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| My mother, in a quiet place, with her grandson. |
Esther Ahn Kim's mother had neither church nor Bible. She taught her daughter to live by four tenets that a missionary had taught her when she was a child:
1. Jesus is the only Son of God and is the only Savior.
2. Jesus will never forsake his believers.
3. Jesus is able to take all the misfortunes of believers and turn them into good.
4. Jesus hears the prayers of his children.
My mother was one of those persons who always lived for others. Once a week she filled a sack with aspirin, salve, candy, and tissue paper and visited the poor. I had never seen her eat warm rice. She would always cook a large amount of rice at one time.
"If I have plenty of cooked rice," she told me when I asked her about it, "I can give some to a beggar when he comes. In order to follow Jesus, I think we should always be prepared to give to others."
Mother was so different from the other members of my father's household. They only gave away that which they did not want to keep for themselves. They seemed to hate each other and only lived from day to day. They had no God, no holy day, no true joy of confidence. Wherever Mother was, it was like a chapel of heaven around her.
By 1939, most missionaries had left Korea because the Japanese occupation endangered the local people when they had contact with them. Everyone was commanded to only speak Japanese and take on Japanese surnames. Those who didn't comply would lose their jobs and their children wouldn't be allowed in school.
Shrines were built in every city, and small ones were placed in every school, church, and house. It became a rule that every Korean must bow before the shrines. Esther was a music teacher when her school was called to a rally at a great shrine in Seoul. She had no choice but to go, though she felt very much like she was marching to her own execution as she led her students up the mountain. The bold words of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego echoed against the fear in her mind.
Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O King. But if not, be it known to you, O King, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.
Daniel 3:17-18
In eerily coincidental fashion, the order came to bow. As one, the entire great crowd obeyed, bending the upper half of their bodies at a straight angle.
Only one person remained standing.
Four detectives were waiting in her classroom; her students watched as Esther was led away for her brazen disobedience. Though she managed to slip away before being incarcerated, she felt the need to prepare herself for the cold prison cell ultimately awaiting her. She slipped onto a train, and her mother met her in the far north, near the Manchurian border, where the two of them found an isolated, deserted house. This place was both retreat and preparation. Her mother knew Esther's fear and frailty, but she also knew the strength of God. She did not try to keep her daughter from impending suffering. She helped her prepare for it.
In the weeks they were there, Esther memorized hymns and over 100 chapters of the Bible. She fasted for longer and longer periods, even from water. She slept without a quilt. She practiced living in deep poverty, eating rotten beans and poor produce. She expected it would only be worse in the prison camps. She had many clandestine meetings with persecuted Christians who already hid in the mountains and could tell her their stories of torture and pain. All too soon, she heard the Japanese knew of her whereabouts, and she had to flee. Alone.
It was hard for Mother to see me leave... The tears flowed as I thought of Mother, who was left alone now with her aching heart. She would be even more dependent upon the Lord than before.
When next they met, Esther's mother told her "The time has come for you to prepare yourself to die." So, as Esther put it, she started "practicing to die." In fact, she felt a burden to go to the Japanese and tell them of their wrong before God. She left Korea and headed for Tokyo. No longer waiting for death, Esther was diving into it. Her mother watched her determine to follow God's directing, saying, "Concerning your going to warn the Japanese authorities, I can think of many things that make me feel that God has planed this for you since you were a child."
Esther and a friend made their way upward, talking and preaching to many in authority throughout the capital. Finally they made it into the Japanese legislature. They spoke boldly. They were arrested.
Esther spent the next 6 years in prison, mostly in Pyongyang. Often she expected to die. She used the time to speak and live before many other prisoners and guards. But years of cold, sickness, harsh treatment, and little food aged and weakened her body. At one point, the prison doctor asked that she be released because she was growing blind and had frostbitten feet. She met her mother outside. The matron woman's figure was waif-thin and she hobbled painfully. She remonstrated her daughter, explaining what life was like beyond the prison's brick walls.
We can get nothing except by rationing... We eat anything we can get... Because of these, I am blind; I cannot see your face... We can't get fuel. My feet are so frostbitten I can hardly walk. A citizen who is loyal to God has no place in this world. Christians in prison are dying, but so are the believers outside... Didn't you give everything to the Lord, including your eyes?
Esther thanked her mother for reminding her of reality, then asked the guard to return her to her frigid cell. "I have never seen anything like this before," said the Korean senior officer. "The daughter is great. The mother is greater."
Thirty-four Christians had entered Pyongyang prison in 1940. On August 17, 1945, when the cells were opened and the Japanese occupation was over, fourteen had survived. Esther and her family fled from North Korea, where the Russian occupation would prove to be worse even than the Japanese. In Seoul, she met her husband. She'd always wanted to marry an engineer; but her mother had always hoped she'd marry a pastor. Esther said, "Mother and I had competed against each other in our prayers. We both laughed at our predicament." It wasn't long before Esther's husband gave up his engineering work to become a pastor.
Esther's mother was nurturing and very caring. But her sympathy did not make her soft. She was not stoic, but managed to be strong and courageous in the face of both her and her own daughter's intense suffering. It is agonizingly difficult to speak the prayer, "Do whatever You will with my child," knowing that it may very well not be physical comfort, ease or happiness.
Yet I suspect there was never a mother prouder of her child, or a child more loved and prayed for than Esther Ahn Kim.
I always felt strengthened when I talked with Mother about God and His love. I began to think that life might be worth living in this time of persecution. It might even be a truer picture of the believer to agonize, to suffer, to be hated, and tortured, and even to be killed in obeying God's words rather than to live an ordinary, uneventful life.
-Esther Ahn Kim
Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you... Rejoice and be glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Matthew 5:11-12
(Most of this story was taken from the book, Faithful Women and their Extraordinary God by Noel Piper. Piper obtained the quotes and biography from If I Perish by Esther Ahn Kim.)
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