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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] |
