LIFE FULL AND FREE
In the chaos that followed the Korean
Conflict, I was among the many struggling for
existence. Poor but persistent, I held several
jobs in the course of a single day.
One afternoon I was working as a tutor.
Suddenly I felt something oozing up from deep
inside my chest. My mouth felt full. I thought I
would choke.
As I opened my mouth, blood began to gush
out. I tried to stop the bleeding, but blood
continued to flow from my nostrils and mouth.
My stomach and chest soon filled with blood.
Severely weakened, I fainted.
When I returned to consciousness
everything seemed to be spinning. Shaken, I
barely managed to travel home.
I was nineteen years old. And I was dying.
GO HOME, YOUNG MAN
Frightened, my parents immediately sold
enough of their possessions to take me to a
famous hospital for treatment. The doctor’s
examinations were careful, their diagnosis:
incurable tuberculosis.
When I heard their assessment, I realized
how badly I wanted to live. My desires for the
future were to end before I even had the chance
to start fully living.
Desperate, I turned to the physician who had
pronounced the grim diagnosis. “Doctor,” I
plead, “isn’t there anything you can do for me?”
His reply was to resound often in my mind.
“No. This type of tuberculosis is very unusual.
It is spreading so fast that there is no way to
arrest it.
“You have three, at the most four, months to
live. Go home, young man. Eat anything you
want. Say good-bye to your friends.”
Dejected, I left the hospital. I passed
hundreds of refugees on the streets, and felt a
kindred spirit. Feeling totally alone, I was one of
the hopeless.
I returned home in a dazed condition. Ready
to die, I hung a three month calendar on the
wall. Raised a Buddhist, I prayed daily that
Buddha would help me. But no hope came, and I
grew continually worse.
Sensing that my time to live was shortening,
I gave up faith in Buddha. It was then that I
began to cry to the unknown God. Little did I
know how great an impact His response would
have on my life.
TOUCHING TEARS
A few days later a high school girl visited
me, and began to talk about Jesus Christ. She
told me about Christ’s virgin birth, His death on
a cross, His resurrection, and salvation through
grace. These stories seemed nonsense to me. I
neither accepted her stories, nor paid much
attention to this ignorant young female. Her
departure left me with one emotion: relief.
But the next day she returned. She came
again and again, every time troubling me with
stories about the God-man, Jesus. After more
than a week of these visits, I became greatly
agitated, and roughly rebuked her.
She did not run away in shame, nor retaliate
in anger. She simply knelt down, and began to
pray for me. Large tears rolled down her
cheeks, reflecting a compassion foreign to my
well-organized and sterile Buddhist philosophies
and rituals.
When I saw her tears, my heart was deeply
touched. There was something different in this
young girl. She was not reciting religious stories
to me; she was living what she believed.
Through her love and tears I could feel the
presence of God.
“Young lady,” I entreated, “please don’t cry.
I am sorry. I now know about your Christian
love. Since I am dying I will become a Christian
for you.”
Her response was immediate. Her face
brightened into a glow, and she praised God.
Shaking hands with me, she gave me her Bible.
“Search the Bible,” she instructed. “If you
read it faithfully you will find the words of life.”
That was the first time in my life I had ever
held a Bible. Constantly struggling to gasp air
into my lungs, I opened to the Book of Genesis.
Turning the pages to Matthew, she smiled:
“Sir, you are so sick that if you start from
Genesis, I don’t think you will last long enough
to finish Revelation. If you start from the Book
of Matthew, you will have enough time.”
Expecting to find deep moral and
philosophical religious teachings, I was shocked
at what I read. “Abraham begat Isaac; Isaac
begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his
brethren.”
I felt very foolish. I closed the Bible saying,
“Young lady, I won’t read this Bible. This is only
a story of one man begetting another. I would
rather read a telephone directory.”
“Sir, she replied. “You don’t recognize these
names right now. But as you read on, these
names will come to hold special meaning for
you.” Encouraged, I began reading the Bible
again.