Faith & Life

Happy Family Does Not Say, “It’s Your Fault!”

While two people were walking in the street, one of them found a wallet on the ground. “Wow, I’m lucky today. I got free money!” said the person who found the wallet. Then the man who was ac​companying him flew into a rage and said, “Well, I suggested that we go this way, so half of the money is mine.” Then suddenly the wallet owner appeared. “I got you! You stole my wallet.” The one who found the wallet said as if it was unfair, “I just saw it lying on the ground and picked it up. And I wasn’t going to take all the money. I was going to share it with my friend here.” Then the person next…

People of Amazon Returned into Mother’s Arms

“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 The Bible says that whoever wants can receive the water of life that the Spirit and the Bride freely give; however, we had never thought of the natives living deep in the Amazon rainforest; we had such a narrow perspective. In actuality, they were definitely among the 7.8 billion people, and the news of salvation was preached even to indigenous people in Brazil according to God’s prearranged plan. It started with what Brother Ivanildon said. The brother lived with indigenous people and taught them…

The Manaus Church in Brazil

The Elderly and Kittens

Elderly people in nursing homes need to be in the care of others. But the elderly at a nursing home in Tucson, Arizona, U.S., are not only being cared, but also caring others—they feed milk to kittens. An animal protection center near the nursing home was suffering insufficient manpower to take care of abandoned animals. Kittens cannot eat by themselves; someone has to feed them by holding them in the arms. The elderly in the nursing home, meanwhile, had too much free time; even the nursing home staff had a hard time in creating programs for them. The anxieties of both sides could be dealt with by forming a partnership between the two. Surprisingly, not only the kittens have got…

Say, “I’m Happy!”

Recently, have you ever said, “I’m happy”? When you do something difficult or dissatisfying, you are likely to spit out complaints. But when you do something pleasant and satisfying, you are less likely to express how happy or satisfied you are. People say, “A bell is not a bell until somebody rings it. A song is not a song until someone sings it.” Doesn’t the same go for happiness? When you are joyful and happy, do not just smile or feel it, but speak out your happiness with your mouth. Just as you would like to visit the place you’re invited to, if you keep expressing your happiness with words, happiness would like to visit you again and again. Tip…

Overview Effect

If you go up to the rooftop of a skyscraper, you can see the whole town at a glance; if you climb up a high mountain, you can see the whole city at a look; if you fly up to the sky by plane, the vast world will be seen as a land of pigmies. If you soar up higher and see the earth from space, it looks like a marble. If you broaden your view, your thoughts will change. Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space said after seeing the earth in space: “I realized that the earth is too small for us to argue with each other.” He came to have a different perspective on the struggles and…

Please People Close to You

About 2,500 years ago, there was a monarch of a small country in China. He had a worry: His people often crossed borders into neighboring countries, so the population and the tax revenue reduced. When Confucius came to visit the monarch with his disciples, he asked Confucius, confiding his troubles, “Teacher, my people run away day after day. Should I build up a great wall to stop them?” Confucius replied, “If you please those who are near you, even the people far away will get close to you.” He meant that if the monarch pleased his people by ruling them well, the news would spread to neighboring countries and even the people living far away would stream into the country.…

Realizing God’s Love

It was around the time when my sister attended a Protestant church. One day, she returned home with bruises all over her body. Shocked, I asked her what happened. She explained that she got the bruises from a religious ritual of the church. ‘How can the church that hurts the members be right? I’m sure there is no God!’ I came to distrust the church and made a conclusion that God does not exist. My sister too no longer attended the church. Time went by, and my sister started attending another church named the Church of God. I could not understand at all why she would attend a church again after having such a horrible experience, and I firmly rejected…

Kang Yeon-suk from Incheon, South Korea

Hiking

“Mom, can’t you take my backpack?” One holiday when my husband went away on a business trip, I decided to go hiking after much thought over how I would spend time with my child. However, she whined from the moment we began. “Is it too heavy? We’ll get to the spring soon. Be patient a little more. Let’s take a rest there.” My child, who was not accustomed to hiking, felt burdened to even carry her backpack that just contained her own things like drinking water, snacks and so on. I was reminded of myself in my childhood days. Shortly after my younger sister was born, my mother gave birth to twins. With the newly born crying babies and my…

Cho Eun-jin from Changwon, South Korea

To Fly in the Sky

Human beings have long wanted to fly in the sky. After inventors’ constant study, trial and error, the plane was finally born, and today there are very large aircraft flying around the world, which can carry more than 700 passengers. A passenger plane such as A380 and B777 has more than four million parts and weighs hundreds of tons. Then, how can a plane fly in the sky with this tremendous weight? There are four forces acting on the plane: the force moving forward (thrust), the force pulling to the ground (gravity), the force lifting upward (lift force), and the force acting in the opposite direction (drag). In order for the plane to take off, the lift force of the…

Going to Work at Midnight

Before dawn, a police patrol found a young man walking on a lonesome road. The police approached him and asked where he was going at this hour. The young man said, “I’m on my way to work now.” The young man who lived in Alabama was Walter Carr. Newly hired at a moving company, he had to go to the client’s house by eight in the morning. But, his car, the only means of transportation, recently broke down. The destination was 32 kilometers away from his home, which took seven to eight hours on foot. Not wanting to ruin his first day of the job, he left home around midnight and was walking on a dim road, relying on a…

