If I Perish by I-Suk An & Esther Ahn Kim

Author:I-Suk An & Esther Ahn Kim
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Biographies & Memoirs, Specific Groups, Leaders & Notable People, Christian Living, Religious, Christian Books & Bibles, Women
ISBN: 0802430791
Publisher: Moody Publishers
Published: 2001-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

25

LIFE IN

PRISON

Jailer Kuriyama brought light to my darkened heart. Realizing how God had prepared my way even before I came, I thanked Him. As long as God was with me, this prison would not be as bad as hell. I recited chapter 54 of Isaiah. When I came to the last verse, I repeated it again.

No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of Jehovah, and their righteousness which is of me, saith Jehovah (Isaiah 54:17).

The food in the prison looked much better than the box lunch we were served at the detention house. The smell of the soup made me nauseated, but I closed my eyes and ate it with one sip. I had made up my mind to endure anything as a prisoner.

When I finished my first meal in the prison, I thanked God and, shutting my eyes, I pondered many things. Mother came into my thoughts. She never seemed to be upset. Although she was lonely, she was always clean, quiet, and pleasant, at peace within herself. Tears came easily to her, but they were tears of thanks, repentance, and of prayers for the unsaved. Because her heart was pure, she always worked diligently to make her surroundings clean, too, by washing, sweeping, and polishing the house. She was truly a living testimony of God’s grace, strong spiritually and very dependable.

Once I teased her by telling her that her name is written in chapter 13 of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. “Love … bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (vv. 4–7, NASB).

She was one of those persons who always lived for others. Once a week she filled a sack with aspirin, salve, candy, and tissue paper and visited the poor. I had never seen her eat warm rice. She would always cook a large amount of rice at one time.

“If I have plenty of cooked rice,” she told me when I asked her about it, “I can give some to a beggar whenever he comes. In order to follow Jesus, I think we should always be prepared to give to others.”

Mother was so different from the other members of my father’s household. They only gave away that which they did not want to keep for themselves. They seemed to hate each other and only lived from day to day. They had no God, no holy day, no true joy or confidence. Wherever Mother was, it was like a chapel of heaven around her. As I remembered all of this about her, thankfulness to God for giving her to me arose in my heart.

“God,” I prayed, “when I have accomplished this mission, award my mother the prize. I will be happy to die for You, anyway.”

In a way, my prison cell was similar to my mother’s marriage to my father. She was the daughter of a high government official in Seoul, and at the age of eight, she accepted Jesus through the efforts of a missionary.

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