Faith & Life

A Warm Price

There was a man who sold waffles in a shabby alleyway. His calculation of the prices for the waffles was a bit odd: 300 won for one and 1,000 won for three. If one waffle costs 300 won, it should be 900 won for three. But the prices on the menu read, “3 for 1,000 won.” His customers wondered and asked him, “Why don’t you sell cheaper to those who buy more?” He replied, “He who buys one is poorer than he who buys three. So one should be cheaper.” He gave the example of a student who shared one waffle with his friend, and that an elderly woman who bought one with the money she earned, collecting wastepaper. His…

And Then

A poor student went to see a rich old lady in the village to borrow money for school expenses. “I want to study and become a lawyer.” “Yeah? And then, what are you going to do?” “I want to earn a lot of money and become rich, like you.” “And then?” “I’ll get married, have kids, and live happily.” “And then what will you do?” As her questions seemed never-ending, the student got irritated. “What do you think I would do next? I’ll just live like that, and probably die when I get old.” “Then, will that be it?” “What can happen after I die?” “Then, does that mean you’ll study just to die? I can never lend my money…

I’m Happy Because I Have…

My friend’s new cell phone, a pair of shoes on display in the department store, a house in a magazine, a car in a commercial . . . People want fame, prominent positions, or other things that they don’t have, and only imagine themselves having them. However, when they come back to reality and look at themselves without the things they want, they feel down. If you keep thinking about what you don’t have, happiness will go further and further away from you. If you want to be content and happy with your life, think, ‘What if I don’t have what I have now,’ instead of thinking, ‘I wish to have that.’ Your family, health, co-workers, precious things . .…

Until One Soul Is Led

Before I met the truth, I tried many times to have faith in God but it didn’t come to me. I thought, ‘Having a religious belief doesn’t seem my thing. Would I meet God after death?’ Frustration came along with many thoughts. Every day, I would ask myself, “At the end of this life, what will happen to me? Where will I go?” I put all my time and efforts into my studies, consoling myself that those were what I needed to do; but something always felt empty and I was not happy at all. When I was planning my future, I could not help but think that everything was meaningless. I wanted to find something that could bring me…

Maria Cleofe Cuchillo Gutierrez from Lima, Peru

Surpassing the Limits of Our Muscles

The muscles of an athlete are not built up in a day. In order to gain physical strength and improve their skills, they constantly have to train themselves. Only when they surpass the threshold of their muscle capacity can they gain the fruit of their efforts. The maximum threshold of your muscles is the point at which you have exhausted all of their strength. When the critical limits of the muscles have been reached, the muscular tissues that have been tightly tied together become loose or are even painfully torn. However, the torn muscles are repaired within a short time. If we use the repaired muscles again, they are damaged again and the damaged muscles are then repaired once again.…

Treat Your Family to Tea!

Tea is a favorite food loved both in the East and the West. To enjoy a deep taste of tea, you have to be careful in every step from preparing the tea water to steeping it in the cup. As you need time and effort to make it, you can enjoy tea if you drink slowly, savoring it. Tea is sometimes a medium of communication among people. When you have a cup of tea, a conversational atmosphere will be naturally created, and you can get to know each other while talking. This month, enjoy a cup of fragrant tea with your loving family. Treat your family to tea, regarding them as valued guests, and enjoy a friendly talk. Then, fragrance…

Crisis Can Be an Opportunity

In Yosemite National Park located in California, U.S., there are giant trees which are about 262 feet [80 m] high and 16 feet [5 m] in diameter. These trees are giant sequoias known as the “President Tree.” Among the giant sequoias, there are some that are even more than 3,000 years old. Interestingly, they have many burn marks on their trunks, surviving more than eighty forest fires—some lasting seven days. In the forest where fires occur regularly due to friction between trees during the dry season or by lightning, the secret of these giant sequoias surviving there for so long lies in their soft bark which is 3 feet [1 m] thick. As they hold abundant water in their bark,…

Coming Close to God

When I was in my first year of middle school, I learned the Bible deeply at Zion. Actually, I started to go to church with my family when I was a child, but that was my first time to study the words of God seriously. I had been always proud of myself, thinking I knew the Bible to some degree even though I was young. However, the prophecies of the Bible and their fulfillment made me feel as if I had never experienced the Bible before; the Bible was full of testimonies that I couldn’t deny, and God truly existed. I was so happy to be able to completely believe both in God and the Bible that I wrote a…

Lee Pyung-hwa from Seoul, South Korea

A Flycatcher Full of Worries

A flycatcher was wearing a long face, perching on a twig. A mother sparrow and her young saw the flycatcher and asked, “Flycatcher, what’s wrong with you?” “I’m worried about when I’ll be shot by a hunter. I’m too afraid to live.” Hearing this, the baby sparrow asked the mother sparrow with much anxiety, “Mom, what if we too are shot by a hunter? Aren’t you worried?” “Worries cannot rid us of dangers.” “What do I have to do when I have worries to deal with, then?” “Spread your wings. Flying birds have no time to worry.” Following the mother sparrow soaring up in the sky, the baby sparrow flapped its wings hard. Then there was a gunshot. And a…

Marks

For “Go” players, their favorite board to use is made of a nutmeg tree. In addition to its good color and fragrance, its resilience allows the trace of the stones to disappears after a certain period of time. Among the boards made of a nutmeg tree, the board with thin marks on the surface is considered to be the best, though the production of it occurs unintentionally. If the wood cracks in the process of making a Go board, it is not thrown away but wrapped in cloth and kept in a separate place. After a couple of years, the wood is restored to its original state with the cracks filled up as it repeatedly contracts and expands. This Go…

