Monday, March 31, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Grand Central
Your son will live.
In 1978 there were no cell phones. I found a phone booth in Grand Central Station and called my parents in Lincoln, Illinois. Mom answered the phone. After telling me they were skipping my cousin’s wedding in Rhode Island, I said, “Well … uhhh … I was thinking of coming home with you.”
Oh! I could hear her exclamation a thousand miles away. “Well, then we’ll be there!” Both of us took a deep breath. Their son was alive again, Mom thought. My parents love me, I thought.
Carefully, I planned my exit from the Unification Seminary north of New York City. Although rain was in the forecast I filled a small backpack with necessities and stowed it in the woods on the lane down toward the highway. At 2 am on that warm August night I got up and left the dormitory, retrieved my pack and walked awhile in the dark, hitchhiking to Narragansett. While I walked rain began to softly fall, baptizing me. Holy Spirit, you were all around me.
A year earlier, after I had been gone 11 months learning the ways of the Korean Unification Church in America, my parents welcomed me home when I returned for my Grandpa Sandel’s funeral. It was the only time I’d seen them in two years. I have a picture of grandpa wearing the brand new backpack I traveled with a year before he died. But after the funeral I left again, joining my mobile fundraising team back on the road again.
After I came home for good, Mom told me about her prayers, how she had prayed for me to be rescued from the Moonies, that I would change my mind about their religion, that I would see clearly and hear the word of God (the Lutheran word of God). When we talked for fifteen minutes or so on the phone every couple of weeks, she struggled to persuade me and I tried to persuade her. We were both so sure we were right. God surely would rally to our side and give us what we asked for.
Then her prayer changed. In the footsteps of Catherine Marshall, Mom turned her prayers around and surrendered her son to his heavenly Father. Catherine had been ill unto death, then surrendered her body and God gave her back her health. Mom was ill unto death herself, settled into grief, and she surrendered her son.
I knew none of this when I called Mom from midtown Manhattan, only that what felt like unrelated circumstances were guiding me away from, rather than toward the church I’d been committed to for two years. When we met in Rhode Island Mom must have finally stopped holding her breath.
I learned to pray with passion and conviction while I was in the Moonies, but now the prayers changed direction. Hearing Mom’s story of surrender invited me to walk along the same path, learning to pray without demand, without giving God instructions about what to do, waiting in faith rather than fear. Of course I will learn this lesson as she did, incompletely, and decades later I still confess my failure to be still and wait, trust and obey.
You may go; your son will live.
In marriage with Margaret, in parenting with Chris, Marc, and Andi, in grandparenting with Jack, Aly, Miles, Jasper and Finn these words echo in my mind. Jesus knows how to love me and all of those that I love, and it is not just ok to trust him, it’s the only way to live.
I am about to create new heavens and a new earth. I will rejoice in my people. You shall live in the houses that you build and eat the fruit of the vineyards that you plant. Seek good and not evil so that you may live, and the Lord will be with you.
 (Isaiah 65, Psalm 30, Amos 5, John 4)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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