The question of what kind of picture we have toward our God influences not only our Christian life, but our total life. God is just and fair, but at the same time He loved us unconditionally to the point of sacrificing His Only Son, and even now is paying attention to me as if I am the only one in the universe. It is very important to have this image of God in our head. I discussed sometime ago in one of my sermons that when I close my eyes and call Him saying ‘God’, whether I see Him coming to me with a wide smile on His face, or with an unhappy face or a fearful face, will determine what is the image of God I hold.
Currently, the pastors in our church are reading the book ‘The Healing Presence’ by Leanne Payne. Humans are imagining beings. And because our language itself symbolizes objects endlessly, we keep all objects and events in our head with images. So it is very important to have a healthy image about something. For example, the word‘Father’ should have an image of a healthy father figure, but when it does not exist, the value system begins to get confused in that person. Sexual perversion and homosexuality tends to be discovered in a person who does not have a healthy image of his parents. So, it is very important to have images of healthy men and women, but in these modern times social conditions continue to change men into feminine figures, and women into masculine figures through feminism movement. These are beginning to result in a destruction of society and family life.
One of the interesting things he talked about in the book was the importance of having the right image of dinner table. Many persons will have an image of a large family sitting together around the table with the word ‘dinner table’. A person that has this image of grandparents, parents, and uncles gathered around the table laughing and having a conversation while eating dinner together, will be very healthy in many other aspects. In contrast, when a person has the image of eating alone, or when one of the parents is not present in the image, will be influenced by this image in many other ways.
As we were reading this book, we came to be reminded about how much important Mokjang is to our children. The children, who grows in the environment where each family visits a different home each week, where many households come together to become one family to eat together while laughing and having a conversation, and after the meal to listen to the children, to take turns to pray for them, will have the image of a bountiful dinner table itself. To our children who are growing up without siblings, to children who does not have many opportunities to have meals with their father because of his busy schedule, to children who are not around the extended family, Mokjang is an incomparable value to them.
I feel so regrettable and sad for those who leave Mokjang because they say it is a waste of time in their busy life, and for those who leave Mokjang saying that it interferes with children’s sleeping time, because I know that they are giving up on a very precious thing that cannot be obtained by anything in this world.
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