A Grandmother's Faith, Passed On in Seoul

At four o'clock the school bus stops outside the apartment block, and Jiwoo runs across the courtyard with her backpack bouncing. Her grandmother, Soonja, is waiting by the door in a padded coat. The air smells of roasting chestnuts from the cart on the corner. The ginkgo trees along the road have turned bright yellow.

Jiwoo's parents both work in Gangnam. They leave before seven and are rarely home before nine. So the afternoons belong to Halmeoni. Snacks, homework, piano practice, the hagwon run at six. Soonja is seventy-three. Some days her knees remind her of every stair.

Every afternoon, before Jiwoo eats, Soonja bows her head and says a short prayer of thanks. Every evening, before the hagwon, she reads one story from a children's Bible with worn corners. That is all. She is not a teacher. She left school at fifteen.

Lately she has wondered if it is enough, or if it is anything at all. Jiwoo has started rolling her eyes during the prayer. Last week she asked, “Halmeoni, why do you always pray? My friends' grandmas don't.” Her son is kind but busy, and faith is not much talked about at home. Soonja sometimes feels like she is pouring water into sand.

On Wednesday morning, at the women's prayer meeting, the leader read from Paul's second letter to Timothy. Soonja had heard it many times, but this time she heard the names. “The unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice.”

A grandmother. Named in Scripture. Not for preaching to crowds, not for anything famous. Only for a sincere faith that lived in her and then lived in the next person, and the next. Paul did not say how Lois did it. Perhaps it was just like this. Prayers at a table. Stories at bedtime. Being there, year after year.

Soonja walked home slowly that day. She did not decide to do anything new. She decided to keep doing the small things, and to stop measuring them.

That evening Jiwoo rolled her eyes again at the prayer. Soonja smiled and finished anyway. Then she answered the question from last week. “I pray because my mother prayed for me,” she said. “In a very small house, in a very hard time. And I am still here. So I say thank you.” Jiwoo said nothing and ate her gimbap.

Nothing dramatic happened. Jiwoo still sighs sometimes. But two weeks later, when Soonja had a cold and stayed in bed, she heard small feet in the kitchen. Jiwoo had made her a cup of barley tea. She set it down and, without being asked, folded her hands and said a short, clumsy prayer for Halmeoni to get better.

Soonja did not make a fuss. She just said, “Gomawo,” thank you, and drank the tea. Whatever happens next is in God's hands. But she knows now that the water was not going into sand.