What is God doing in Japan?

God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble at its swelling.
...
Come, behold the works of the Lord,
how he has brought desolations on the earth.
...
“Be still, and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!”
The Lord of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.

These words from Psalm 46 have been on the hearts of many Christians and missionaries in the days following the March 11^th Great East Japan Earthquake (東日本大震災). On that day, the mountains did tremble, and the waters roared and foamed for miles inland, sweeping everyone and everything away with them. Come, behold the works of the Lord, how He has brought desolations on the earth!

I have beheld it. I was there for 10 days. I have seen with my own eyes the desolations that He has wrought, and they are terrible, dreadful. The only response I could give at that time was silence. Be still, and know that I am God.

My wife Jen and I first heard the call from God to pursue missionary work in Japan in 2002. Since then we have followed, in much weakness and sadly in much pride, but all these years He has been graciously and faithfully preparing us for that calling, both in terms of higher education as well as in personal growth, holiness, and humility (things that I have sorely lacked). And a key part of our training process involved living for a time in Japan. From 2006 to 2008, we lived in rural Fukushima prefecture as English teachers, learning Japanese, ministering where we could, and falling in love more and more with Japan. It became our home, and has remained so even to this day.

So we were crushed when we learned that the March 11^th disaster had not only struck the nation we love and the people we love, but it literally struck in our own backyard. The quaint little town we lived in is only 20 miles away from the stricken Daiichi Nuclear Power plant (just outside of the exclusion zone), and many of the people there have left because of radiation scares and shortages of daily goods. In addition, many of the cities we had visited in the past were now in ruins: Sendai, Iwaki, Namie, Makuhari. While no one we knew perished (praise the Lord), many people we know have suffered greatly, and many of the towns we loved have been damaged, deserted, or destroyed.

But even this is not the true Disaster. For many years now, the nation of Japan has been deeply troubled, plagued by a host of spiritual ills. Japan is “a superpower without a moral compass,” a land blessed with much common grace but almost no saving grace. 99.9% of all people there do not trust Christ as Savior, and most have never heard the gospel even once. Depression, anxiety, shame, guilt, and relentless perfectionism haunt millions and contribute to a suicide epidemic (over 32,000 people every year take their own lives). Pornography is rampant, teenage prostitution is commonplace, and over a million young men refuse to leave their rooms and remain isolated from the world around them.

Why has God allowed all this to happen? Why has He visited such devastation on these people that we love so much, these precious people who are made in God's own image? Is God punishing Japan for the many sins that they have committed, and continue to commit? Or is He striking them for our lack of obedience in ministry, our hardness of heart, our lukewarm prayers? Has God forsaken Japan, and cast them off forever? In the words of the lament of the Sons of Korah, Will you be angry with us forever? Will you prolong your anger to all generations? (Psalm 85:5)

Lord, will you be angry with Japan forever? Will you prolong your anger to all generations?

People of God, hear now God's own answer to His own question:

I will not contend forever, nor will I always be angry; for the spirit would grow faint before me, and the breath of life that I made (Isaiah 57:16).

“Come, let us return to the Lord;
for he has torn us, that he may heal us;
he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.
After two days he will revive us;
on the third day he will raise us up,
that we may live before him.
Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord;
his going out is sure as the dawn;
he will come to us as the showers,
as the spring rains that water the earth” (Hosea 6:1-3).

Our God is a God of compassion! I long for the people of Japan to say these words to one another; I long for the Japanese to seek God with all their heart and mind and soul and strength, to press on (and urge each other on) to know the Lord.

And God shares that same longing. Just as God pitied the city of Ninevah, He says, should not I also pity Japan, that great country, in which there are more than 120 million persons who do not know their right hand from their left...? (Jonah 4:11)

There is indeed a lack of moral understanding in Japan because there is a famine on the land— not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord (Amos 8:11).

But it is not over yet! Jesus has not forsaken Japan, nor will He cast them off forever. Japanese Christians are few and churches there are small and weak, but a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his law (Isaiah 42:3-4).

He will send His law and His Word to the people of Japan until at last, in the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” it shall be said to them, “Children of the living God.” (Hosea 1:10)

“Be still, and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!”

God never wastes suffering. On this side of Heaven he never brings desolations devoid of grace. God loves the Japanese too much to let them continue to walk in their own ways, in the same ways that I myself walked in before I was saved. And just as He did to Israel countless times in the past, he is using the sufferings of the Japanese people to draw them to Himself.

When I was there this past March, I saw firsthand some of the glorious ways He is working:

• I met pastors whose tireless faith and indomitable confidence in the goodness of God spurred them on to works of radical compassion.

• I prayed with large groups of Japanese Christians whose zeal burned to heaven and stoked a fire deep in my own bones.

• I worshiped with a Christian singer/songwriter who cried tears of love as he sang his songs to people living in a makeshift shelter.

• I prayed with a young college-age man who had grow up in the church but wept as he finally started to believe in his own heart that God might really love him.

• I saw volunteers willing to drive truckloads of supplies through the night to needy towns despite the fear of radiation.

• I joined a Japanese Christian in a heartfelt prayer of thanks with an elderly couple who had never prayed before.

• I heard countless other testimonies of how God touched the hearts of unbelievers to donate goods, stand in line for hours to buy gas, and even attend worship for the first time because the felt that God was trying to tell them something.

God has not wasted the sufferings of the Japanese people. He is at work, wooing, inviting, drawing people to Himself. And He has not watched the devastation from a distance, either. No, Jesus entered into our sin-stained world and felt, more than we can ever know, the full devastating burden of human sin and suffering:

He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.
Surely he has borne the griefs of the Japanese people and carried their sorrows (Isaiah 53:4)

[But,] Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many—even the Japanese—to be accounted righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities (Isaiah 53:11).

