Thank You, God, for North Koreans. They teach me how to recognize the difference between want and need. They show me what is pain and what is merely inconvenience. They demonstrate "cross", while I experience a little "trouble". Thank you for giving me heroes over there when so many of my countrymen have become lukewarm, and I with them. They let me know the church is alive and passionate and of God, not cold and culture-dominated and irrelevant. They tell me You are alive and worth living and dying for.

Thank You that North Korean Christians are not sports-obsessed. If they have any obsession, it is hunger. Yet in the face of their hunger and difficulty, many of them choose to stay and bring the Gospel to their countrymen. Thank You, God. Thank You that I can go to what I called my "prison" of a job with its dead end and sorry work and I can be thankful and rejoicing in having a place to earn money for Your people. Thank You for working on my complaining spirit, for lifting up my head far enough to see around the world.

Thank You that You are a God without borders. Thanks that I can be in touch with my Korean brothers in the Spirit any time I choose. Thank You that You created one holy church, and that denominations and nations are only fiction that will dissolve in a little while, when all the divisions of earth become the Kingdom of our Lord. Thank You that, even though we are so far apart, I can feel their pain a little, they can feel my liberty a little, and together we can know You a little more every day. Thank You.

Thank You that even though our sin and theirs has abounded, Your grace has abounded more. We know there is no greater sin than resisting Your Spirit's call to Jesus, so we share the world's load of guilt for we have resisted that call often. But we thank You for the forgiveness that abounds at Calvary still.

We know You have saved great sinners. Like us. Would You touch Mr. Kim's heart? Would You change him? Would You protect Your people from his misguided ways from this day on?