse is given the command to go left, go right, go fast, or go slow, or stop with a bit and a bridle because the hand of the rider is controlling the bit and the bridle. But at the same time, some horses are so trained and highly adept at doing things with the rider in such a uniform fashion that the two of them move almost like one body. Those horses utilize the reining ear.

Th is means that one ear of the horse is always tuned in to the master’s voice or the trainer’s voice. So even though there is a lot of noise and a lot of external directions, and commands are being given through the bit and the bridle and through the legs telling the horse what it should do, the horse leaves one ear open constantly to listen to the master’s voice.

Often the voice or the direction from the master is told in a very small and a still voice. Many times it’s just a sound, perhaps a few clicks, that tell the horse to do this or to do that. The master and the horse ha ve their own little language, and the horse’s reining ear is always open and sensitive to the master voice that tells the horse exactly what to do. So even if the bridle or the bit say one thing, or the leg says something, if the reining ear is hearing, “S low down a little bit more,” or just, “W ait,” or “B e cautious,” then the horse adjusts whatever it’s doing to that voice.

So, too, with us. In the course of our lives, a lot of external pressures try to conform and pressure us into doing many, many different things. Like the horse, we are receiving a lot of different commands through a lot of different command centers . Then also like the horse, we as God’s divine sons and daughters must keep that reining ear open in that we leave our hearts open and sensitive to the voice— often a very small voice— that tells us what Heavenly Father or Heavenly Mother wants to share with us.

In the course of my life, God has spoken to me in many different ways, but one of the ways that he and she have spoken to me is through songs, such as these three songs, in these three different episodes or phases of my life. Thus I have realized again that my own preconceptions or expectations might not be exactly accurate in that sometimes it’s the most unexpected, or the least anticipated, or the quietest of ways that God speaks to us. In these ways God can let us know that we are loved and cared for, that God wants us to do our best, and to be th e agent of change to usher in the ne w millennium.

So as I saw my father disappear into the distance singing one of his favorite Korean songs, again, it was a song said to my ears, and God spoke to me, “I sn’t this a beautiful picture? This is so unlike what you envision the messiah to be, right?” That’s what God said to me. And again I felt this incredible warmth, love, and energy to take me back home and to continue doing what I do every day.

I realized that, just as the Bible has said , “I t’s not the wind. It’s not the earthquake, and it’s not the fire.” In other words, “Don’t look for the big stuff, for the superficiality of life, for the loud stuff, the things that cause you to tremble. But look deep within and keep our reining ear open because when we do, we will hear the master trainer or the master guide or our master Heavenly Parent speaking to us, always guiding us, and always loving us.

Brothers and Sisters, in that way, keep your reining ear open to our True Parents as well because they are here guiding us, leading us, and wanting the best for us as God’s eternal sons and daughters.

There’s a lot of static in the air all the time. A lot of people are saying a lot of silly things. But keep that reining ear open. Keep your heart open and sensitive to God’s mysterious ways, and if you do, if we do, we will find that God is speaking to us all the time.

So God bless, have a great week. Thank you.