INTERCONNECTIVITY: Easter and the Justice of God – Japan, Suffering and Hope
“Japan, Suffering and Hope”
VJN asked Miarose Ishijima, an HLI graduate, to contribute to our Easter series.
This past winter, I spent the better part of my Christmas vacation reuniting with my father and grandfather in Tokyo, Japan after almost a decade apart. One night my father and I were perusing through my grandfather’s yearbook from university, and as we flipped through the pages, I found myself legitimately struck by each man’s face. The faces of these men carried life that seemed immortal, life that shone through seventy-plus years of being in a book, purity as I have never seen before- a complete juxtaposition from the vacant Japanese faces I had become accustomed to seeing.
So I asked my dad if there was a backstory to these incredible gazes, and what he told me was this:
“Your grandfather graduated from college the year after World War II ended. These men had seen outsiders destroy their country, they had witnessed bombings and dead bodies in their cities. They had to fight for their lives and their families’ safety, whether it was finding food or protection. Now here they are, leaving university. What you see in their faces is the determination to make their country great again.”
Suffering is an inevitable part of the human experience; however, in Christ, we gain a perspective of eternity, something that allows us to look through a situation instead of simply looking at it.
In Japan, my grandfather’s generation endured truly awful things. I have never heard childhood stories from him because they are just too shocking. Despite this, he and his friends did not let the destruction of their cities and families stop them from rebuilding their country into something magnificent. When looked at, the injustice of war tore apart humanity. When looked through, a legacy of rising up from the ashes has been created, and will forever stay.
Because of the cross, our suffering has two dimensions. Because He said, “It is finished!”, we know how the end goes. Because of God’s relentless pursuit of us, and the promise of eternity with Him, we know that ultimately, God’s will has worked and will continue to work for the good of those that love Him. This eternal promise from His death and resurrection assures His ultimate care for us, and in that, gives us the unique ability to look through our situations to try and see His eternal glory being done.
When looked at, the crucifixion of Christ was gruesome. It’s a scene that we reenact today in hopes to understand the multifaceted impact of His death, it having become the epitome of our concept of suffering. However, when looked through, we see human history rebuilt and made complete. Jesus’s death and resurrection has not only made our souls clean, it was a divine action that brings us face to face with Yahweh and makes us whole. In Him we are resurrected, and by His side we can now stand. When we look through the crucifixion, we see the entirety of history being shifted into place, going back to how it was originally meant to be.
As we look through His resurrection, we see that justice has been made on our behalf. Only an act of divinity could have atoned our exit from paradise; likewise, as we continue to seek justice and bring the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven, we must remember that it is only the power of the Holy Spirit that can shift paradigms. It is only through the power of the Holy Spirit that we are able to see through our circumstance, and toward the glory of God.
As Easter approaches, I pray our perspectives would become tuned to an eternal reality in addition to our earthly reality. May our zeal to see oppression cease pour out from the justice that we are promised in Christ, and may we never stop rejoicing that through Him, it has been finished.
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About the author:
Miarose Ishijima is a college student in the metro-NYC area. She recently completed the Vineyard’s Heroic Leadership Institute and is slowly learning how to see God is all things. Miarose loves Latin America, exploring new cities, and somehow always finds herself in the most peculiar, slightly dangerous situations.