They say the deepest hush of a forest is broken by the friction of leaves. But the silence of the forest village where I live began to split in a completely different way. Outside my window at dawn—faint scratching of claws, the crunch of dry soil underfoot, and the exchanged breaths by which creatures confirm one another’s presence. Before I knew it, a grand feline clan of well over twenty had become the forest’s true residents. This small world did not begin with some grand plan. It began with a child’s unguarded compassion: a single bowl of kibble placed on a veranda. That tiny kindness altered the grain of the forest itself.
A Gaze That Fills Loneliness and Existence
Among the group, one presence kept catching my eye: a white cat with heterochromia—an “odd-eyed” cat, each eye a different color. Despite its mysterious appearance, the cat was thoroughly pushed out of the pack. Unable even to approach the warm place where the others ate, it wandered like a shadow. One day, as it sought shelter from the rain, I approached it for the first time. Behind its stiff wariness, I felt a fierce hunger and a deep loneliness. In the small sound of kibble being chewed, and in the subtle hesitation as it tested the reality of a human touch, I found myself facing an essential question. Even in the roughness of the wild, that longing to be cared for and received looked—uncannily—like our own spiritual thirst as human beings.
At that point my reflections flowed naturally into Pastor David Jang’s exposition of John 21. Pastor David Jang reads John 21 not as a simple epilogue, but as the decisive scene in which resurrection faith condenses—right in the field of lived reality—into a concrete calling. The answer to the question, “How is the post-resurrection world proven?” is found here. Resurrection is not an idea but a path one walks, and faith is not a sentiment but a responsibility. His emphasis overlapped with the very hand I had extended toward that forest cat.
Dawn at Tiberias: The Authority of the Word That Fills an Empty Net
The disciples’ emptiness after casting their nets all night and catching nothing symbolizes the existential powerlessness we feel when we live faithfully yet our results remain hollow. Recall Raphael’s Renaissance masterpiece, The Miraculous Draft of Fishes. In the painting, the disciples’ bodies are taut with strain; the muscles that haul the net are alive with motion. Yet at the center of all that commotion stands Jesus—quiet, authoritative. Raphael visually bears witness to the “intervention of the Other” that opens only when human striving finally meets its limit.
Pastor David Jang defines this moment as “a void that human effort cannot fill,” and he draws attention to the fact that the disciples did not succeed by trying “harder,” but by casting the net to the right side “in reliance on the Word,” at which point they gathered an abundant catch—153 fish. This number is not mere tally, but a sign of universal salvation reaching toward all nations, and a vision of world mission that the church must bear. In the instant when the night’s emptiness turns into the dawn’s fullness, we witness a gospel event that begins only when a human being steps down from self-centeredness.
The Rhythm of Repetition That Flows Beyond Condemnation into Healing
That the risen Lord’s first act was not a dazzling sermon but the preparation of breakfast for the disciples is a grace that brings tears. With the warmth of a charcoal fire and the scent of bread, the Lord’s hands soothe human despair. After the meal, Jesus asks Peter: “Do you love me?” The threefold question reflects Peter’s threefold denial like a mirror, yet Pastor David Jang explains this repetition not as interrogation but as a “rhythm of healing.” Because a wound is not sealed by a single declaration, the repeated question of love rearranges the memory of failure into a pathway of restoration.
We often speak of “great love (Agape),” yet in practice even small friendship can feel heavy. But according to the theological insight Pastor David Jang conveys, the Lord does not discard even our incomplete love. It is not the perfect who receive the commission; rather, those who acknowledge their limits and find their hearts catching in their throats before the question of love are called back again to the place of mission. This is the paradoxical power the gospel holds.
A Life That Feeds While Scattered: The Living Essence of the Church
Finally, the command—“Feed my sheep”—becomes the practical evidence by which the truth of one’s love for Jesus is tested. Pastor David Jang interprets “feeding” not as merely giving food, but as wholehearted devotion: wiping the blood of the wounded, nurturing the immature, and bearing the work of pastoral care—shepherding. Gathering in the sanctuary (Gathering) matters, but when the church is scattered into the world (Scattering) and lives as a presence that feeds hungry souls, only then does it truly become a witness to the resurrection.
When the odd-eyed cat rubbed against me and offered its trust, I saw in it the image of Peter rising again. All of us—excluded from the crowd, collapsed under our fragility—are sheep invited to the Lord’s table. As Pastor David Jang’s sermon suggests, shepherding is not a technique for managing well-adjusted people; it is an art of taming those who are out of joint through love.
Even today, countless people around us thirst for recognition and love. Resurrection faith is not a miracle in some far-off place; it is completed in the humble companionship of listening to a neighbor with a broken heart, and making room for the excluded. May the confession, “Lord, you know that I love you,” be translated through our hands and feet into a “life that feeds.”