Faith & Life

Versatile Mom

“Mom, I will grow to be a mom.” “Why?” “You can hold toilet rolls with one hand and hold my hand with the other hand.” I don’t remember, but my mom told me that I said that when I was four years old. On the way back home from a market, my mom used to grab my hand with one hand, holding a pack of toilet rolls with the other hand. At that time, she must have looked great in my eyes. Considering that I was as tall as a pack of toilet rolls, I might have thought that. Now I am taller than my mother. But still, my mother is so great to me; she does without a problem…

Lee Jeong-yeon from Bucheon, South Korea

The Power That Woke My Wife Up

Overnight, my beloved wife got in a vegetative state. She was assaulted by a passerby for no reason, and as she fell, she hit her head against the floor. When I rushed into the emergency room. the doctor said she could be brain-dead. I thought, would it feel like this at the end of the world? I fell into deep sorrow looking at her relying her life on a life-support device. The doctor suggested to donate organs but I couldn’t jump to a conclusion. Our three children were well growing up and I trusted her that she won’t leave us like this. I was too hesitant in letting children see the way she was. So finally, a month after my…

Honeybees’ Overwintering

Honeybees are poikilotherms, so they are sensitive to temperature changes. If the body temperature of the bee falls below 10℃ (50℉), paralysis of the bees’ muscles can begin to take place. At a body temperature of 7.2℃ (45℉) the bees appear “frozen,” meaning their muscles can no longer move. So flying activity does not take place outside of 10℃–14℃ (50℉–57℉) air temperature. Instead, they’ll choose to stay inside the hive. They have to work diligently to prepare food for the winter before the cold wind blows. However, having food prepared in advance does not mean they can spend comfortable winter. They have to cluster together to generate heat because they do not hibernate like other animals. Their clustering like a…

Between Easy and Right

The earliest British currency was mainly gold or silver coins. Gold and silver were valued in themselves, so when they were made into coins, they were well accepted. However, coins with impurities appeared over time. Even low-purity coins remained unchanged in face value, so people used the coins with a lot of impurities and kept high-purity coins at home. As a result, only bad-quality coins were commonly used in the market. At this, Thomas Gresham, a financier, said, “Bad money1 drives out good2.” 1. Currency of which the metal price is lower than the legal price. 2. Currency of good quality. Currency with little difference between the actual price and the legal price. Today, it is widely used to mean…

Speaking Each Word With Love

I was eagerly looking forward to doing volunteer services with senior students of ASEZ, the World Mission Society Church of God University Student Volunteer Group, before entering university; I had only come across their activities through videos and news articles before. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I could not go to my university, and as a result, volunteer services got postponed over many months. While I was frustrated about this, ASEZ’s “No More Verbal Abuse” campaign was held in celebration of the International Day of Non-Violence. The campaign was to stop verbal violence and form healthy language culture. It was very easy to participate in it; I only had to send encouraging words to the people around me in…

Cheon Sae-eum from Donghae, South Korea

A Man with a Vivid Dream

In 1966, world-famous filmmaker Walt Disney passed away. Five years later, Disney World, which Disney was so looking forward to, opened in Florida, U.S., the largest amusement park in the world. It was four times the size of Disneyland opened in the past. “I’m sorry that Mr. Walt couldn’t see the opening.” People said to Lillian Disney, who attended the opening ceremony on behalf of her husband. Then she said, smiling. “No worries. He saw it first.” It meant that her husband was already drawing Disney World vividly in his head. Since he became a self-made man after going through poor childhood, Walt Disney dreamed of making a warm and happy world for children all his life. He didn’t hesitate…

Keep My Family Healthy!

“To the well man, every day is a feast” (Turkey), “A good wife and health are a man’s best wealth” (U.K.), “We realize the importance of health and youth after losing them” (Arab), “Anybody who thinks money is everything has never been sick” (In the West) . . . Every country has at least one proverb about health because everyone knows the importance of health. If any part of our body such as eyes, teeth, spine, stomach, and skin is not healthy, our whole body will suffer. You can’t stress enough the importance of health. This month, let us take care of our family health, just as we take care of our own health. Care and consideration for our family…

Attitude toward Problems

“On a day of heavy rain, you see three people at the bus stop as you drive. One is an old man fighting for life, another is a doctor who saved your life in the past, and the other is your dream girl. If you can take only one person in your car, who would it be?” “The old man, of course.” “I would take the doctor who saved my life to repay him.” “For me, the dream girl. If you miss her, you may never meet her again.” Whatever choice you make, there’s always a good reason. However, the key to this question is not in how you solve the problem, but in your attitude. Depending on your attitude…

A Gold Medal for Doing the Best

Steven Bradbury entered men’s 1,000-meter short track speed skating at the Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Olympics. He barely passed the qualifier, repeating the same mistake of moving before the starting signal. In the quarter-finals, where only two out of four skaters proceed to the semi-final, he finished third in the race, so he seemed to be dropped off. But the second place racer was disqualified and he could advance to the semi-finals by the skin of his teeth. In the semi-finals were Olympic medalists waiting for him. As expected, Bradbury lagged behind from the beginning. However, the leading racers fell at the final corner while jostling for track position, which advanced him through to the final incidentally. In the…

Birthday Cake

When I was young, my family suffered financial difficulties. To make a living for seven children, my mother used to do hard work such as repairing walls, floors, and toilets. Since she could not afford to hire an employee, she had to do it herself. I was the youngest daughter, and I was ashamed of my mother who did rough manual labor. My mother also used to mend bags, sewing all night, for a small factory in order to buy food. I remember falling asleep, listening to the noise of her old sewing machine. Even though we were in a tight situation where we had to worry about meals, I was immature. “I’ve never received a birthday cake,” I complained…

