On February 15th, Saturday morning, I woke up with the weirdest dream I've ever had. In the dream, Esther and I were standing on a quiet, peaceful beach where turtles were swimming. Then, all of a sudden, one big turtle swooped over us and quickly soared into the sky, like an eagle would do. Seeing the big turtle fly and soar like an eagle, I woke up laughing to myself, wondering how on earth I could imagine a turtle flying and what the dream could possibly mean. I shared the dream with Esther and told her that with the turtle being her favorite animal and the eagle my favorite, maybe the coming of our son Noel is imminent.
The following week on Wednesday, Esther woke me up at 3:00 am saying she was feeling labor pains—symptoms that arrived two weeks before her fortieth week of pregnancy. We rushed to Burnaby General Hospital early that morning. As we headed there, we worried whether the hospital would admit us or have medical staff available to perform the surgery, since the hospital is typically crowded and our scheduled C-section wasn't due until the following week. While driving, the song "Faithfulness" by Korean Christian band Isaiah6tyOne came to mind. The lyrics describing the Lord's wisdom as "deeper than the sea and higher than the sky" made a profound impression on my heart, reminding us that His wisdom, deeper and higher than our understanding, would guide and lead us through this unexpected moment.
As we entered the hospital, contrary to our worries and concerns, the staff warmly greeted us, saying they had been waiting for us. Despite the potential scheduling complications, all the medical team—the family physician, anesthesiologist, and obstetrician—were surprisingly available at the same time, a rare occurrence in a hospital with typically long waits. Within minutes, they escorted us to the surgery room, and within half an hour, through the hands of skillful medical practitioners, our baby Noel, the first born of the day, entered the world—a moment of pure joy.
After two days of recovery in the hospital, we returned home on Saturday morning as a family of three. The next day, grateful for the Lord's faithfulness, I read through the book of Job chapters 26–28, where Job challenges his friends to look beyond their simplistic orthodoxy that bad things happen to bad people and good things to good people. Job speaks of the Lord's wisdom that is deeper than the earth's depths and higher than the heavens, and tells his friends that maybe there are invisible realities hidden from human perspectives which we cannot see and understand. With this, he urges his friends to view his suffering within this broader light—that there may be deeper reasons defined by invisible realities for his suffering which simplistic orthodoxy cannot explain. Reading the book of Job, I thought of today's world of "messy middle," a world that is more fractured and fragmented than ever before as parties on all sides make claims of twisted truths based on overly simplified facts, blurring and deflecting realities, causing deep brokenness in places and people of the world. Isn't this what the world has become and is as of today??
At home, reflecting on the dream of the flying turtle, I remembered when Esther and I visited Hawaii last year. While snorkeling there, we saw turtles swimming and exploring the deep depth of the ocean. I also recalled the sacred moment of standing on Waikiki beach during the time of peak sunset hours, witnessing the light that shone through in the moment of heaven and earth kissing each other. With these memories in mind, the vision of the flying turtle became clearer in my mind.
Yesterday, being the first week of Noel's birth, Esther and I welcomed Noel into our home again. Looking over him, we prayed that he would grow to be like a flying turtle—that he would have eyes to see beyond what is seen to the deeper realities of earth's depths and heaven's heights, and that the praxis of his vocation would be true to the telos of the heavenly vision, and that both invisible and visible realities of heaven and earth may be expressed as a seamless tapestry in and through the unfolding of vocation of his implicated in the grand story of redemptive history in the world of messy middle in the times of now and not-yet, until the fulfillment of the time of cosmic reconciliation of heaven and earth.
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