Faith & Life

A Lesson from Kauai

The island of Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands is now famous for its beautiful scenery, but it was once a dark gloomy land. The residents suffered from poverty and diseases, and criminals, alcoholics, and juvenile delinquents were serious. In 1954, a research was conducted about how family background and socioeconomic environment influenced the development of people there. Experts in each field observed about 800 residents from the time when they were fetuses to adulthood, and found out that the worse their living environment was such as parents’ flaws in character and mental health and the like, the harder they found it to adjust to society, living a wrong-headed life. Among 201 residents in the high-risk group with the poorest living…

God Is Light

If you turn to the light, the shadow retreats backward, but if you turn against the light, the shadow—darkness— is in front of you. … God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 1 Jn 1:5 If you look toward God, who is light, darkness always backs away. On the contrary, if you turn your back on God, you cannot help but put darkness before you. The only way to escape from darkness is to look at God and come toward Him. Everything is seen under the light; our sins and the way to go are clearly seen. In the light, we are not likely to overlook sins, stumble in darkness, nor wander in the dark, losing…

Time Is Gold, We think time is gold especially when we spend time with our families

A woman in her fifties goes to see the doctor to get the result of her medical checkup and is told that she has nine months to live. The woman is at a loss for words by the unexpected result. This is a scene from a viral video. Actually, the nine months given her to live are not the time she can live, but the time she can spend with her family. Assuming that human lifespan is eighty-five years, the remaining time for a fifty-three-year-old housewife is thirty-two years. If you think about the time for work, time for sleep, time for TV or smartphone, and the time for herself, the time she has for her family is just nine…

Appearance and Value

In January 2007, a man wearing a hat in shabby attire began to play the violin at a subway station in Washington D.C., U.S. For forty-five minutes of performance, many passersby went by him, but only a few people stopped for a while; most of them did not even look at him. Two days before this, a violinist’s concert was held in Boston. The ticket that was over 100 dollars was sold out, and the concert came to an end with great cheering by the audience. His name is Joshua Bell. He is a musician loved by Americans and a world-renowned violinist. What was surprising was that Joshua Bell was the one who played the violin at the subway station.…

Putting Down the Burden of Sin

Last October, my husband and I moved our gospel field to Baybay in the province of Leyte, Philippines. We had been to Baybay once for a short-term mission, but there was almost nothing we knew about the city. I was a bit worried because it was an unfamiliar area quite far from Zion my husband and I belonged to. However, we were willing to go to Baybay, believing that there was God’s will to quickly complete the gospel work. But our willing hearts did not last long. It was because we got impatient as there was no fruit borne even after a month since we had moved. It seemed there must’ve been something contrary to God’s will, although we thought…

Mary Rose Paulines from Pagadian, Philippines

Open

Open concert, open lecture, open competition, open experience . . . There are many “open” events that emphasize the opportunity to participate without any restrictions. If it says it’s open, it gets a little easier to get closer because you won’t have to open the door yourself or hold back yourself from entering in front of the closed door. It is the same for preaching the gospel; the door must be opened. In front of someone whose mind is closed or hardened, everything what you say will be disagreed. Even if you bring out all kinds of rhetorics and use all means and methods, you can never get into their minds. The one who has the key is God. Only…

When We Look Most Adorable

There is something that contains my vivid childhood days. It is a video tape recorded by the camcorder that Dad purchased about twenty years ago. Since the appearance of smart phones, the camcorder had been placed out of sight for a long time and the tape identification device didn’t work. I was curious about the videos in it, so I found a company that converts the video into a digital file. A week later, the flash drive that contains the videos arrived at home. All my family members gathered in front of TV with excitement and played the video. My whole body was dark because of the sunburn, my younger sister whose teeth had fallen out, and my youngest sister…

Lee Jeong-yeon from Bucheon, South Korea

When You Talk about Others

One disciple asked his teacher, “You said backbiting hurts three people.” “Yes. It turns the backbiter, the listener, and the one who gets backbitten into victims.” “So what should I do in order not to backbite others?” Pleased with his disciple who was going to do as he learned, the teacher responded with a smile, “Think of three things before you talk about others: First, ‘Did I hear and see it myself?’ Second, ‘Is what I’m trying to say a good thing?’ Third, ‘Is it necessary for me?’ ” Not to forget his teacher’s teaching, the disciple repeated to himself what his teacher told him. Looking at him, the teacher said again with a gentle smile, “The simplest and easiest…

A Single Message

The Island of the Five Lighthouses written by Spanish author Ferran Ramon-Cortes is a book about the process of solving communication problems through five lighthouses. The story goes that the protagonist finishes a presentation, thinking that he has done well but the audience shows a lukewarm reaction. Shocked, he asks his professor what the reason is. The professor recommends him to go to an island with five lighthouses and observe each lighthouse to look for the answer rather than giving him the answer directly. A lesson from the first lighthouse is impressive. This lighthouse blinks repeatedly about 3,000 times a night. The lighthouse, which flashes without rest for 365 days a year to vessels sailing in the dark night sea,…

Pit Crew

Formula One Grand Prix is a world-class motor race. As Formula One [F1] is a single-seat racing car, it may seem the game depends on the driver, but it is actually a game that requires teamwork. The racing team includes pit crew members in addition to the driver, manager, and director. The record can be poor when the tires wear during the race, and so tire change is a must. A pit stop is a place where a racing vehicle stops during a race for new tires. The mechanics who work there are the pit crew. It takes less than three seconds for about 20 pit crew members to change four tires. The pit crew is very important for car…

The Fruit of Unity

Our Torrance Zion has been doing various kinds of voluntary works, keeping a good relationship with the City Hall of Torrance, since we held the global environmental cleanup movement for the first time in October, 2015. Recently, the City Hall asked us to clean the Charles H. Wilson Park. Wilson Park is famous in Torrance because it has a small steam train that runs there twice a month. However, as it rained a lot recently, weeds grew around 2.4 km [1.5 mile]-long train track, and it spoiled its beauty. The City Hall asked us if we could remove the weeds so that the residents and children could use the steam train more joyfully and safely. On the day of the…

Kotaro Uechi from Torrance, CA, U.S.