A Daughter Found in Twenty-Four Years

In January 1994, Wang Ming-ching and his wife, who were fruit sellers in Chengdu, China, lost their three-year-old daughter while giving change to their customer. Even after twenty years since then, Wang Ming-ching couldn’t give up seeking his daughter and began to work as a taxi driver to find her. He put posters with pictures of his daughter inside and outside the taxi, and handed his name card to customers, asking for a report. His sad story was widely known through TV and the Internet. A woman in Jilin Province heard the story, and thought that the imagined, grown-up portrait of the little girl looked like her. Because she too was adopted when she was a little child, she contacted…

Breathing of My Soul

“Mom, the doctor said that I have pneumothorax, and that I might die if I don’t have surgery right away.” I received a phone call from my son who went to hospital for having breathing difficulty. Then the doctor talked to me over the phone. “Hello, Ma’am. We just took an X-ray, and he is in a critical condition. He needs to have surgery right away. We will have him go through the admission process and get things ready for an operation, so please come right away. We will start the operation as soon as you arrive.” My mind went blank when I hung up the phone. ‘Pneumothorax?’ I pulled myself together and quickly searched for pneumothorax. It is a…

Kim Eun-mi from Cheongju, South Korea

Mother’s Love That Does Not Yield to Old Age

In 2017, a 98-year-old lady named Ada moved into a nursing home in Huyton, Liverpool, U.K. The reason she entered the care home was because of her 80-year-old son, Tom Keating. The mother and her son are particularly close to each other. Tom, her eldest son, served his mother with all his heart even after all his younger siblings got married and left home. When the son, who had always been together, went into a nursing home because of his illness, the mother could not sleep well for a year. She was always concerned about her son who would feel lonely. So she decided to move into the nursing home to look after her son. The son, who came to…

What Will You Pass Down?

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Looks, intelligence, body constitution . . . children resemble their father and mother because they inherit biological genes, DNA, from their parents. When people see a child look just like his parents, they say that he is the miniature or spitting image of his parents. All parents want to pass down good things to their children. A pregnant woman listens to good music, enjoys hobbies that give emotional stability, and tries to eat only good foods in order to give good things to the child through prenatal education. However, what influences the child more than the innate DNA is acquired factors. Whether a child is aware or not, he follows his parents’…

Labeling Effect

The respected leader Winston Churchill was also famous for leading his subordinates well. To the person whom he wanted to proceed with a task quickly, he said, “You seem to be quick to make a decision,” and to the person whom he wanted to get things done perfectly, “You look scrupulous.” Instead of telling directly what he wanted, he said as if the person had such a tendency. If you say to the other person, “You are like this person,” the person will behave as you expected. In psychology, this is called “label effect” or “letter effect.” Even an unfriendly person tries to be kind if he is told, “You look kind.” On the other hand, when a person is…

The Greatest Gift

A few days ago, it was my birthday. I had a busy day so I went out early in the morning and came home late at night. So I didn’t have a proper meal all day long. When I went inside my house, my little daughter burst out of her room and said, “Mom, happy birthday!” giving me a letter with a picture on it. She drew a woman of big face and a small body on a yellow paper, and wrote “Mom” on it. She does not know how to write yet, so she asked her dad to write it instead. That was not all. When she went to a grocery store with her dad, she even bought my…

Choi Yun-hui from Daegu, South Korea

A Cure for Altitude Sickness

Altitude sickness is an acute reaction of the body that cannot cope with the lack of oxygen and pressure changes at an altitude of 2,000 meters [6,500 ft] or higher. Its symptoms are dyspnea, dizziness, nausea, and loss of appetite, and in serious cases, vomiting, unbearable headache, and loss of judgment. At the worst, it leads to death. So you may have to pay dearly if you just go up to a high mountain, only trusting your physical strength. In fact, people die from altitude sickness in the Himalayas every year. Those who climb a lofty mountain take medication to prevent altitude sickness. However, the higher the altitude, the more unexpected situation follows, so you cannot rely solely on medicine.…

Reality and Language

This is what happened at a lecture. The instructor let one member of an audience stand up during the lecture and said, “I’m telling you a lie now. You are a positive person and have a strong sense of responsibility. You have leadership and sense of humor so people like you and trust you.” When the instructor asked how he felt about the remark, he laughed and said he felt good. The human brain activates the part that controls pleasure when the person is praised. However, the same phenomenon occurs in the brain even when the person clearly recognizes that the praise is false as in the above case. Likewise, if you make a bad word to someone else, even…

What We Can Do

‘What can we do there since we don’t even speak their language?’ This is what we thought while flying to Colombia, which is located on the opposite side of the earth from Korea, during the summer of 2019. Although we wanted to have a meaningful volunteer experience during the summer vacation, I couldn’t stop worrying that there might be nothing we could do as we didn’t know how things worked there. However, our thought changed when we met officials from the City of Bogota. We visited the city hall, introduced ASEZ WAO consisting of young adult workers from the Church of God, and asked them what kind of volunteer work the city needed, and they were deeply moved. An official…

Kim Myeong-eun from Namyangju, South Korea

Reason for Doing Volunteer Services

I participated in a street cleanup organized by my campus club with my friend who enjoys volunteer opportunities. We got to clean at a food alley located at the back gate of our university. As the alley was lined with restaurants and coffee shops, disposable cups, food waste, and cigarette butts were everywhere. Soon, the joy of joining volunteer service was forgotten. Garbage stank. I couldn’t help frowning. I couldn’t dare to clean it up, even with my cleaning tools and gloves. I looked around to get away from there, but I noticed my friend diligently picking up trash. Other volunteers who were behind me were also picking up the foul-smelling garbage without hesitation. My conscience pricked me. I paused…

Kim So-jeong from Bucheon, South Korea