This is the continuation of the article posted on Valentine’s Day.
What led to this post is this: a Chinese takeaway menu was dropped through the postbox and the restaurant has the same name as me.
I have joked forever that my name is very common. When I was in primary school there was one year when there were three of us with the same name in the class.
美 玲 美 玲 美 玲
I was reminded of this recently whilst watching a Korean Drama called Fated to Love You (운명처럼 널 사랑해). The important thing is: there are two Korean Mr Darcys (KMD) in this show. I will write about this KMD phenomenon in a separate post.
The female lead, Kim Mi-young, has a very common name (she shares this with another girl in the office, and KMD 2 who is looking for his adopted sister tells her they have the same name).
Naturally I identified with Mi-young, and I liked KMD 1, from the start. When Mi-young tells him how common and ordinary her name is, he replies: “What’s wrong with ‘Kim Mi-young’? A common name means that a lot of people like it”.
20 episodes can be summarised thus: Mi Young is a humble and simple girl. KMD1 and KMD2, for whom finding a wife would pose no problem whatsoever, fall in love with her. Both are wealthy, good-looking, and have a good sense of humour. I couldn’t make up any better kind of Prince Charming.
In fact, one is fated to love her and the other one is well…it’s not that he is not fated to love her. I tried very hard to think if one of them loved Mi-young more than the other, but it’s going nowhere. Both would have taken very good care of her heart.
Each man, in their own way, embodies ‘love’ as we read in 1 Corinthians 13 v 4 – 7:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no records of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
And yet “as familiar as it is, this chapter is not understood nearly as well as it ought to be”…”we tend to read 1 Corinthians 13 as an encouraging, feel-good Bible passage full of happy thoughts about love”. Instead “this message is for people in the church…gifted Christians who are actively serving in ministry. Rather than congratulating ourselves for all the things we do for God, or looking down on people who don’t serve God the way we do, or thinking that we have it right and everyone else has it wrong, God is calling us to do everything for love. Otherwise, it is all for nothing.” *
Personally, I get an idea of this kind of sacrificial love from the actions of KMD 1 and KMD 2. I know this us dramaland, which might as well be dreamland, but if each of them did everything for Mi-young to win her hand but did not do this for love, then what kind of warped relationship would be the outcome?
Finally, this post ends with something that Mi-young says to KMD1:
People who like sweet things are people who want to be happy.
Today is Niece Number 2’s 15th birthday…so Happy Birthday, and I hope you like the cake I have made for you. The recipe follows in the next post.
* Loving the Way Jesus Loves, by Phil Ryken, Inter-Varsity press, ISBN 978-1-84474-565-4: pp 18, 19 and 23.