Pastors . .. and pastor’s kids.  

It could also apply to

• MKs (Missionary’s Kid) 
• EKs (Elder’s Kid) 
• DKs (Deacon’s Kid)

There is a world of difference and chasm between the two.  One chose to be who they are.  And the other, they had no choice.  They were born one, whether they liked it or not.  

I was born as a PK.  And I was always known as a PK.  No one really knew me by my name.  I was always Pastor Yang’s Kid.  

In my adolescence, I tried hard to find myself ’apart from’ the ‘God-given birthright’ as a pastor’s kid.  I tried to run as far away as I possibly could from my ‘spiritual inheritance’ to somehow find who I was ‘really’ meant to be.  

There had to be a mistake.  I was born into the wrong family with the wrong set of parents.  I had to have been switched at birth.  This had to be some kind of cosmic slip-up.  

There was no way that God could’ve entrusted me to the most un-cool, un-worldly, non-conforming, old-fashioned, conventional, traditional and consistently all-too-SDA parents.

I was doomed.  I couldn’t breathe.  I was suffocating under the tyranny of Adventism.  All the 100% SDA ‘Kale, Celery, Green Pepper Juice’ I had to chuck down my throat speak for themselves.  The fact I had to memorize all 52 Bible Verses for the last Sabbath (because I was PK) of the year vindicates my quandary.

For quite some time, I fought long and hard to resist with everything in me the person I was created to be.  I couldn’t accept the fact I was who I was.  It was unfair.  I was missing out.  I was stuck with parents that didn’t want me to have any fun.  When all of my friends were playing in the arcades I was memorizing Bible verses.  When they were wearing whatever they wanted to church, I had to dress up like a good PK.  When they were having fun outside, I had to sit in the front row and take sermon notes.  I was miserable and very despondent.  

In the meantime, it never occurred to me that maybe I had been strategically placed where I was for a very specific reason and that I was being trained for a very specific purpose.  

And it was just this past Sabbath, the last ‘official’ Sabbath at VASDA, that it finally dawned on me why God had chosen me to be born into a pastor’s family and had trained me to become who I was.  

When I stopped resisting, when I stopped fighting against the predicament God had prepared in advance for my life, the eyes of my heart opened and I gained insight into the mysterious and enigmatic providence of God.  

I spent the last 2 1/2 years in full-time ministry here at VASDA as the youth & associate pastor for the English Ministry.  At first, it wasn’t clear as to why I was here and what I was supposed to do.  But last Sabbath, it became very clear as to why I was born as a PK, and why I was called into ministry.  

All throughout the farewell ceremony, all through the tears, hugs, embraces, testimonials and messages of appreciation for our ministry, the words that evoked the deepest emotion of my soul were these two very simple words.  

Thank You!

Thank you for . .  Thank you for … Thank you for …

I was being thanked.  For what?  Who was I and what did I do to receive such gratitude and appreciation?  

And out of nowhere came The Voice.

Well done my son.  Well done.  This is why I created you.  This is why I trained you.  Now do you understand?

And that’s when springs of joy and utter delight exploded from the depths of my soul and I rejoiced & praised God for His providential plan for my life.

There has never been a moment like last Sabbath when life made perfect sense.  Like a Panoramic IMAX View, all the scenes of my life from its genesis to the present moment passed before me and I was in awe and in worship to the God who is the Alpha and Omega!  

Then it came.  This huge, massive, gigantic, enrapturing peace that overflowed into every fiber of my being.  

God connected every dot from the ungrateful-PK-me to being-thanked-pastor-me.  

Wherever you are, in whatever circumstance you seem to be ‘stuck in’, there is an over-arching, invisible fabric that the Grand Weaver is weaving to connect the present-you to the future-you.