My message will be relatively short so that you may not have to suffer from attention deficit disorder syndrome.

I am not standing here because I am qualified to talk to you about anything but only by the grace of God and True Parents. However, I wanted to share my personal reflection with you. I am very grateful that I was given this opportunity to speak to you. I would be happy if at least one person in this congregation can find my sermon helpful.

Let me go straight to the topic. Count your blessings. How many blessings do you have? Have you counted them before? How many complaints or challenges do you have? You may count them all the time.

It's easier to be negative than to be positive about our various situations in life. There are always people who have better or worse situations than ours. The point is; who do you compare yourselves with? Your wealth with that of Bill Gates or with that of the homeless? Your physical strength with that of an Olympic athlete or that of a patient who is dying of cancer in the hospital? Your conjugal relationship with that of a so-called perfect match made in heaven or with that of a dysfunctional couple who is barely staying together or a divorced couple or a person who lost his or her spouse?

There is no end to comparing our situations with anybody else's. Our immediate neighbor's lawn always looks greener when we cannot see our distant neighbors' brown or foot-high lawns.

I'm talking about our attitudes here. Basically we can find more blessings in our lives simply by changing our attitudes or perspectives of life.

Parents, I want to talk to you for a moment. I have an interesting question for you. Which child would you rather have, a handicapped child with a golden heart or a physically healthy child with a terrible attitude? You never know the suffering and struggle of a parent with a handicapped child unless you have one. You never know the suffering and struggle of a parent with a physically healthy child who seems to have serious attitudinal problems unless you have one.

We do not know what other parents or individuals are going through internally every day. Because of that we may wish we were in their shoes when their situations ostensibly look better. It is obvious that we cannot have everything we want. Of course, it would be nice to have plenty of money to give to others in need and normal healthy children. When you do not have enough money, you can appreciate the value of one dollar and learn how to stretch it as much as you can.

When you do not have a physically or mentally healthy child, you can understand that it is a miracle to have a normal child. When I see normal (I mean physically well) children around me, essentially I see miracles. They are not the children you always feel like spanking or grounding, even though sometimes I feel like doing so to one or two myself. However, it does not change my fundamental attitude towards those children, who are miracles.

Let me tell you how my wife and I came to be at the point where we are now. When I was getting ready to get matched, I was imagining what kind of sister I would be matched to and I was saying to myself, "I will accept anyone even if she is an ugly woman with a beautiful heart or a beautiful woman with a cold heart," which meant in my heart that I was ready to accept anyone. Then I got the best of both.

When our first child was born, everything seemed so perfect until we had our second child. When our son, Kenji was born, we were very happy. However, his development seemed slow and stagnant, compared to the first child. My wife began to grow suspicious about his development. When he was about one year old, she had an opportunity to visit her parents with our son and to have him examined at a local hospital in Pennsylvania. The test results proved our fears right.

He had fragile X, which means an imperfect chromosome. It causes mental retardation. Even though we kind of knew that he might have problems, the confirmation of the problem was devastating to us, especially to my wife. She cried. Naturally, we struggled for a while. However, we decided that God gave us this son because He knew we could accept him as our beloved son and that if He had given him to another family, the couple would not have been able to accept him gratefully. We know one broken family because a handicapped child was born to the couple. God chose us to take care of and love our son.

He has limitations in doing normal things, such as tying his shoe laces, buttoning his shirt, eating without making a mess on his face and shirt, etc., and yet he taught us lessons of virtues such as patience, perseverance, self-sacrifice, compassion for other handicapped people, etc. His heart is purer than the average teenager. He does not know how to speak back. He does not know how to attack someone, if only in a playful manner as most teenagers do.

What kind of a teenage boy would thank you for the pledge you had with him at 5:00 am on Sunday morning? For taking him to church? For cooking dinner for him? For taking him to McDonald's? For almost anything else you do for him? At least until a few years ago Kenji would say thank you for those things all the time. I guess he is not a teenager any more. He has a great sense of humor. He is very precious to us. My wife and I know that he has a special place in heaven. Of course sometimes he frustrates me a lot by what he does or doesn't do repeatedly. Then I find shortcomings within myself. He challenges me to change myself to be a better loving person by being himself. My wife is very patient with him. Nothing seems to bother her. She must be perfect or almost there. Or her love is so deep that she can embrace any challenges with her love. I'm afraid I have a lot of catching up to do.