God Knows Everything

“What do you want to do if you become invisible?” This is a frequently asked question in a superpower quiz. Answers vary, but some are always included: visiting places for free, taking things to one’s heart’s content, following someone one likes, or giving somebody trouble. Whatever it is, the common thing is that they generally try to do something different from usual when they are not seen; they want to do things that they can’t do due to their self-consciousness or restrictions. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.Heb 4:13 Nobody is invisible to God. God knows everything we think, everything…

Lively Family Is Good at Greeting

As a proverb says, “The way you greet someone determines how he will welcome you,” greetings are the key to success in your social life. Greetings are not only the way to be polite but make the other person feel good because they are an expression of your good feeling and concern for him or her. So if you are good at greeting people, things will go well. Greetings also play a big role in building a happy family. The family who exchanges greetings in time has a cheerful mood. Good greetings between family members lead them to respect and be considerate of each other, and they naturally come to converse often. It is also a great home education for…

Having the Same Care for One Another

I’ve never been part of a dance group in my life. When I was asked if I wanted to partake in the dance for the elderly, I took this blessing with great gratitude. I was not good at it but I didn’t want to lose the opportunity of blessing. Brothers named the dance group and practiced dancing every day. We all helped one another in creating an outfit we would wear for the day. We worked all night in preparation for the event and at times we seemed to get tired, but we encouraged each other by reminding one another of our goal that was to bring joy, laughter, and happiness to the elderly. Finally, we finished the costumes, but…

Byron Reveles from Sunland, CA, U.S.

How to Get Up Early in the Morning

It is easy to lie down at night, but it is hard to get up at once from your cozy bed in the morning. Many people struggle in their beds every morning, or take another minute, and eventually rush out of home, being pressed for time. Particularly, cold weather tempts you to sleep all the more, but there is a scientific way to wake up in an entertaining way. Our brain has a compensation system called Ventral Tegmental Area [VTA]. If this part is activated, we can easily wake up from sleep. In other words, it needs enough reward. Although people usually oversleep, on a day when they go on a trip, they wake up even before the alarm rings.…

The Place beyond Your Imagination

Man’s imagination is limitless. When you see an incredible invention or a beautiful work of art made out of brilliant imagination, you would marvel, exclaiming, “Wow.” When somebody achieves something that nobody thought was possible, people praise him with expressions like “He’s done something beyond imagination,” or “His work is more than what you’ve ever imagined.” However, as it is written: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” 1 Co 2:9 The kingdom of heaven is out of reach for human imagination. No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no language can describe it, and no mind can even picture it. That’s why God of…

To Finish the Spiritual Marathon

My mom died when I was three, and my father did when I was nine. My oldest sister, who was sixteen years old at that time, became the head of our family, and we strove to overcome the sorrow for losing our parents and the financial difficulties. After I entered middle school, I learned running and became a member of the national team as a marathoner. Unfortunately, however, my ankle got injured while training in the severe cold of under -40ºC [-40ºF], and I had to give up being an athlete. I grew up, overcoming the absence of my parents and the hard life of athlete, and I became arrogant; I felt proud of myself for being strong and successful.…

Enkhod from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

To Create a Dense Forest

Forests not only purify the air, but also regulate humidity, temperature, and wind speed. Also, they provide us with a lot of products such as wood, herbs, and fruits, prevent landslides, and become nesting places for various plants and animals, which makes the ecosystem harmonious. We’ve found a way to make these important forests healthier. More than 80 scientists from universities and research institutes in 44 countries, including the University of West Virginia, University of Minnesota, and the Ecology Research Center of the Netherlands, have done a research on more than 30 million trees. The research reported that if tree species are reduced by 10%, forests’ productivity is reduced by about 3%; and if it gets reduced by 99%, the…

We Are All Friends

In Western society there is an idea called six degrees of separation that anyone in the planet can be connected to anyone else in just six steps. It basically means that human relationships are all connected to each other in a few steps. An American social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, did an experiment to prove this in 1967. He’d made some residents of the Midwest in the United States send mails through their acquaintances to a stockbroker living in Boston whom they didn’t even know, to see in how many steps it gets delivered. The mails arrived to the recipient through an average of five steps. A simple mathematical calculation of the experimental results is as follows: When we assume that…

Family Is Not Coincidental, but Inevitable!

Family is a group of people who share genes biologically and have the same or related blood types. Since all cells of the body are provided with nutrition and oxygen through blood, blood is the basis of life. Family shares the blood. Family relationship is stronger than any other relationships. There is a saying about family cohesion: “Blood is thicker than water.” The love for family members cannot be cut off. It is natural for people separated from their families to make efforts to find them, unless they left their families by their own will. People say the relationship between parents and children is destined by heaven. Life is a series of choices, but parents, siblings, and children are not…