It is the season when cold winds cut through our collars. And beyond the winter that returns with the turning of the year, there are winters that arrive in our lives without warning—sudden, ruthless, and unforgiving. When the blizzard comes in the form of financial lack, severed relationships, or illness, we instinctively look for somewhere to hide, somewhere to endure. Two thousand years ago, the aged apostle Paul—confined in a cold underground Roman prison—was also feeling the biting chill of an approaching winter. Writing to his beloved disciple Timothy, he makes two requests: “Do your best to come to me soon… and when you come, bring the cloak.” What the great evangelist, with death looming, asks for is not a grand theological proposition, but a worn cloak to cover his aching body—and the warmth of human presence.
On a stormy night, the only refuge where a soul can rest
In Victor Hugo’s immortal masterpiece Les Misérables, there is a scene that pierces straight to the essence of the temple (a sacred dwelling). Jean Valjean, released after nineteen years in prison, trembles with cold and hunger because the stigma of being a convict leaves him rejected everywhere. The last door he knocks on is the home of Bishop Myriel. When every door in the world has been shut, the bishop welcomes him and says in effect: “This is not my house; it is the house of Jesus Christ. This door does not ask a person’s name—only whether the person is in pain.”
This moving moment resonates deeply with the sermon messages Pastor David Jang delivered from 2 Chronicles 7 and Zechariah 14. Pastor David Jang does not reduce the temple to the mere idea of a building. Like Bethel’s wilderness, where Jacob slept with a stone for a pillow, he unfolds a theological insight: the temple is “the holy place where heaven and earth meet, and where God and humanity commune.” God’s promise to Solomon—“My eyes and my heart will always be there”—declares to us, who find ourselves in storms of tribulation today, that the temple is not simply a religious facility but the soul’s one true refuge.
When the world staggers before massive waves like a pandemic and economic crisis, what responsibility must the church bear? Pastor David Jang emphasizes that the more severe the tribulation, the more the temple must recover its essential identity as “a house of prayer for all nations.” Just as what Bishop Myriel offered Jean Valjean was not merely a bed and food but the dignity of a human being restored, the church must become a spiritual fortress where the wounded and cast aside can come, meet God, and be healed. Prayer is the key that opens heaven’s door, and the channel through which God’s power flows to heal a suffering land.
The warmth of reconciliation that melts a cold prison floor
Yet the temple’s role does not end with being a refuge. Through the words of 2 Timothy chapter 4, Pastor David Jang delivers a weighty truth: the real warmth that must fill the temple is “love and reconciliation.” Paul’s request from prison—“Get Mark and bring him with you”—is a startling reversal. Mark was the one who, during an earlier missionary journey, abandoned the work because it was too difficult, causing Paul deep disappointment. The fallout even led to the painful separation between Paul and Barnabas. And yet, in the final winter of his life, Paul forgives Mark, welcomes him again, and acknowledges him as “useful to me for ministry.”
This dramatic reconciliation is precisely the gospel’s great power. Pastor David Jang observes that if the “cloak” Paul asked for would shield him from physical cold, then calling for Mark was an act of love that would thaw the coldness of the soul. The same thread runs through Paul’s appeal to Philemon to receive Onesimus—the runaway slave—as a brother. Through Scripture meditation, we come to recognize a piercing truth: no matter how magnificent the building or how splendid the ceremonies, if there is no forgiveness, no reconciliation, and no fervent love for one’s brother, that place is nothing but a pile of stones filled with chill. The power that overcomes a brutal winter is not a system, but a cloak of love that covers one another’s faults.
Welcoming spiritual spring on knees bent in prayer
Even now, we live amid news of war and famine, conflict and division—like passing through a long winter night with no end in sight. Yet Pastor David Jang does not despair. Like Zechariah’s prophecy, he is convinced that in the day of tribulation God will surely make a way of escape, and that way opens when we bow our knees in prayer. The crucial question is what we prepare during that season of trial.
Is our temple warm today? Or has it become an icy room because of hatred and condemnation toward someone? Pastor David Jang’s message is unmistakably clear: wisdom for passing through tribulation is earnest prayer toward God and concrete reconciliation toward our neighbor. When we become one another’s “Mark,” and when we become one another’s “Onesimus,” the church is finally completed as the true temple that grants a peace the world cannot give.
Paul was confined to the narrow space of a prison, yet his soul was freer than anyone’s within grace—because he looked beyond winter’s approaching death to the eternal crown of righteousness. We, too, need the eyes of such faith. Even when circumstances are hard and reality feels cold, put on the warm cloak of love and kindle the fire of prayer. God will surely respond upon that prayer and love, and in the end He will grant a radiant spiritual spring to our lives. This is God’s comfort and promise given to us—one that pierces through every age.