I would like to urge you. Probably some of you have even more difficult problems in your hands than we do. However, please try to find solace even in those hardships. If you do, you are truly champions of God. I admire and respect those people. That is what Father has been doing throughout his life as we all know so well. He found hope at the Hungnam concentration camp by sharing a half of his rice ball and looking forward to eating a whole rice ball later on.

We may not have to do the same in our lifetime. Our current daily struggles may be severe enough for us. Some people struggle just to survive financially each day. Some struggle with their relationships as a couple or parent and child each day. Some carry the pain in their hearts for the loss of their spouses to illnesses or in the form of divorce. Others carry the pain in their hearts for the loss of their child or not even bearing children. The greater their love and hopes for the person who was lost were, the greater their sorrows are. They may feel like demanding God an answer. But we often do not know why things like that happen to us just because we do not know how the Spirit World works. It seems unfair. Life is never fair. At least it seems that way. But as we know intellectually, most of them, if not all, happen based on spiritual laws.

In our case, we know why we have a handicapped son. The main cause is definitely spiritual. Of course, it is not his fault. Sometime somewhere somehow somebody has to pay indemnity for the past or current mistakes. It is simply our time to take up the role and pay the indemnity so that our future generations may not have to suffer as much as we did or do now. At this point, my wife and I do not think we suffered or are suffering a lot. It was simply not easy. If we do not do our part, our descendants will have to suffer.

Our TP have the strongest desire to pioneer the way of indemnity as TP of mankind so that they may stop the suffering of all people by doing what they have been doing so long until now. They are the ones who should receive the greatest glory but are suffering more than anybody else. I am sure they carry the unfulfilled desire or "Han" for God, which is their pain in their heart as well as their pain over their personal tragedies. However, they do not spill the pain all over us.

They just keep chugging along no matter what. How many sorrows have they had? How many blessings have they had? Do they have more blessings than sorrows? We all know the answer, don't we?

How many blessings do we have? How many sorrows or complaints do we have? If you have complaints about your spouse, please try to complain to someone who just lost his or her spouse. If you have complaints about your child, try to complain to someone who lost his or her child. Then you will know what a blessing really means.

Blessed are those who cannot count their blessings with their fingers and toes alone, but only with their hairs because they know they have that many blessings. Again, do you know how many blessings you have?

Do you know how to count them or find them? If you are not sure, I will give you an idea.

When I was living at a center in Tokyo about 25 years ago, there was this one brother at the center. One day he counted his blessings in the church. He said, "I don't have to worry about dating. I don't have to worry about my ugly face. I don't have to find a wife. She will be provided anyway. Shelter is provided. Food is provided.

Allowances are provided. Who wants to leave the church? It's hell out there. I don't understand people who want to leave the church."

I heard someone say to the effect that gratitude is the basis of all other virtues. Without it we only complain. Without it, it is hard to love and serve someone, even family members. It is very hard to try to practice true love without a feeling of gratitude and being loved by someone. We should know that someone always loves us no matter what. Let me explain what I mean by that through one story I would like to share with you.

When I was young spiritually and physically in CARP, although I still consider myself a youth - 29 years old, I used to go to ecumenical prayer breakfast every Thursday. One morning I arrived at the church with other CARP center members. Before I was about to go inside, I noticed a stray cat staring at something in a pouncing position. I looked around to find out what it was staring at. Several feet away from the cat, I found a badly wounded bird on the ground. The cat was about to make a final kill. So I chased the cat away and picked up the bird.

It looked so scared. This wounded little creature might have thought that I was going to kill and eat it. It struggled, trying to get out of my hands to freedom. Then I squeezed it more so that it might not get out of my hands. It tried to struggle even harder. If it had escaped from my hands, only death would have been waiting for it. I took pity on it even more because the bird did not know how to gain life. So I decided to take it inside the church to treat its wound and left it in someone's care. Later when I went back there the following week for another prayer breakfast, I learned that the bird had eventually died a few days later. I was saddened but I learned a great lesson about God's love from this happening.

The bird represented us, fallen men and my hands the love of God. We try to get out of the realm of God's love in order to reach what we call freedom without knowing that we are heading for death instead of life simply due to our ignorance. God takes a pity on us because He knows that due to our ignorance we think we are gaining freedom and life by escaping from His loving hands. It is His parental heart not a judgmental one. We should thank God for trying to caress and heal our wounds, even if we may not feel it. It is so funny that many of us talk to our pets even if they do not seem to respond to our monologue with their facial expressions. We don't care. We just keep talking to them. How come we stop talking to God just because we sometimes or most of the times we do not feel any response to our prayers from God? Isn't God more responsive to our prayers than our pets to our monologue? I think that in our case with God it is the other way around. God is trying to talk to us and we are not responding to His reaching out because we do not see God directly like our pets we see every day.

