Two stories about thanksgiving

Feelings of regret come from not sufficiently expressing gratitude 

‘This can’t be… I could not properly express even one word of thankfulness...’ 

  The residents of Sorok Island were grief stricken when two nuns suddenly left the Island without so much as saying their goodbyes. They stopped work and ceaselessly offered prayers for the nuns’ safety on their way home at the church. 

  During the 1950s and 60s, people in Korea had practically no interest in lepers and provided no support for them. The Sorok Island Hospital desperately needed nurses, and ultimately, news about their need for nurses even reached an Austrian convent. Sister Marianne and Sister Margaret, both graduates of an Austrian nursing school, set foot for the first time on Sorok Island at the young age of 20.  

  The sisters insisted on not wearing gloves and using their bare hands to properly apply ointments and treat sores. They did so despite the patient's’ resistance. They cooked porridge, baked cookies, and toured the village carrying baskets full of their cooking. They even spent their monthly allowance from the Austrian convent on purchasing milk and snacks for the patients, and even gave their monthly allowance to patients who were leaving the village after being cured, as travel money. 

  After forty years had passed, the two nuns had by then worked as the hands and feet of countless patients, and they were both seventy-year old ladies. 

One day, they boarded a boat to leave Sorok Island unnoticed in the early hours of the morning. They left nothing behind, just a letter titled, ‘To our beloved and precious friends.’ 

In the letter, they expressed their reasons for leaving, “Our age keeps us from doing our jobs properly, so we must leave before we become a burden to this place.”

  When returning to their home country, the only things the two nuns held in their hands were the old suitcases they had brought to Sorok Island. Unable to take their eyes of the island, they stared at it with tears in their eyes until the island, where they had spent most of their lives, disappeared from sight as they drifted away.  

The residents of Sorok Island, who could not watch the sisters leave, must have also shed tears with piercing grief for not thanking them more during the time they were there. 

The power of thanksgiving

  The puritans were reformed Protestants who followed Calvinism. In the fall of 1620, a hundred and two Puritans (known as the ‘Pilgrim Fathers’) boarded the Mayflower and set sail for America. They did so in search of religious freedom, in order to escape the persecution they received from the British government. 

  However, they were unable to directly arrive at the set destination because of the poor navigation of that time. Instead, they arrived at somewhere else sixty-six days after their expected arrival date. While failing to arrive at their set destination from the outset, they had to anchor their ship, and disembarked at where they landed which is a different, nearby location. They spent the winter there. In the following spring,  they learned how to farm from the American Indians, and they began to farm by planting corn seeds, which were given to them. That eventuated into their first harvest on foreign land. 

  They harvested the crops in November and invited the Indians, who had helped them, to join in the offering of a  thanksgiving service.The number of puritans who attended the service was no longer one hundred two, which was the number of people that had landed. Fifty-one puritans had died from the cold, hunger and endemic diseases, and only the fifty-one who barely survived were able to offer the service of thanksgiving to God. The circumstances they were in made it very hard for them to be thankful. The harvest was scarce and half of their fellow pilgrims who had ventured out from England had died. Despite that, the Pilgrim Fathers were thankful for being able to give thanks to God. The Pilgrim Father’s mentality became the driving force that gave birth to America, the greatest superpower country in the world today.   

A life of thanksgiving and joy

  It is known that having a thankful heart every day can lead to a healthy life and positive thoughts. Dr. John F. Jewett, an American biologist, claimed that praying before eating a meal causes the body to produce a mysterious substance that prevents diseases. He explained that the anti-toxin secreted at that time works as an antibody that blocks the progression of diseases and disinfects the body. It also prevents food from spoiling in the stomach, and assists with digestive absorption. He described these antitoxins as a longevity promoting substance. 

  A study done by Dr. Kim Eui-Shin, a tenured professor from an American cancer center, showed that members of a church choir have 1000 times more immune cells than other people. He asserted that singing and having a heart of thankfulness promote the formation of natural healing cells, which would allow a cancer patient to defeat cancer more easily than other cancer patients. 

  You are the one who knows best about the things you have received. When you have realized what you have received, you should not miss that opportunity to be thankful and be thankful at that time. What would be more ideal is to make yourself become a person who is always thankful and joyful in any given situation. Once again, I give my thanks and love for the fact that we have the Trinity who continues to work with us, give us the blessings that are incomparably greater than what we have received, and who gives those blessings to us upon our condition of living a thankful and joyful life.