Faith & Life

An Impressive Race

This happened at the women’s 5,000-meter run in the Rio Olympics 2016. Some athletes were running in the second group when New Zealand athlete Hamblin tripped and fell, causing USA’s Abbey D’Agostino to fall. Abbey would feel aggrieved, but she rather raised up Hamblin, saying, “Get up, get up, we have to finish this.” Probably because of the damage from falling, Abbey faltered and fell down in a few steps. This time, Hamblin encouraged her and ran the race together. Although they saw each other for the first time, they cheered up each other and ran the race together, and they embraced each other after crossing the finish line. Hamblin said, “Everyone wants to win, and everyone wants a medal.…

Mother’s Love Is Special

Some say that our life on earth is based on love. In fact, when you look into how a person is born into this world and grows over time, that sounds right, because we are all connected with one another through love while taking care of and giving help to one another. We can find various forms of love as in the relationship between a boyfriend and a girlfriend, between friends, between parents and children, and between brothers and sisters. Besides, there are people who love money or their possessions. Then, what is the essence of all forms of love? I personally thought love sprang from selfish motives. I thought, ‘If I want to protect someone, it is because I…

Bayasakh Oyunbat from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

The Medici Effect

The Medici Effect refers to a phenomenon which inspires breakthrough insights or produces great productivity when different fields come together. This means “1+1>2” instead of “1+1=2.” It is derived from the House of Medici in Italy. From the 14th century to the 17th century, the Medici family accumulated great wealth through trade and finance. Then, the family lavished support on culture and art. Artists, architects, and scientists of the time were invited to Medici’s mansions and worked freely without worrying about their livelihoods, which created an environment where experts in various fields could tear down each other’s walls and fuse their talents. World-renowned artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Botticelli, and Dante emerged at this time. And Florence, the…

Walking with Heavenly Father and Mother

One Sunday, on my way to a church that my relatives introduced to me, nearby my matrimonial house, I met members from the Church of God. They delivered to me news like a bolt out of the blue—the cross is an idol. Following the example of my devout Christian parents, I always had a cross around my neck from a young age, and felt at ease during sleep only when I had a cross in my hand. It was extremely unpleasant to hear that the cross is an idol; it was to shake the foundation of my faith. However, they proved it from the Bible, and I could not refute them. A few days later, I became a child of…

Park Chan-jeong from Jeju, South Korea

Two Fools

Two men were working in the mountain. One man dug a hole, then the other man filled up the hole with dirt. Moving from place to place, they repeated digging holes and filling them up. A man watching their work asked them, puzzled. “I’ve seen you working for a while, but I don’t understand at all. What on earth are you doing?” Then one of the two answered, “We plant trees. Usually, three men work together; one man digs a hole, another man puts a tree in it, and the other man fills up the hole. But the man who puts a tree in holes didn’t come today. So just two of us are working now.” Hearing that, the man…

The Power of Gratitude

A paper titled “Undervaluing Gratitude” was published in the Sage Journals in June 2018. Psychologists Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley, co-authors of the paper, asked the participants to write gratitude letters to their friends or acquaintances. The participants were also asked to predict the happiness that the recipients would feel when receiving the gratitude letters. The happiness they predicted was three out of five points; more people were concerned that the recipients would feel awkward and the letters might look pretentious or insincere than those who expected that the recipients would feel grateful. However, the level of happiness of those who received the gratitude letters was four points, which was higher than expected. Letters were just one paragraph written in…

A Habit, the Beginning of Change

From the moment you wake up in the morning until you fall asleep at night, you do countless actions. However, you do not worry about how to wash, in what order to wear clothes, and how to use spoons when eating. The body moves before the head because those have grown into habits. A habit is an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary. It is not too much to say that life is a continuation of habits; our daily life consists of various habits such as sleeping habits, eating habits, exercise habits, language habits, driving habits, and consumption habits. It is said, “We are what we do repeatedly. Excellence, then, is not an act, but…

Mother’s Special Lesson

In the Bible, youth is likened to the dew of the dawn. The pure and clean dew of the dawn is beautiful but it is seen only for a while. Though young adults receive great blessings in the time of youth, it passes quickly. So I made up my mind to take the blessing whenever I get a chance. In the beginning of this year, I applied for a short-term mission to Quezon City, Philippines, after coming back from Panaji in India. Quezon City is the biggest city located in the southwestern part of Luzon. The population is as large as the vast land, and there are the National Assembly, government offices, and prestigious schools. Probably because of this, the…

Kim Min-cheol from Anyang, South Korea

The Tomb of Words

Four or five hundred years ago in Korea, there was a village where people were divided into groups with the same family name and argued each other almost every day. Quarrels arouse mostly because of a minor word of someone. One day, a wayfarer passed by and heard the story. He recommended the villagers to build a Tomb of Words. It was to write on paper all the words that caused discord such as lies, harsh words, and the words that pick on or hurt others and to bury them just like having a funeral. After the villagers made the tomb as the wayfarer said, the discord and conflict caused by words disappeared and it became a peaceful village. “The…

When I Was Three Years Old

I happened to take care of a three-year-old daughter of my acquaintance for hours. My parents, who were out with me, picked her up together and headed home. My parents looked very happy, probably because they had little opportunity for taking care of a kid. When we arrived home, I had to carry her up the stairs to the third floor we live on. At the time, my dad asked the girl, “Do you mind if this uncle takes you in the arms?” I burst into laughter because it was funny to see the way my dad carefully asked a child for permission, calling himself uncle not grandpa. Dad looked excited, going up the stairs with her in his arms.…

