Faith & Life

What Do You See?

A company was in crisis due to recession. Disheartened employees lost their willingness to work. One day, the company president gathered the staff and showed a piece of drawing paper. There was a large black dot on it. “Everyone, what do you see?” “A black dot!” At the staffs’ uniform answer, the company president cleared his voice and said: “Why can’t you see the white background besides the black dot? The difficulty we’re going through right now is no more than this black dot. Let’s not be blinded by the black dot and miss the white background which takes up a lot more than that.”


The Park Cleaned and Beautified by the Church of God

There are two small children’s parks near the church. One of them was almost abandoned. The rides and the exercise facilities at the park were too old to use, and the dense shrubs didn’t allow people to even look inside it. The residents were reluctant to go to the park. Although it was called “children’s park,” it was actually a crime-ridden area and a place for illegal littering. However, this park has completely changed as our Church of God participated in the “Decorating the Flower Garden of Our Town” policy conducted by the resident committee since last year. The dense scrub that surrounded the park was removed; the old stains on big slides, outdoor pull-up bars, swings, and other equipments…

The Seogu Church in Gwangju, South Korea

Following the Dream

There was a man whose dream was to become an actor. He went to as many auditions as possible to fulfill his dream. However, he was rejected each time for the reason that he had no distinct individuality or face. He auditioned more than eight hundred times for ten years. He had to have many jobs, working as a bartender, doorman, painter, and more, but he never gave up on his dream. One day, the critics complimented him after watching him act in a play. His future seemed promising. However, he received sad news like a bolt from the blue: he had a brain tumor. After a big surgery taking ten hours, his tumor was removed, but he became deaf…

Nudge Effect

If both stairs and escalator are equipped side by side, most people tend to use the convenient escalator. But at a subway station in Stockholm, the capital city of Sweden, the stairs are more popular than the escalator. Guess why? At first, here too, people rushed to the escalator like other subway stations. The Swedish government recommended people to take the stairs to avoid the crowded escalator and to improve people’s health, but it was useless. After much study, the government devised a piano staircase. When pressure is applied on each step, a musical note is played. So, many people from kids to the elderly, and even the disabled began to take the stairs. This is called Nudge Effect—inducing people…

The Best Choice That I’ve Ever Made in My Life

It has been three years since I became a child of God. So far, I’ve preached the truth to my family, wishing to share the heavenly blessing with them. Though it was hard, I didn’t give up and prayed to God day after day, asking to save all of my family members. During the last prayer week of the autumn feast, my prayer became even more earnest. I have a nephew whom I raised from his childhood. He is now working in Macao. He used to attend our church events like the “Our Mother” Writing & Photo Exhibition, and studied the Bible when he was in Korea. I wanted my nephew, who is like my own child, to stay in…

Kim Geum-ja from Ansan, South Korea

Articles with No Malicious Comments

Some say malicious comments are better rather than no comments. But if they go through malicious comments about themselves, they will change their thought. Although many groups are trying to get rid of malicious comments, there are still many problems that must be solved. But there is a posting that became well-known for no bad comments. The posting goes as below. “If you are in your mid or late forties and have a daughter, I know it’s brazen, but would you call me just once, ‘My daughter’? I have no mother who can call me gently, ‘My daughter.’ So I really want to hear that at least once.” At this short writing, thousands of comments were posted. “I love you,…

With Burning Fervor despite Rain and Wind

We keep hearing news about voluntary services actively carried out throughout the world in obedience to the teachings of Heavenly Father and Mother. To participate in them, the members of the Kaohsiung Church in Taiwan conducted a cleanup around Kaohsiung train station. The station located in the center of Kaohsiung was built in the 1940s and is still there now when the once-fishing village Kaohsiung has grown to be a big city with a population of 2.8million. We started the cleanup, hoping that Kaohsiung station will be the first step to a beautiful journey for citizens with a cleaner environment. Many family members and friends of the Zion members participated in the cleanup. From a little 7-year-old child to a…

The Kaohsiung Church in Taiwan

Decision

When a volcano on French island Martinique was about to erupt, one ship was taking on cargo from the port. The captain, who detected the signs of volcanic eruption, stopped what he was doing and immediately made himself ready to leave the island. He urged people around him to leave the island now. But nobody listened. They hustled to load cargo on the ship. Without any further delay, the captain ordered the ship to move. As the ship was getting away from the port, a customs officer and the cargo owner threatened the captain that they would sue him. At that moment, the volcano exploded with a tremendous roar. The city turned into ruins within a few minutes and the…

Reason for Casting

A five-year-old daughter of Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie made a surprise appearance in a movie, drawing people’s attention. She played a role well even in her young age, probably because talent runs in her family. But the reason she was cast is interesting. It was not planned for her to play the role from the beginning. All the other child actresses, who had to play the role of a young princess who is not afraid of the witch, cried when they saw Jolie with the scary witch costume. The dark witch costume with long nails and scary horns on the head scared four- or five-year-old children. Because all child actresses ran away, the daughter who was not afraid of her…

Dad’s Crash Diet

Eduardo Camargo, 35, who had never jogged after his school days and only failed in his diet, went on a crash diet this time. Cutting down on his meal, he monitored his food intake, stuck to a diet consisting of fresh fruit and vegetables, drank water only as for something to drink, and set the goal of running 20miles (32km) a week. Halfway through, he actually felt like he was going to vomit, but kept running with the only resolution to lose his weight. As a result, he, at 210pounds (95kg), lost 40pounds (20kg) in two months. What made him put all his strength in losing his weight? It was not to have a good figure but to save his…

To the New World of the Gospel

“Do you want to hear some words of wisdom?” My friends asked me as we walked back from school on the last day of our junior year in high school. Seeing their eagerness, I wanted to hear them. One who lived close had run to his house and brought his Bible, and they explained the truth about Heavenly Father and Mother and God’s regulations. The words of God were amazing and undoubtedly certain. That very afternoon, I went home and highlighted every verse I had been taught, not wanting to forget even one point. The next day, I was scheduled to leave to boot camp in high school, so I was not able to go to Zion right away. However,…

Nathalia Salvatierra-Abuid from Morgantown, WV, U.S.

