|
Your
filial duty is to die
The hillside
of Kumho-dong was my hiding and resting place. There I could see the Han
River flow quietly. Many years had passed while I was living a hard life
with a sick body and wounded heart and my family was totally destroyed. One
day, my seventy-year-old mother unexpectedly visited me. She looked
vacantly at me lying in my sickbed, and then she suddenly started to weep
bitterly beating the floor with her rists.
"You should
die, die! Death is a real filial duty for you."
Mother's
wailing hurt me and tore my heart into pieces taking away my last hope for
life. Strange but when I made up my mind to die, wiping away the tears
flowing down my face, the eager desire to live suddenly welled up in my
heart. A famous herb doctor even said that it was a miracle that I was
still alive! My body was like a department store with all kinds of disease.
But I started to struggle to live.
To live,
I'd drink even the liquid of feces!
Modern
medical science was not able to heal me, so I used all sorts of folk
remedies. I ate whatever was said to be good for my health. I even changed
my name and invited a sorceress to perform an exorcism. But to make things
worse, I got the rheumatic arthritis and I had to hide myself. In this
terrible situation, I heard that the liquid of feces was good for
recovering my health. Although its stench was unbearable, I drank it
earnestly. But it was all in vain and my condition got so worse that others
had to help me urinate and defecate. I didn't know about God's providence
and tried many things in human way, only to see no hopeful result for the
future. My wife frequently ran away from home and my beloved mother wished
I would die. Nobody can imagine how sorrowful and painful it was!
Oh! How
can this be possible?
One day in
April of 1974 when I had wandered in the valley of death for seven years,
my second elder sister who lived in the countryside came and asked me to
guide her to a place called Hyun-Shin-Ae's Altar. I couldn't say no to her
and I went there by holding my sister's arms and using my stick. When I
entered to the place, I was so surprised. There were so many people praying loudly.
They looked out of their minds to me. I thought I had to get out of that
place before I also became crazy. But I was even more surprised to see my
sister, who was a quiet person by nature, lifted up an shook her hands
while praying. As people kept coming in and my sister didn't seem to care
about me while she was praying, I didn't know what to do. So I just knelt
down and closed my eyes as others did. At the very moment, my body suddenly
became hot and it oozed sweat. Since that day, miraculous things began to
happen. I hadn't been able to hear any sound because my eardrums were
split. But I could hear the voices of people. My intake was a few spoonfull of rice only, but I had a sudden urge to eat more and could eat a bowel of steamed rice at once with some meat. The pus in my ears and the joints and
the lumps were gone. The skin disease disappeared!
"How come this happened?
By the power of God. He healed all my diseases. My wife and I wept for joy as we saw that seven years of pain were passed away. Recalling what had happened
the day before at Hyun-Shin-Ae's Altar, I knelt down before God and prayed
to him. "Oh, God! Thank you! You are really alive! You healed all my
diseases!".
[Click for more information - Rev. Dr. Jaerock Lee]
|