Suzana Machado Botton from Porto Alegre, Brazil

A Flowering Desert

The Atacama Desert located in the north-west of Chile is the driest and the most barren region in the world. It is also well-known for its rough and rugged environment that resembles that of Mars—stony terrain, high sand hills, salt lakes that dried up long ago, holes made by meteorites, and the like. Due to the nature of the terrain, no rain cloud was formed that there was little rain. In 2015, however, super El Niño occurred. Heavy rain poured for over twelve hours. A few days after the rain stopped, something miraculous happened. The barren desert suddenly turned into a flower garden. After it rained, all the seeds buried in the sand woke up from their dormancy and sprouted;…

Faith Comes from Hearing the Message

“Do you attend church these days?” “Are you a minister?” This is what my acquaintances often tell me these days. When I hear them say that, I feel relieved, thinking, ‘I’m on the right track,’ because it means that my appearance, words, and actions are different from before. I followed my wife nineteen years ago to receive the truth. At first, I had no idea about church, but as I attended sports fellowship and did various services with the church members, I was attached to the church and kept all worship services. However, my daily life was far from a Christian life. Ever since I left my company and started my own business, I have always been busy, having no…

Han Chan-hyeon from Busan, South Korea

I Don’t Deserve Them

While a teacher was spending the latter years of his life in writing, his pupils visited him to pay their respect for the New Year. His whole family gathered in the house: his sons, daughters, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren, who came from afar. All his family members welcomed the pupils with bright smiles and they looked very happy. After greeting the teacher, one of the pupils asked him, “You always have a good relationship with your wife, and you’ve raised your children excellently. What is the secret?” The teacher said with a smile, putting down a cup of tea, “It’s because they are all too good for me. My wife trusts in me although I don’t deserve it. My children…

Fine Wine and Oak Barrel

“How long do you think it will take to produce ten-year-old wine?” At this question, you are likely to answer, “Ten years.” Actually, however, it is not too much to say that it takes more than a hundred years. Freshly fermented wine has a bad taste and a bad smell due to yeast and carbon dioxide. Only after being contained in an oak barrel for a certain period of time, it becomes a good wine with a soft taste and flavor. This is an essential process for making wine. As barrels are usually made of oaks that are at least a hundred years old, we can say that it takes over a hundred years until ten-year-old wine is produced. However,…

About What We See and Hear

A mother happened to see her child imitating a mourner. Being shocked, the mother moved from near a graveyard to a house next to a market. Then, her child started imitating a merchant. So the mother packed up their stuff again and moved to a house near a school. From then on her child imitated reading books, and the mother was satisfied. This is the origin of the Chinese idiom 孟母三遷之敎 (meng mu san qian zhi jiao), meaning Mencius’ mother moves three times (for her son’s education), which contains the message that men are much influenced by what they see and hear. Even a woman who used to like watching breathtaking scary movies and listening to loud music with uneven…

Clothed with the Holy Spirit of the Feast of Tabernacles

A few years ago, I invited a boss of a publishing company whom my wife came to know because of her work, to the “Our Mother” Photo and Writing Exhibition. Telling us that he’d been aware about the Church of God, the boss was greatly moved by the exhibition and studied the Bible. It turned out that he was truly seeking God. In his youth, he was severely injured while fighting against the robber who broke into his house, and he almost died at that time. Since then, he was interested in God and the life after death, and attended many other churches. However, he was not confident in any of them. Meanwhile, he said it seemed like the Church…

Lee Jeong-hyeon from Incheon, South Korea

Demonstrate Your Skills with Confidence

“Confidence” is one of the most important factors in showing the best performance in a sport. If players are nearly equal in their skills, the player with high confidence definitely has an advantage. Self-confidence is assurance about success, a state of mind believing that you can do something successfully. So if you have self-confidence, your positive auto-suggestion reduces stress and anxiety, strengthens concentration and keeps challenging, and improves performance. Then how can you increase your confidence? In general, outgoing and optimistic people are highly confident. Although you are not born with such genes, you can develop your confidence in various ways: Recall your past success that you experienced in the same situation, watch videos about those who accomplished their goals…

I Want to Resemble Mom

Everyone has a role model in his or her life and tries to resemble the role model. I, too, have the person I want to become like; it is my mother. She is the most caring and loving person in my family, so I wanted to learn everything whatever she did. When I was around twelve years old, I started learning house chores and helping Mom in the kitchen. But later I had to live away from her for my further studies. Since I was away from Mom, I could understand how much sacrifice was needed to be like Mom. It is not easy for her to take care of all the family members and fulfill wishes of everyone, but…

Vini Alexander Chettiar from Vadodara, India

As I Am Free Now

In the early 1820s, Harriet Tubman was born a slave in a farm in Maryland, U.S. In those days, black people were treated worse than animals by white people and died in harness. Harriet desperately desired freedom since her childhood, bearing up day after day. In 1849, she finally got freedom with the help of “Underground Railroad.”1 1. A secret organization established to liberate American slaves in the 19th century. They called the escape route “railroad”; the houses of assistants who hid escaped slaves “stations”; and those who help them escape safely to the North “conductors,” using rail terminology. She fled to the North where there was no slavery, and made some money by doing chores. It was a much…

Let’s Take a Walk

Apple founder Steve Jobs was famous for walking meetings when he came up with new ideas. Virgin Group founder Richard Branson also likes to have walking meetings. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg invited new talents to a forest path for recruitment interview, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai said, “To think I have to start walking.” There are many companies that have walking meetings in Silicon Valley, U.S. There are good reasons for successful people to prefer walking meetings. When you walk, oxygen is supplied to your brain cells to increase concentration; as you pass by the surrounding scenery, people, and objects, your brain receives continuous stimulation to improve your creativity. Not only is it beneficial for health, but walking side by…