Park Yun-jeong from Seongnam, South Korea

Loss Aversion Bias

Between the joy of picking one hundred-dollar bill on the road and the agony of losing it, which emotion do you think is bigger? People usually choose the latter one. This is because they feel the agony of losing more than the joy of getting the same amount of money. This psychological phenomenon, which is more sensitive to loss than profit, is called “Loss Aversion Bias.” The same is true in golf; the agony of a bogey [taking one stroke more than what is expected] outweighs the thrill of a birdie [sinking a ball in one stroke less than the number of expected strokes]. This makes golfers have fear of failure and discourages them to give it a new try.…

A Scientist Who Loved Corn

American scientist Barbara McClintock (1902-1992) questioned why a corn has several colors of kernels and they changed their positions in different corns. In her research, she discovered Jumping Genes, which move from one chromosomal location to another. As it was a theory against the notions of scientists of the time that the genome location was stationary, her study was depreciated in those days. Much later, however, her research was acknowledged and eventually she received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1983. McClintock lived single all her life, burying herself in her studies on corn. She didn’t approach corn in a rational and objective way, regarding it as an object of her research, but tried to be emotionally close…

How to Defeat a Devastator

Wasps that are five times larger than honey bees are natural enemies of honey bees. While honey bees can sting only once and die after attacking, a single wasp is capable of stinging multiple times and is highly venomous. What is more, a wasp can kill hundreds of honey bees with its big and strong jaw. Once wasps raid a hive, they kill the bees and plunder larvae and honey. They are just like devastators. However, honey bees do not retreat easily. When a scout wasp appears to find out a hive, the bees inside go out to call in other bees collecting honey outside. If more wasps attack them, honey bees desperately fight against them to keep their beehive.…

No Graffiti! Yes Clean and Safe Town! 1

Graffiti is a headache in Australia because it does not look good aesthetically and gives a negative impression that the “area is not safe” to local residents. On a mild sunny Sunday morning, from the early hours on, about eighty brothers and sisters gathered together to remove graffiti from the wall of an industrial building at Blacktown. Everyone started to paint the building. There was graffiti all over big building wall and even beyond the fence, so at first we could not even conceive the idea of painting the entire building. The lower part of the wall was painted by the short elementary school members, the upper part by the tall members and the members with the rollers, and the…

Ju Su-jin from Sydney, Australia

How to Double Happiness

After entering college, I participated for the first time in a street cleanup held by the club. I picked up garbage, and by the time I got to a smoking area, I was surprised to find hundreds of cigarette butts on the ground. At first, I picked up each cigarette butt with tongs. But since they were too many, I collected them with my hands and put them into garbage bags. Thanks to the diligent efforts of volunteers, the smoking area soon became clean. The college I attend is nearby the last bus stop in the city. So there are many buses waiting at the station and it is always crowded with people standing in a line. Maybe that’s why…

Jeon Beom-jun from Jeonju, South Korea

The Anchoring Effect

Once an anchor is lowered, the ship moves only within the length of the rope tied to the anchor. In this regard, a cognitive bias that describes the common human tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered when making decisions is called the anchoring effect. If a watch seller first offers 200 dollars and then lowers it to 100 dollars, consumers are more likely to buy the watch. When asked, “Was Napoleon taller than six feet?” you are more likely to guess his height higher than when asked “Is Napoleon taller than five feet?” In fact, 200 dollars have nothing to do with the buyer’s decision in buying the watch. In guessing Napoleon’s height, the…

Anger at Ebb Tide, Laughter at Flood Tide!

Sea levels repeat rise and fall by the invisible force between the Moon and the Earth. The phenomenon of seawater flowing away from the shore is called ebb, and the opposite is called flow. The sea gets purified in this process. Sometimes, our mind is likened to the sea, and we need psychological ebb and flow, because our mind is purified as emotional impurities like irritation and anger are pushed away at ebb tide and laughter surges into our hearts at flood tide. Laughter comes from positive thinking, right? For a month, let’s clean up our mind and make our home overflow with laughter! Tip When you are angry, take your time rather than reacting immediately. Think objectively about why…

Water Coming Down from the Sky

Three essential elements for plant growth are water, sunlight, and wind. The most important of them is water. But not all water is the same. Purified water is clean, but it doesn’t help plants grow because all the nutrients plants need are filtered out. Tap water is more nutritious than purified water, but some plants are sensitive to certain components of tap water. In case of areca palm or table palm, the leaves may turn yellow due to chlorine in tap water. So you need to release chlorine into the air by putting tap water in a basin for a day. Hard water, which contains relatively high amounts of calcium and magnesium, is rather harmful to plants. What type of…

Gospel Work Fulfilled in Amazon

In 2020, COVID-19 pandemic alert was issued in Peru, and we were constrained on gospel activities and our daily life. Nevertheless, the gospel did not stop but even reached the Amazon region in Peru. The one who played the catalytic role was Brother German. Amazon’s forest, which functions as the lungs of the earth, is large; it lies in Brazil, Peru, and Bolivia. The brother, who is a teacher in Cayamas, visited his daughter who is in Piura, and on the way home, he happened to stay in his cousin’s house in Chiclayo, Lambayeque, because of the moving alert due to COVID-19. Thankfully, he heard the truth through his cousin, who was our Zion member, and accepted the truth, showing…

Lee Sun-yong from Chiclayo, Peru

Beautiful Conscience

In March 2019, a short note with cash was delivered to a bus company in Korea. “About forty years ago, I stole a coin from a receptionist while working at your company, and two mops. Please forgive me. I have enclosed 35,000 won [30 dollars].” As no sender was written in the letter and it’s what happened decades ago, the company had no way to find who sent it. A company official said, “It’s a short but sincere letter. I could feel the weight of guilt and sincerity of asking for forgiveness, which the person had kept in heart for forty years.” In May 2017, a woman in her sixties visited a train station. When she was a high school…