August 2026

Pastor Message: 

Find Your Truest Self

How is your summer unfolding? As I write this, it is the first week of July, yet I am preparing this reflection for our August newsletter. It feels a little strange—almost as if I am writing a letter to my future self.

Many of you already know that I will be taking three weeks of vacation to hike the John Muir Trail in California. Stretching 211 miles from Yosemite Valley to Mount Whitney, the John Muir Trail is one of the most sought-after long-distance trails in the country. Every year, thousands hope to hike it, yet only a small percentage are selected through the lottery.

I first heard about the trail from friends in Rhode Island. At the time, it seemed impossibly far away—one of those adventures that belonged to someone else's life, not mine. My friends Yohan, Juhee, and I planned to apply throughout the application season, but the website was often overwhelmed with traffic, and many times we could not even get in. Then, almost on a whim, one application was submitted earlier than we had planned. To our surprise, it was selected.

For the past six months, I have been preparing—not only gathering backpacking gear and building physical endurance, but also quietly preparing my heart for the journey. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I have been on a journey for much longer than these three weeks.

Since arriving in the United States to study in January 2015, serving my first United Methodist church in Boston in 2017, moving to Wisconsin during the pandemic in the summer of 2020, and now serving here in Waupaca, my life has been one long pilgrimage. Perhaps these three weeks have been given to me as a gift: an invitation to step away from the constant demands of ministry, to become a little quieter, and perhaps to rediscover the person God has been forming all along.

As I prepare for this journey, one biblical story keeps returning to me: Jacob wrestling beside the Jabbok River.

Jacob stands on the threshold of one of the most frightening moments of his life. Twenty years earlier, he had deceived his brother Esau and stolen the blessing that belonged to him. Now he is finally returning home.

Then comes the news. Esau is approaching—with four hundred men. Fear overwhelms Jacob.

Is he coming to destroy me?

Jacob divides his family. He separates his possessions. He sends gifts ahead. He prays. Then, after sending everyone else across the river, he remains alone in the darkness. There, someone meets him.

A man. An angel. God. And the stranger and Jacob wrestle until daybreak.

I wonder if, somewhere along the John Muir Trail, I may find myself wrestling too—though I sincerely hope my opponent is not a bear. (Lord, in your mercy.)

Was Esau really coming to attack Jacob? Scripture never tells us. Perhaps he was. Perhaps he wasn't.

But long before Jacob ever met Esau, he had already become imprisoned by fear.

I think many of us know what that feels like. Sometimes we project our fears, our wounds, and our unfinished stories onto other people. We imagine motives that may not exist. We create versions of others in our minds and then begin living in response to those imagined versions rather than the people standing before us.

And perhaps, in those moments, we are not truly seeing the other person at all. Perhaps we are seeing ourselves.

I wonder if Jacob's wrestling match was never merely about Esau. Perhaps it was about Jacob finally confronting Jacob. The younger son. The deceiver. The runaway. The fraud. The names he had lived under. The masks he had learned to wear. The relationships he interpreted through those identities. Even the God he imagined through those same lenses. And when all those layers were stripped away, perhaps for the very first time, Jacob stood before God simply as himself. His truest self.

Only then could he see Esau differently. When the brothers finally met, Jacob said, "Truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God." Perhaps that is what happens when we encounter God honestly.

As we become more fully ourselves, we become freer to let others be themselves. We stop casting our own shadows onto their faces. Of course, such encounters always leave a mark. Jacob walked away limping into the sunrise. His wound became the sign that he had wrestled with God—and had been changed. I hope my time on the John Muir Trail—and even more, my life with Christ—may become such a place.

And I hope our life together as a church becomes such a place as well: a community where we dare to wrestle honestly with God, where we discover our truest selves, and where, little by little, we begin to recognize the face of God in one another. Perhaps I will not return with clear answers. Perhaps I will return carrying better questions. Maybe my future self will know.

Hyunwoong, did you find your truest self along the trail?

Church, did we discover ours? Did we catch a clearer glimpse of the face of God?

Whatever the answer, my prayer is that we continue walking—a little more honestly, a little more gently, and a little more open to the Presence that meets us in the wilderness, in ordinary days, and in one another.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Hyunwoong