Thus, in Him, and only in Him, shall come true these very great and precious promises from the Psalms:

Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you! (Psalm 67:3)

The princes of the peoples gather as the people of the God of Abraham. (Psalm 47:9)

“Be still, and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!”
The Lord of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.

UPDATE FROM JAPAN, PART TWO

Saturday

After a very blessed stay in Iwaki, we drove straight through my old hometown of Funehiki (I really wanted to stop, but our schedule wouldn't allow it) up to the city of Sendai, which had arguably seen the most devastating effects of the earthquake and tsunami. We stayed at the Morigo Christian Campground, which was both breathtakingly beautiful and surprisingly comfortable (the only amenity that we lacked was hot showers).

While there, I met an old friend from my time in Fukehiki named Aaron. After we both got over our shock at seeing one another, he explained to me that many of his fellow (foreign) English teachers had left the country, but that he had made up his mind to stay and help. His presence there was a great encouragement, as well as a wonderful witness.

Sunday

After an impromptu worship service (I had been looking forward to worshiping at a local church, but no such plans had been made), our team decided to split up and go two different directions. Because I was one of the few drivers in the team, I felt that I didn't really have a choice where I went, so I ended up going with half of our team to Shiogama City, where we delivered supplies and manpower to a neighborhood that had been flooded by the tsunami.

My experience there was difficult on a number of levels. We helped an elderly couple to move large items out of their damaged house--refrigerator, piano, etc. It felt painful to enter their once-beautiful Japanese home with dirty work boots on, and equally painful to help them take their largest and most expensive possessions out to the street to simply be trashed. We helped another elderly couple to empty their single-story house of their large items as well, and when we asked them if they wanted us to remove their tatami mats, the woman said that there was no need because they were just going to have to tear the whole thing down anyway. I kept asking myself, What if this were my house? What if I was this person? What would I be feeling? I couldn't come up with an answer.

That evening, we drove to a different part of the city where the damage from the tsunami was more intense. There was a row of large, expensive houses that had been knocked wide open:

Behind these ruined estates was a massive expanse of what had been rice fields that was now strewn with wreckage:

The damage here defied description:

There were cars wrapped in fishing nets, torn pieces of peoples' photo albums littering the ground, and even childrens' toys coated in grime laying on trash heaps:

But most disturbing of all was the remains of a scarecrow that we found with an all-too human face laying serenely amidst the rubble:

This haunting picture captures for me the real cost of these disasters, that of tens of thousands of human souls. How many more bodies were found here in this wreckage, mangled beyond recognition? It also makes me think of all those who chose to end their suffering by committing suicide--over 30,000 every year. I have to remind myself at times like this that this physical devastation is only a shadow of the spiritual devastation that has plagued this country for many long years, and only Christ, whose "appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind," can restore the image of God in man and offer true healing to me and my people.

Monday

On Monday my team went further north to a coastal area called Ishinomaki, which was hit just as hard (perhaps even harder) than Shiogama. At sunset, we were taken to the top of a hill that overlooks the city, and total destruction met our eyes:

I have many pictures, but none of them do justice to the level of annihilation that we saw there. Our guide (an elder at a local church) took me down to an area in which the current of the tsunami had smashed many, many houses together into a solid mass of wreckage:

Here is a closer look:

Seeing houses piled up like legos showed that the power of this tsunami was beyond comprehension. In every place, it seemed, the tsunami wrought unique forms of devastation, but all of them were equally powerful and equally destructive and deadly. (My guide pointed out that there are still likely many bodies inside these homes that have yet to be excavated.)

Tuesday

On Tuesday, my team "geared up" and trudged out to help a local family clean out their house.This time, the whole house and surrounding neighborhood (including the sidewalk) was covered, inside and out, by thick, slimy, foul-smelling mud:

We started by clearing out the sidewalk. The mud--it was more like the 'muck' from the bottom of a lake--was thick, sticky, and extremely dense and heavy, and took a lot of energy to shovel:

Then, we helped the residents of the house (a Christian woman and her non-Christian mother and cousin) to remove the majority of the gunk from their floors, and then carry practically EVERYTHING they owned out to the curb to be trashed. By the time we were done the sidewalk was completely full of stuff:

This was another one of those tragic and surreal experiences. As a Christian, I know that this material world is only temporary, but rarely is that fact more poignantly illustrated than when you know someone who has lost EVERYTHING. There was no bargaining with this kind of devastation, no saving anything that had been soaked in this nasty, smelly water. If this doesn't break us of our materialism and our focus on owning stuff that moths and rust consume, then nothing will.

Wednesday and Thursday

On Wednesday we drove back to Chiba (a 7-hour trip), and then on Thursday we boarded our respective planes for our return to the States. Both trips were full of reflection and deep thought, and even now I am not done processing it all. But I am thankful for the opportunity to have gone on this trip, and thankful to have met so many wonderful and godly men and women engaged in the cause of giving aid to the needy in the name of Christ.

Please join me in continuing to pray for Japan. It will be a long, difficult road to recovery for Japan, especially for the Tohuku (North-Eastern) region. There will be many who will lose heart and begin to despair, and many others who will cling to a stubborn sense of self-dependence and self-sufficiency for survival. Please pray God would exalt the weary, sustain the faint, and breathe new life into this dying country. He alone can do it! Please, God, save Japan for the sake of your eternal glory and praise!!

-Mike