God Bless You

 Lately I've been really enjoying the Old Testament.  Maybe that’s because I'm getting “old” myself; who knows?  Anyway, the other day I came across Isaiah 2:3,

“Many peoples will come and say,

‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,

    to the temple of the God of Jacob.

He will teach us his ways,

    so that we may walk in his paths.’”

Suddenly an old song that I knew popped into my head.  It's in Japanese, but so beautiful. And the reason it was dually beautiful was that I remembered Tony singing that scripture to me about 40 years ago as we were walking up to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

This song was written by a dear friend of ours, Makoto Iwabuchi. Over the years, he’s been a real inspiration in our lives, in addition to a lifelong friend.

It was the early 80’s. Tony and I were settling into life in Sendai when Makoto and another fellow by the name of Chu Kosaka came and held a concert in the city auditorium. We fell in love with their music immediately. It was the first time we had heard Japanese Christian music from anything other than the old traditional hymnbook. 

For many years after, they came to Sendai for an annual concert. Not only was their music inspiring; they both had moving testimonies of their life of faith in Jesus.  And then in the midst of his successful career, Makoto's young daughter died of cancer. We were all shattered at such a loss.

And then, as most of you know, our own son also died of cancer.

I'll never forget walking the streets of Tokyo, thinking in my grief, "No one on this earth knows how I feel." But even as I said that, I remembered something Makoto had said as he sat in my living room,

"I always thought losing a child would take (and at this, he shot up his arm in a fist) the Faith of Abraham!"

And then he lowered his arm and continued softly, “But I came to realize that with God, it's just one day at a time, letting him love me and lead me".

Sometime later, as we were talking about our unspeakable losses, Makoto quietly mentioned that he thought of us as "Itami no Kyodai”; “Brothers in pain”.  So true.

What can I say?  After years and years of this journey with Jesus, the bottom line is, "It's still just one day at a time".

Makoto and his wife have a found a way back into our lives lately, as they are now looking to retirement. The four of us agree that the pain of losing a child will never go away completely, but with “one day at a time”, we are coping, and by God’s grace are flourishing in His love. 

One of the indicators of this “coping” process is our ability to look beyond ourselves now and say to someone else from the heart, “God bless you.” In fact, those words are the title to Makoto’s latest hit song. If you can, please PLEASE go to the YouTube website below and listen to it. 

Besides “God Bless You”, the second link is to the song Tony sang to me as we walked up to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The words are mostly in Japanese, but I think you’ll agree that there’s another level of communication going on here, thanks to His Holy Spirit.

God Bless You

Marsha

God Bless You

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpAWgh7dyYk 

Walking up the the Temple

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xq3F1LaJyw　



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