Learn to be grateful

Last Saturday night, my roommates and I found ourselves in no condition to study or do anything else remotely productive, so we decided to end the night by watching a movie. The movie we watched was a Korean movie called "The Way Home," which was extremely popular in Korea when it first opened in theaters in 2003. Throughout the movie, my roommates and I found ourselves in an emotional whirlwind of frustration, anger, nostalgia, laughter, sorrow, and loss - all within the 90-minute span of the movie.

This movie centers on a selfish 7-year-old boy who goes to the countryside to live with his deaf and mute grandmother while his mom searches for a new job in the city. The beginning of the movie shows the extreme generational and cultural differences between the two, as the grandson finds everything repulsive, dirty, and uncomfortable and therefore lives in a constant state of rebellion. He refuses to eat or help his grandmother around the house, and instead breaks the dishes, draws all over the walls, urinates all over her shoes, and calls her names like "dummy" and "retarded." However, it is the grandmother's silent and humble attitude of loving her grandson, by continually providing and sacrificing for him despite his actions, that made us so angry and frustrated with the young boy. Day after day the grandmother gave what little she had and the grandson continued to take in his greed. We couldn't believe that the boy was so blind to the consequences of his actions.

When I was watching this movie and thinking about the upcoming Easter Sunday, I was struck by how the relationship between the grandmother and the grandson paralleled the relationship between God and man. What God has given us is never enough - we continue to greed, to be envious, to be prideful and therefore cheat, lie, and hurt. We quickly forget God when our lives are going well but return to God in anger and fury when something doesn't go as planned. Yet despite man's actions, God with his unfailing love gave the ultimate sacrifice in love through the death of his most beloved Son on the cross, all for the sake of man. I realized that this boy was such a perfect representation man's blindness towards God's love.

As the movie drew nearer to the end, the boy began to understand her grandmother as he observed her care for the sick and needy despite her own sicknesses and poverty. He begins to hear her although she cannot talk, and he grows to love her. When the letter arrives from the city that his mother would be returning to take him back to the city, the grandson and the grandmother spent their last night in tears. They promise to keep in touch and one day meet again, and the boy leaves with a face full of smiles and tears.

When I think about how Christ died on the cross and resurrected again three days later, I feel like how the boy must have felt in his last few days with his grandmother. I grieve over the death of Christ and how he suffered and was broken, but then I am filled with joy and rejoicing over His resurrection and His defeat of death. Jesus has promised me that He would keep in touch and that one day we will meet face to face. And so I will wait, with smiles and tears until that day comes.