Lessons from the good soil

From my balcony in Osaka, I can see the tallest skyscraper in western Japan and hear the rush of cars on the major street below. Just across that street, I can also see a stone path winding through a centuries-old Buddhist temple. This contrast is a beautiful picture of Japanese culture: the ancient and the new, tradition and progress coming together in unexpected harmony. Japan’s people create a similar contrast with over 15% of the country’s population now over the age of 75.¹ The rest of the world aches to know the secret to Japan’s long life expectancy amid the stress of urban society.

During the COVID pandemic, my team and I waited for two years to get a visa to enter Japan. During that time I learned more lessons that would prepare me for Japanese society than I could have imagined. While we waited, my team and I worked at a church in Wisconsin with international students. As a Southern California native suddenly finding herself in the middle of a Wisconsin winter, I questioned God often. Why couldn’t we just get to Japan already? Why was God keeping me out of the country I longed to do ministry in? The season was marked by unbelievable slowness and confusion. I was antsy and bored, and I saw no purpose in waiting. If I couldn’t go overseas yet, I at least wanted some instant gratification from my ministry in Wisconsin, but even that felt slow. I resented the slowness.

Once, a friend told our team, “I think God’s making you wait so long because ministry in Japan will feel the exact same way.” I now think back to her words and laugh at the accuracy. The very slowness I resented is what prepared me most for ministry in Japan.

Wintering with patience

Japan’s oldest generation has seen two world wars; two atomic bombs; conflict with Russia, China, and Korea; and the worst earthquakes in the country’s history. All this makes them some of the most long-suffering people on earth. In his book Silence and Beauty, Makoto Fujimura writes, “In order for soil to become fertile, the ground must go through many a winter. Japanese soil is like that . . . Each death and trauma prepares Japan as an oasis for the gospel to find nourishment for the world.”² Japanese people of all ages shoulder such winters over and over with patience, many of them unaware of the gospel picture they already represent as they are shaped into the good soil of Matthew 13.

As I waited to enter Japan, God instilled in me a fraction of the long-suffering that characterizes Japanese society. Instead of the rushed and self-reliant laborer I was two years ago, God brought me to Japan with a far better understanding of the endurance required for ministry here. I had to go through a winter to deeply understand the gospel and the people with whom I would be sharing it. After growing in endurance myself, I can more fully love the long-suffering Japanese friends around me.

Living in the present

Another mark of Japanese society I learned while waiting was gratitude. The older generations of Japan are especially known for “inhabiting the present, rather than dwelling in the past or leaping toward the future.”³ Unlike many others in the world, they know how to simply be.

As I wondered each month whether I would finally leave for Japan, I frequently prayed the Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”⁴ Before entering a culture known for its unhurried gratitude, I needed to learn to simply be—to live as a child of God, not trying to control any more than the work entrusted to me in each moment.

Mirrored in Japanese society itself, the lessons I learned waiting to begin ministry in Japan are proving essential to my work here. Growing in long-suffering and gratitude before I came will help me sustain ministry long-term, rather than quickly burning out. So I can now meet my friends where they are, patiently love them, pray for them, and faithfully share the gospel without rigid expectations for the results. There’s joy in the slowness of reading the Bible with a Japanese friend weekly, not calculating progress but living in the present. It may take a long time to see fruit, and that’s okay. Because I serve a God who promises to draw his people to himself, I can truly live one day at a time and enjoy one moment at a time as I wait on him.

1. Jiji Kyodo, “Over 75s Make up Over 15% of Japan’s Population for First Time,” The Japan Times, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/09/19/national/japans-graying-population (September 19, 2022).
2. Makoto Fujimura, Silence and Beauty: Hidden Faith Born of Suffering (Downers Grover, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2016), 198.
3. Iza Kavedžija, “An Attitude of Gratitude: Older Japanese in the Hopeful Present,” Anthropology & Aging 41, no. 2 (2020): 58.
4. Reinhold Niebuhr, “The original Serenity Prayer,” https://proactive12steps.com/serenity-prayer/ (accessed March 15, 2023).