When God calls, resistance is futile.
The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord. (Jonah 1: 1-3 NIV)
On Thanksgiving weekend of 2011, Soo, the boys, and I boarded a train in Kyoto and headed north to Iwate Prefecture, stopping along the way and spending a few days in Tokyo to connect with some of our contacts.
As we rode a crowded train on the Yamanote line in Central Tokyo, Soo and I started to wonder– was God really calling us to serve up north in Ofunato, a coastal town in Iwate Prefecture, which is part of the region known as Tohoku (literally, “East-North”)? What if God just wanted to get us to Japan and we end up serving in Tokyo or Kyoto instead?
I must confess that we had gotten quite comfortable in Kyoto and were enjoying our time in Tokyo.
I had been staring blankly at the wall while processing this, and when I finally paid attention to what I was seeing, I noticed an ad promoting tourism to Iwate. “Interesting,” I thought. I read the rest of the English text on the ad and saw the names of other prefectures such as Yamagata, Akita, and Aomori.
The next thing I noticed was the, um, “bold” choice of colors. Cyan and magenta? The gaudy colors reminded me of the Hayabusa, the metallic turquoise and magenta train that Mark, our missionary friend, and I had taken to Iwate one month earlier.
That’s when it hit me: this color scheme was unique to the Tohoku line bullet train.
The ad I had been staring at was promoting tourism to all of Tohoku, including Iwate. I tried reading the Japanese text– it says, rather emphatically, “Go to Tohoku!”
I smiled to myself and thought, “What are the chances that I’d be sitting directly across from a poster that says ‘Go to Tohoku?’”
I glanced at the other ads on the train.
Every ad in the entire train was a promo for Tohoku. There wasn’t a single one plugging Toyota or Suntory or some doctor’s office or a Disney-esque wedding chapel. As far as the eye could see, on posters as well as on banners hanging from the ceiling, were the cyan and magenta promos imploring people to “Go to Tohoku!”
I pointed this out to Soo. She jokingly pretended not to see any of it.
We reached our station and got off the train– even the outside of it was plastered with the distinct “Go to Tohoku” banners.
Again, I showed Soo. Again, she feigned ignorance.
We stopped at the restrooms before exiting the station. As I waited outside while Soo changed our youngest child’s diapers, I noticed the following display on the wall directly across from the restrooms:
There was no escape.
We had flirted with the idea of avoiding our calling to Iwate, much like Jonah tried to avoid his calling to Nineveh, and being a captive audience on this particular train, where we were besieged with “GO TO TOHOKU!” ads in garish colors, was our version of sitting in the belly of the whale for three days.
We got the message, loud and clear.
We wouldn’t settle for Tokyo, Kyoto, or any other city in Japan. Our sense of calling was for Ofunato in Tohoku, and, unless God closed the door on it, we’d keep moving in that direction.
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