In a hospital room, two aged men are writing down something on a piece of paper.
‘Skydiving, helping strangers, climbing the Himalayas . . .’
It is so-called a bucket list—things to do before you die. While doing things that they haven’t experienced all their life, they look back upon the past.
Life is but a dream
The movie The Bucket List is a story about how two terminally-ill cancer patients find the meaning of their lives. As they don’t have many days to live, even a trifle thing seem to have a special meaning to them.
People usually take pity on a terminally-ill patient like the two men in the movie. Technically, however, every single person in the world is living a time-limited life. Someone dies young in an accident or from a disease, while someone lives over one hundred years; either way, they all face death someday.
Life is short, but we spend most of our time sleeping or working for basic needs. In average, people spend 26 years sleeping, 21 years working, 6 years eating, and 5 years awaiting and meeting people. Besides, if we take into account the time to go to the bathroom and watch TV, we don’t have enough time to do what we really want to do in case our life span is 70 or 80 years.
We still don’t have much time even if we divide our life by age. We study in adolescence and struggle to survive infinite competition when we become adults. When we are middle-aged, it’s not an easy job to marry off children. We live in an aging society, but it is hard to plan the second life if we get sick or become weak in our declining years.
According to a professor’s research team at a Korean university, Koreans are living three and a half years longer on average this decade. Instead, most of them are suffering from illness for five or six years before death. Leaving the pain in later years aside, when we consider that we live under stress and pain rather than joy and happiness all our life, the life span of one hundred years is never too long. On top of that, very few people live to be one hundred years.
Good deeds, a choice for a worthy life
As our life is short, it is natural that we want to fill it with happiness as much as we can. With what can we feel happiness, then? There is not just one right answer in life, but a Chinese proverb concerning it sounds plausible.
“If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a month, get married. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, make others happy.”
This emphasizes that you should help others and make them happy if you want happiness that lasts for a lifetime, not just for moment.
Each person finds happiness in different causes such as money, honor, and power, and has his or her own criteria to measure it. Nevertheless, no one would feel unhappy or bad from doing good.
A world-famous movie star Audrey Hepburn was dedicated for a long time to children whom she had never known. Making the best use of her fame as a movie star, she promoted child protection activities and personally took care of children suffering from hunger and disease. She even left these words like a farewell letter to her son.
“As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands: one for helping yourself, and the other for helping others.”
Among people who have wealth and honor, not a few people put much value on contribution to society and volunteer services. What they try to find is something more than a wealthy life. Seeing others happy is rewarding, and they feel a sense of achievement from it. In fact, a study has found that people who help others are happier and healthier than those who do not.
Experimental work was carried out at the Mindlab International laboratory based at the University of Sussex in the U.K. Recruits aged 18 to 55 were instructed to spend nine days actively seeking out ways of being kind toward others in a selfless manner. Through the medical and psychological tests that were conducted after nine days, they confirmed their emotional states and health statuses. As a result, their self-esteem and self-worth increased, whereas anger and stress reduced. This suggests that the altruistic behavior caused a positive change in them.
One participant said, “I was surprised that people were grateful to me when I yielded my turn to the person behind me in a supermarket. It also made me think how we were ungenerous about helping others in our lives.”
Altruistic behavior begins with small and minor things
Everybody knows that it is good to help others, but it is not always easy to practice what we know. Many of us might’ve felt uncomfortable when we failed to help others while hesitating over helping them.
When we remember that people are moved by little things, we may find it easier to behave altruistically in our life. When we offer our seats to others in a bus or push the elevator button for others, they receive happiness as well as physical help as a gift. As mentioned above, it is needless to say that we gain increased emotional wellbeing. People who have experienced this make sensitive moves to seize the opportunity of doing good and put it into practice right away.
A TV documentary featured some people who saved others at the risk of their own life. All of them had something in common: They were accustomed to helping others though it was small.
A university student saved a man who fell onto the subway tracks. It had already been known among his friends that he continued to help the people around him. A postman saved an aged woman from a burning house. He, too, had been helping senior citizens at the town hall for years. Their good deeds that had become a part of their lives gave them a foothold to save priceless lives.
The foothold is established by repeated actions. When we repeat the same thing, it strengthens synapses (junctions between nerve cells) in our brain. Repeated stimulations such as studying, exercising or experiencing solidify them even more. For example, it is easier to memorize a word when you repeat it in your mind, and you get used to driving a car as you repeat it. That is because repeated actions develop synapses.
The same applies to good deeds. When you understand how embarrassed others would be in a difficult situation and repeat giving help, the development of synapses in your brain makes you feel more natural to do kind actions.
Once you are accustomed to altruistic behavior, you can often help others, and it will make your life much richer.
The greatest deed in the world
Around 1 p.m. on August 24, A.D. 79, Mt. Vesuvius erupted. Pompeii, an ancient Roman town-city in the Gulf of Naples, Italy, was buried under ash in a day. When the town of Pompeii was uncovered by a farmer who dug up a pipe beneath his vineyard after about a thousand years in 1592, people’s final postures at the moment of death had been startlingly well preserved. A family at mealtime, a couple holding each other’s hands, a horseman flopping down on the ground, and elegant villas with ballrooms . . . The ruins of Pompeii showed how the maritime trade ensured Pompeiians economic prosperity in the old days.
However splendid the city once was, it vanished in a second. Only its ruins and tarnished artifacts are keeping their places. The history of Pompeii teaches us that life may halt at any moment.
It means that our life can end while we just make a living and put off doing valuable things. So, if you want your life to be more meaningful, you need to make efforts to do good things—to live a worthy life, as if you’re living the last moment of your life.
Among all good deeds, the greatest deed is to save lives. If people owe their life to someone and their mortal life has been extended by a few decades, they are grateful to that person all their life. So, what is greater than the good deed to help people, who will die after living seventy or eighty years, live eternal life—longer than a thousand and tens of thousands years?
As our Heavenly Father and Mother do not want anyone to perish but everyone to be saved, They give the free gift of the water of life to everyone who wants to receive it.
The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let him who hears say, “Come!” Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life. Rev 22:17
In order to give mankind the water of life—eternal life, God sacrificed Himself on the cross and established the Passover of the new covenant.
Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” Jn 6:53–54
“…I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” . . . And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” Lk 22:15–20
“I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.” Jn 13:15
Jesus taught us the way to eternal life 2,000 years ago. In this age, God the Father and God the Mother—the Spirit and the Bride—are showing us the example of saving lives with love and sacrifice. Following the example of God, we ought to save souls with a good heart, expecting nothing in return. When we make the best use of our good mind until the day we return to our heavenly home and lead even one more soul to the way of eternal life, God will remember our every single effort and give us glorious rewards in heaven.
Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever. Da 12:3
Even at this moment when we have a hazy idea about preaching and think that saving souls is something hard to do, precious time goes by. Let us first look around at our families, friends, and neighbors right now to make sure no one is wandering in the pit of death and pain, without knowing the way to salvation. Whenever we feel hesitant to take action, let us remember that life is not a rehearsal.
“If people have stored up virtues before God by doing good things, what will be in store for them? They will receive blessings from God, because they have done good things and glorified God with faith. Then where do you think their spirits will go? They will go to the eternal kingdom of heaven and be glorified.
The Bible tells us to train ourselves to be godly. We should train ourselves little by little to serve guests as well as to serve God. In order to do so, we should make the best use of our good mind.”
From Christ Ahnsahnghong’s Sermon