Mutuality in The Moon

Do you ever step outside on nights when the weather carries with it that specific temperature or that specific smell that strikes something inside of your heart that sends your heart whirling and tingles radiating from your chest to the tips of your fingers? Something in the air, whether it's the smell, the temperature, the moisture...sparks something in your spirit.
I stepped outside tonight after being in a stuffy room and was hit by the crispness of the air and the clarity of the sky. I poised myself on my tiptoes and looked straight up and noticed (albeit too briefly) each star in the sky that was sparkling so bright I could make out the defined edges of each sparkle. Then I turned on my toes getting ready to do a quick spin (because that's what I do when I feel all warm and fuzzy inside) and as I turned my head I noticed the moon.

I work at a missions organization that is very injustice focused. I hear A LOT about injustice. It pains me to say I might be slightly numb to all the pictures of babies with swollen bellies and flies around their heads, but when you see the pictures and hear the stats time and time again, they lose their punch, and I think we can all relate to that. But I've recently learned about the plight of North Korea and it has been sticking with me like no injustice ever has. Ever since I heard a firsthand account from a co-founder of a US North Korean advocacy center, it's been like a splinter in my heart that's continually aching. My heart aches for the North Koreans. And it's for this reason--yes, they're starving, they're cold, they're subjected to forced labor. But what resonates as the greatest injustice of North Korea is this: they are stripped of freedom of thought. They're subjected to mental manipulation and trauma that cannot simply be relieved by giving them food or shelter. It takes years of therapy and counseling to undo the lies that are intentionally planted in the mind of North Koreans by the Kim dynasty. This video is a great glimpse into the life of a North Korean labor camp defector. But pay attention specifically to  34:34-35:21 and you can see that even escaping the worst conditions in the world and living well in society cannot alleviate years of brainwashing and emotional torture.

Watching this video and seeing the weight that Shin will carry the rest of his life, simply because he was born into the country of North Korea, makes me want to kayak the entire Pacific ocean all the way to Kim Jung-Il's palace and take matters and justice into my own hands. Someone STOP this succession of crazed dictators, in the name of Jesus. 

The entire crisis just feels hopeless, sometimes.

But tonight, as I was looking at the moon, it was impressed up on my heart that the North Koreans, thousands of miles away, look at the exact same moon that I do. And that may sound cheesy, but think about how cool that is. At night, no matter where I am...I see the same moon, in all it's splendor, as the North Koreans. I found such mutuality with these people I've never met simply from looking at this moon. Sometimes injustice seems so far away, but in looking at the moon, it makes me feel like it's up close. Tangible.  It hits me that people in North Korea, in labor camps, starving and eating kernels of corn or bits of grass to stay alive can look up in their desperation and see the beauty of the moon, a chunk of rock floating in space that each of us on planet earth can see...and I wonder if God didn't create it just for that reason--to bring us all to a place of mutuality with one another. Amidst pain, struggle and suffering, when we feel stuck, insignificant and useless, we can see something like the moon and be reminded that the world is big, God is bigger, and there's something Other than whatever it is we're in. That is hopeful.