Build a Strong Home That Won’t Collapse Even by a Strong Wind

A home where the family members are united in love and trust is the strongest one that is able to stand against any strong wind. Though a man lives in wealth and honor, what good is his wealth if he doesn’t have his loving family? Even though he may succeed in society, if he doesn’t take care of his family and get acknowledged by them, he won’t be truly happy. On the other hand, even though everybody in the world criticizes him, if he has his family who trusts and encourages him, he can surely stand right back up thanks to his family that supports him like a strong pivot. There is an old Korean saying, “When one’s home is…

Life’s Choice

Life is a series of choices. Even for small matters such as deciding whether to eat toast or cereal, or which dress to buy, people think things over and over again to make a choice. There is even a vending machine that has a button that says, “Any Drink.” If the matter is about school, work, or your spouse, choosing becomes a serious decision. How good would it be if we could see our future? If we look happy in the future, it must mean that we’ve made good choices. However, we don’t have that ability. Then how can we make up our minds? Choosing one means giving up the other. If you give up without hesitation the things that…

Working Together Voluntarily

We, the members from the Cape Town Zion and the Bellville Zion, rolled up their sleeves to clean the streets in the downtown of Cape Town. When we went there, the downtown looked clean but there were lots of weeds and trash right outside of the downtown. The members made teams for the regions that the street cleaners usually could not cover. We picked up litter in the street in perfect order and pulled the thick weeds. We didn’t mind going into the storm drain to take trash out. After cleaning, we could see that the streets became so much cleaner that they couldn’t be even compared with how it was before. When the members of the Church of God…

Park Eun-gyeong from Cape Town, Rep. of South Africa

If You Laugh

Generally, people think, ‘I laugh because I’m happy; I shiver because I’m afraid; I frown because I’m tired.’ However, there is a contrasting argument. The American psychologist William James, and the Danish psychologist Carl Lange published a theory named the “James-Lange Theory.” According to their theory, you laugh or cry not because you are happy or sad; you become happy or sad because you laugh or cry. In other words, physical reactions are not triggered by emotions, but emotions are triggered by physical reactions. This psychological theory may be somewhat hard to understand, but it is a useful way for modern people living in stressful times to control their anger. When you’re upset, take a deep breath before release your…

My First Salary

I checked the text message at a vibration of my cell phone. My salary was deposited. I was happy because it was the first salary in my life. ‘Is this really mine? How should I use it?’ I thought of many things on the way to the bank with excitement. ‘This is my first salary. I’ll give it to my mother. She has been sacrificed for me until today.’ I withdrew it in cash and handed it to my mother. I thought she would be much pleased, but she just looked at the envelope for a while. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for having done nothing for you.” I was puzzled as her reaction quite different from my anticipation. I…

Kim Seon-wu from Seongnam, South Korea

What Is More Valuable than Competence

On September 16, 1976, in a city in the Soviet Union, a bus lost its balance and fell into the river. Then a man threw himself into the river without hesitation. He couldn’t see what was ahead of him because of the black smoke, and the water was cold, but he brought the passengers out of the river with all his might. He was a famous finswimmer named Shavarsh Karapetyan, who broke the world record eleven times and won European Champion thirteen times and World Champion seventeen times. By diving into the river more than thirty times, he rescued about thirty people and then he collapsed. He got pneumonia and septicemia from that day. When he woke up forty-six days…

The Love of a Shepherd

“Then Jesus told them this parable: ‘Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent’” Lk 15:3-7 When a sheep leaves the flock, it can hardly survive. The sheep is unable…

Practice to Become Happy

‘I wish I could sleep more in the morning,’ ‘I wish the weather would be better,’ ‘I wish the traffic wouldn’t be bad in the morning,’ ‘I hope my project will pass,’ ‘I wish my wife would stop nagging,’ ‘I wish my son would have better grades at school’... People want things endlessly. However, do things in the world go the way we want? Sometimes, you sleep through your alarm in the morning and leave the house in a hurry, but then, it is raining outside and the traffic is terrible. So you are late for work, and the boss who came to work earlier than usual that day yells at you about your project. You want to have a…

The Reason for Donating Blood

Before becoming a high school student, there was something I wanted to do most. It was blood donation. I wanted the souvenirs I could get after the blood donation, and liked the fact that donating blood once is acknowledged as four hours of volunteer service at school. After I became old enough to donate blood, I participated in the blood donation in earnest. Thanks to that, in my high school, I gained the honor of “blood donation hero,” a title given to a person who donates blood five or more times. Even until then, however, I was unaware that my blood saves lives. Meanwhile, the “Blood Drive to Give Life through the Love of the Passover” was held at the…

Park Min-ji from Seoul, South Korea

If You Want to Fly

Carpenter bees move from this flower to that flower to collect honey from early in the morning. Their bodies are bigger and chubbier than other ordinary bees. For the body size, their wings are rather small. From a perspective of air dynamics, their body structure is not ideal for flying. Then, how can carpenter bees fly with the wings which are not that helpful in flying? The secret lies in the flap of wings. Since carpenter bees can never fly if they flap their wings as many as other bees, they do it more diligently than any other bee. They flutter their wings more than 200 times a second. As a result, their flank muscles are developed that they can…