Beloved of God,

Blessed New Year to one and all! 

I do hope this new year is off to a good start for you—however you define that!   For me—perhaps in part because my birthday falls early in January—this is a time for turning attention from the past toward the future.  I found this notion to be reinforced in a particular way when, on the final Sunday of 2025, our Kindem family joined Pastor Paul Ko and his family and congregation at Luther’s Table in Renton for a Service of Holy Closure—the final worship service of their mission congregation.  It was an occasion in which JOY AND SADNESS were deeply mingled; a time that marked the ending of a dream. 

Pastor Ko and I first met each other in December 2014 over a lunch hosted by Synod Mission Director Jerry Buss at a takeout restaurant in Westwood Village.  Paul, an ordained Presbyterian Pastor from Korea who’d spent several years as a missionary in the Philippines, had been eager to establish a Korean-speaking mission church in Seattle.  Having sensed an openness to partnership on the part of Northwest Washington Lutherans, he was seeking a host congregation.  Might Peace Lutheran serve as that host?  Would the congregation be open to sharing space and making room for his Seattle Community Covenant congregation?  The answer was YES and YES.  And so began a five year relationship between our congregations.  When things shut down during the pandemic, Pastor Ko searched for and found a new location base for their ministry, but as ELCA colleagues we remained in touch. 

What impressed me about Paul from the start was his clear dedication to the well-being of his congregation and the prominent role that prayer played in all the decisions he and his wife Miri Park made.  Their deep faith in the power of prayer was expressed most profoundly in the wake of an incident at Angle Lake that nearly claimed the life of their older daughter, Esther, on June 29, 2016.  Esther, who was twelve at the time, had been swimming in the lake with others when Paul and Miri stepped away for a while to say farewell to some parishioners.  When they returned they found their daughter being given CPR by bystanders who had found Esther floating face down in the lake.  When Medics took over, her pulse was reestablished.

No one knew exactly how long Esther had been unconscious in the water, but it may have been as long as 5 minutes or more—almost certainly a death sentence.  Yet, against all odds, after Medics arrived, Esther’s heart started beating again and she was taken by ambulance to the hospital.  In the hospital Esther’s vital signs stabilized, but the question remained whether her higher brain functions could have survived the trauma of being deprived of oxygen for so long—and to what degree she would be impaired.  The initial brain scans were foreboding; the entire brain appeared white.

Arriving home from vacation two weeks later, I heard of Esther’s near drowning and hurried to Children’s Hospital to meet Paul and Miri and learn more about her condition.  They shared with me the story of how that fateful day had unfolded, and how the initial scans of Esther’s brain had shown no signs of functioning.  They spoke of their trust in the God who was capable of miracles and their fervent belief that God could bring healing even now to their daughter.  Their faith was so palpable I quickly found myself drawn into its orbit.

The signs were encouraging.  Esther had regained consciousness.  Day after day new evidence of brain function appeared. She was beginning to respond. All was not lost. Though she couldn’t eat, talk, or walk, and had no control over other bodily functions, Esther—in spite of what the brain scans had shown—was not a vegetable, was not lost. She was still with us.

As it happened, the day I arrived at Children’s Hospital was Esther’s first day of physical therapy.  During the previous week she had making incremental progress in movement.  When they wheeled her into the therapy room I found myself becoming part of a simple exercise of passing a ball around the circle—the four of us: the therapist, Esther, Paul, and myself.  After a little while we moved to a game table where the therapist pointed out to the choices for games we could play.  “Which game,” she asked Esther, “would you like to play?”  What happened next, I’ll never forget.  Esther slowly lifted her arm and pointed toward the game JENGA—a game that requires manual dexterity, thoughtful strategy, and fine motor control.  I watched the therapists eyes light up, and for the next few minutes, as the four of us played that game together, I was witness to a miracle.

Weeks later, after Esther was discharged from Seattle Children’s Hospital, her journey of recovery continued. She had learned how to walk and how to eat and was learning to read and write again.  A brilliant student before the accident, when she returned to school she would receive special services.  Over the next six years Esther kept making progress, kept improving.  She graduated from High School in 2022 and began a course of college studies.  When I saw her at Luther’s Table on December 28 she told me she would graduate from college this spring and was looking into master’s programs in Social Work.  Glory be!

After Pastor Ko presided at the Eucharist, at the end of the Service of Holy Closure, I was given the opportunity by Synod Staff member Dr. David Hahn to share a few words. I recalled how Esther’s near drowning and long recovery had deepened my own faith and drawn our families closer together.  I recounted how, when our son Kai was hit in the head by a car in a sledding accident three years later, Pastor Paul, Miri, and their congregation were among the first to express their prayerful support for his recovery from an accident whose outcome—like Esther’s—might well have ended tragically but for the unfathomable mercy of God.

Pastor Paul and family will soon be heading to Alabama.  A Hyundai factory in Montgomery—a town with its own complicated and consequential civil rights history—has drawn many Korean expatriates; a development that would have been inconceivable a few generations ago.  Already Paul’s nephew Charlie has secured a job there, along with Charlie’s father, who acquired a Green Card sponsorship from Hyundai two weeks before the Trump administration shuttered the program. 

Paul told me that Bishop Wee has helped connect him with Southeastern Synod Bishop Strickland, and that there is a need for Korean pastors there.  And so, as one dream comes to an end, it seems the time has come for another dream to begin.  The move will require Miri to give up her excellent job here, and so they are praying for direction from the Holy Spirit as they discern next steps in their life and ministry.  Please join me in prayerful support of their discernment.

This year, as we mark the Feast of the Epiphany on January 4^th, we’re also marking the Flight of the Holy Family.  Matthew’s story of Jesus’ birth, which begins with Joseph’s dreamtime visitation, continues with the story of the Magi before circling back again to the Holy Family.  It’s Joseph’s close attention to dreams that prompted him to remain in relationship with Mary and later, after Jesus’ birth, to flee with them from the wrath of Herod.  Thus they became refugees in a foreign country in search of safe haven.  Two final dreams told Joseph when it was safe to return from exile.  And so, says Matthew, Joseph, Mary, and young Jesus came to settle upon Nazareth as their new home. 

Our dreams for this New Year will vary greatly among us.  And at the end of 2026 we will be able to judge how or whether those dreams were fulfilled and to what degree.  But each day along the way we live with the conviction that we are not alone on this journey.  Like Joseph, Mary, and Jesus; like Paul and Miri, Esther and Elizabeth, we are accompanied by a God who, at great risk, pitched his tent among us and is with us still, calling forth our trust even at those times when the odds of our dreams—however configured—being fulfilled seem remote.  God’s commitment to us—to this whole complex, intricate, beautiful and tragic world—has no expiration date.  “I am with you always,” says Jesus in the final words of Matthew’s gospel, “to the end of the age.” 

With you on the Way,

Pastor Erik