The Time Taken to Solve the Problem

There was a problem which had been a global challenge for a long time in American Mathematical Society, New York. However, this problem was solved on the year of 1903 by Frank Nelson Cole, a mathematician professor at Columbia University. Mathematicians greeted his presentation with a standing ovation but Cole shook his head and said, “I’m not that great like you all think. How long do you think it took for me to solve this problem? “About a week?” Once again, Cole shook his head. “Then, did it take you about a month? It cannot be taken more than that, right?” He made a gentle smile and answered, “It took three years of Sundays. I’d been only making a little…

Make the Entrance Full of Love

“I am home.” “Have a nice day!” “Welcome back! You’ve done a good job, today, too.” It is the entrance that you go through first whenever you come home, and that you pass through lastly when you go out. It is the place where you meet or say bye to your family for their daily schedules. It’s where your guests will get the first impression. Although it’s a small area in the house, its role is not little at all. While you see off your family with encouragement and welcome home, the entrance becomes a place of communication and harmony, not just a gate for entry and exit. This month, why don’t you make the entrance full of love so…

Treasure Hidden in a Field

A park in U.S. the scenery is not that beautiful. There are not many cool tree shades. It’s like a barren land. Its admission fee is $10. But more than 50,000 people visit this place every year. From the entrance, they lower their heads to look at the ground and walk slowly. They dig all around the park, sweating buckets, but they never complain despite hot weather. This is what you can see at Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas. You can keep diamonds you find in the park. More than 70,000 diamonds have been discovered in the area since 1906, when a farmer first found one. It’s literally a diamond mine. The world envies the lucky one who…

A Flower of Love Bloomed in the Garden of Trials

For more than ninety days, I had to stay in hospital to get my back treatment. If you think it’s short, it is a short period of time, but when I was lying down, not moving even an inch because of pain, time passed slowly as if it stood still. I was also distressed, learning that I had to receive outpatient treatment for a long time even after I get discharged from hospital. Even before I was hospitalized, I had already been weakened from sadness after losing my loving family three years before without any preparation. I could barely endure without being completely devastated because I understood the spiritual world and God encouraged me with an invisible helping hand. But…

Park Du-yeon from Changwon, South Korea

Harmony

Although every musician of an orchestra is excellent in his own performance, unless all the performers play in harmony, they come to make ugly sounds. As long as they ignore others’ performances and stick to the sound of their own instruments, they can never give a wonderful performance. . . . so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. 1 Corinthians 12:25–27 We are parts of one body in Christ and…

The Work of Salvation Is Carried Out by God

There was a shop owner whom I had delivered the word of God to, from the previous year. It had been a long time since my last visit. I went to the shop again to meet the owner, but only to find that it was replaced by a new mobile phone store. Now that I was there for preaching, I entered the store to deliver the word of God. The store owner looked at me as if he was wondering what brought me there. I told him that I came from a nearby church and I gave him a newspaper and a souvenir which was made to celebrate receiving the U.K. Queen’s Award. He didn’t seem to like the preaching…

Lee Nam-eun from Cheonju, South Korea

Invisible Power

Albert Einstein, a world-renowned genius physicist, came to believe that “there exists an invisible force in the world,” when he saw a compass needle always pointing north, no matter how many times he shook it, during his childhood days. When Isaac Newton, a famous British scientist, observed an apple falling from a tree, he began to think about what force was pulling the apple towards earth. A force like magnetism and gravity always acts on every object on the earth, but we can hardly perceive the force because it is invisible. As for great scientists, however, they grasp even simple phenomena that other people miss or overlook and explore amazing discoveries from them, upon which they continuously devote themselves to…

Giving Thanks, the Essential Virtue of Happy Home

In 1990, Nelson Mandela was released after spending 27 years in prison for fighting against racism. People thought that he would look very old since he was 70 years old. However, he surprised people as he came out of prison, looking healthy and spirited. A reporter asked him the secret to his health, and he answered: “I always gave thanks to God in prison. I thanked God, looking up at the sky. I gave thanks, looking down at the ground. I gave thanks, drinking water. I gave thanks while eating. I even gave thanks, working in a labor camp. I was able to stay healthy because I always gave thanks.” A university student got third-degree burns all over her body…

It’s Easier to Change

Dr. Bernice Andrews from Royal Holloway, University of London, conducted an experiment on about a hundred middle-aged women; 79% of them had low self-esteem and depression. She wanted to find how they changed over seven years. The follow-up research revealed that only 4% of the women still had the same diagnosis, which indicates that people can surely change, whether it is due to different environments or certain events. We’ve seen irritable people becoming gentle, and passive people becoming assertive; so it makes sense. So you don’t have to feel disappointed just because you don’t like your personality. There is room for change as far as you don’t give up. It’s okay even if you lack willpower. It is said that…