The Language She Finally Understood

For three years, Marcus Chen wrote letters to his estranged daughter, Lily, after she moved to Osaka to teach English. He poured his heart onto paper — pages about how proud he was, how sorry he was for the years he worked late and missed her recitals, how much he wanted to rebuild what distance had broken. Lily received every letter. She read them. She filed them in a drawer.

Then, in March 2023, Marcus showed up at her apartment door in Osaka. No announcement. Just a sixty-two-year-old man with a carry-on suitcase and jet lag, standing in the hallway of a building where he couldn't read a single sign. He spent two weeks there. He learned to use chopsticks badly. He sat in her tiny kitchen and listened to her cry about a life that wasn't turning out the way she'd planned. He walked her to school in the rain, holding an umbrella that was too small for both of them.

"The letters were beautiful, Dad," Lily told him at the airport. "But I didn't believe you loved me until you came."

Words on a page can be ignored, doubted, filed away. But a person standing in front of you, entering your mess, eating at your table — that you cannot dismiss.

This is what John means when he writes that the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. God had spoken through prophets and law and poetry for centuries. But then He did something that changed everything — He showed up. The Almighty crossed every distance, took on skin and hunger and tears, and moved into the neighborhood. Not so we could admire His words from afar, but so we could see His glory up close.