My first love story

Everybody may have one or two intractable life problems. For me it was emptiness, which again engendered meaninglessness and hopelessness in me. I began to recognize this problem probably during my puberty. When I was a little kid, I was a good reader. My imagination was enriched by children’s stories such as Gulliver's Travels and Treasure Island and ancient legends like the Trojan War and Hercules' Adventures. As I grew older, however, I learned that I was living in the real world, not in imagination. Heroes and fairies withdrew from the stage, and I was left alone on the empty stage and the light went out.

 

I entered the university and majored in Business Administration, the most practical study for a better life in the real world. Studying business was like chewing rubber, giving me no taste at all. I could see my future life that was quite predictable, graduating from the college, getting a job, marrying a woman, having a few children, and growing old, and expiring into nothing. I felt empty. What is the meaning of this life? Why do I have to study hard if this is all that I can expect? The emptiness grew deeper when I was in the army. At that time, I lived like a puppet moving according to programmed daily routines. I became a heavy smoker and my only delight was looking at cigarette smoke scattering into the air.

 

After having completed my military service, I returned to the campus to continue my college study. Still my life had not changed much. It was my everyday habit to sit down at a sunny spot and to smoke absentmindedly. The situation was even worse because now I had to find a job before graduation. one day when I was groaning with all these anguishes and burdens, one woman approached me. She had a thick Bible and her face was beaming with a smile. She was a senior student studying Mathematics but she didn’t talk like a mathematician. She talked like a tender mother.

 

The first meeting with my future Bible teacher was quite shocking to me. First of all, I wondered how a human being can smile as radiantly as she did. While I was with her I forgot my gloomy mood. In addition to her brightness, I could see her fullness. It was indescribable but I could tell that something was overflowing in her. She opened the Bible and showed me here and there. I became like a sheep and listened to her saying quietly. It was sweet. Then we made an appointment for a one-to-one Bible study. After she left me, I stayed there little longer. I could feel that something strange had happened in me. I went home, opened the Bible, and read it very carefully. For the first time, I read the Bible so intensely as if there would be some hidden secrets that I should find. Although everything still sounded mysterious, I saw the hope that the Bible might give me a light.

 

I remember clearly the themes of the first two Bible study. one was the existence of the spiritual world (John 3) and the other was God’s creation of the world (Genesis 1). I learned that what is visible is not everything. What is more, invisible things are much more important than visible ones. My Bible teacher explained many things about the Kingdom of God, being born again, the Holy Spirit, and so on. These things were all foreign words to me but they turned on the light of my imagination. Now I could explain why I had been so empty. It was because I had lived in the real world or the physical world while I was also a spiritual being. My soul was hungry for spiritual food, the best of which was all treasured in the Bible.

 

Another revolution in my life occurred when I heard Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This word changed my world view radically. It was a late evening when I finished the Bible study. I got out of the church and went up to the hill on which my school was situated. on the hill I looked up the sky and many stars twinkling in darkness. Now they looked totally different. I could breathe the life of God in all the creatures. They didn’t happen to be there by accident. They were created and installed there by God’s almighty power, according to his beautiful design, and for his perfectly good purpose. Now my life was connected to ‘Someone Who Is Absolute,’ although about whom I didn’t know much yet. I was fascinated with Him and read the Bible and many other books about Him diligently.

 

What makes my life rich, full and meaningful? I think that it is relationship. When I was struggling with emptiness and meaninglessness of life, I thought that I was alone and no one could help me. People around me seemed to be too busy to talk with me about the meaning of life. Sometimes I felt that something was wrong in me. Then, God sent me a Bible teacher and invited me to Him and His World. This happened when I was at the bottom of my life. Now I am thankful to God for all the miseries that I suffered when I didn’t know God. The emptiness in me was so great that nothing could fill it. It was God alone who could fill it. God let me know it, and by doing so, He allowed me to enter into a relationship with him. In fact, my personal history is the history of my relationship with God, which is getting richer and more dynamic day by day.