Here is one way God speaks to us as long as we are ready to hear His voice. Again, when I was still in college, still very young in the church and I felt God's love every day in many ways, I had an opportunity to stay at a hotel on the beach. One morning I took a walk to the beach. I was meditating on a rock while I was looking at the waves surging upon the rocks. Then I looked in the water near my feet. I saw small crabs, shells and all kinds of other little creatures like hermit crabs. I was observing them for quite some time. Then a thought came to my mind. They live in this turbulent environment but they just go with the flow. They get pushed around by the waves all the time but they never cease to live. In that environment they do their best to survive each day. They never complain, I'm pretty sure. It is their world. It is their life.

I picked up some shells. When I saw the inside of those shells, I was impressed. They were so beautiful like a rainbow. Why are they so beautiful, I wondered? I felt that God wanted His children to enjoy the beauty of His creation. I felt the strength of life even in those crabs and the other little creatures in the water. I have saved those shells for many years. I still have them somewhere in the house.

Later in the United States about 30 years ago when I learned that a sister I knew in the church had a dying father, I felt compelled to encourage him to fight his sickness and decided to give him one of those shells. I asked the sister to give it to her father after I explained the significance of the shell. She was very grateful for that. When she returned home for Christmas, she gave it to her father. He was very moved and decided to turn it into a pendant and wear it every day. Sometime later, he sadly succumbed to his disease and passed away. However, the shell had given him a moment of encouragement and hope.

With our attitude and love we can give value to something so simple like those shells on the beach. We can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. God can find value in ordinary people like us simply because we believe in TP.

When we are full of life, we may give hope to those who feel bogged down by their daily struggles and chores. When we are full of love, we may give hope to those whose hearts are filled with anger and resentment. When we are full of gratitude, we may give hope to those in misery and despair around us. We never know how we are touching other people's lives until later when they tell us their stories of suffering and struggles turned into hope and victory. I want to be on the side of hope, love and gratitude rather than on the side of resentment, anger and despair. I want to be someone who can touch one person's life at a time by being myself, not by doing something I don't want to do just to show off. Every day I want to train and re-create myself so that my act of love and service for someone may come naturally without an internal struggle.

I am sure all of you have a story to tell about how you met God and True Parents, even though your minds may be occupied with lots of things you have to do every day. However, it is nice to remember once in a while how we came to know True Parents in our early days in the church. It refreshes our fond memories about our dedication to God and True Parents, which should give us a spiritual boost when we feel a little down.

We often worry about situations we have no control over and complain about them. No matter what we say or what we do, those situations are not affected and never change. On the contrary, they could get worse if we try to change them, which is totally opposite of what we hope for. Why waste our energy and time over them? Instead, let's worry about the situations we have control over and change them if they are not working for us. Because we are in charge and we can change them.

For example, in a family situation we do not try to change our spouse or children by demanding them to change. We cannot force them to change. If we try, they tend to get even more closed-minded.

Especially we men tend to do the opposite when our wives get upset with us and demand us to change or do something. Isn't that true, brothers? Because we have stronger egos than women and are less mature than they are. We think that we are smarter than women. But it's not true. The truth is that God created women smarter than men. But He forgot to tell men about that. Am I right, sisters?

Man is the head of the family and woman the neck. Without the neck the head does not even turn. Isn't that obvious? Look at a man with a sore neck. He cannot turn his head. We men may do what our wives ask us to do when they nag. But it is not because we are willing to do it, but because we don't want you to nag too much. It is not an act of love, not a voluntary act, which could cause negative emotions to build up inside. Of course the other way around is true as well, I assume, sisters? Kind and loving words are more effective if you want results. I'm still working on this issue.

Anyway, I repeat, we can change ourselves simply because we are in charge of ourselves but only if we are willing to do so. We can change our own situations by changing ourselves first. As long as we criticize someone who is criticizing us, we are in the same boat. We are simply retaliating, which we often do. In the eyes of God we are without excuse. TF never reacts to any situations like that. He responds with love and thus changes the heart of the person who is trying to hurt him. Only if we could maintain high grounds in the middle of divorce, a family feud, a dispute with a neighbor, a friend, a co-worker, we can stand in front of God without guilt. So before we complain about anybody in the family or any place else, let us work on ourselves while counting our blessings. It will help change our perspective in a positive way and some of the complaints may dissipate naturally.

Couples, I would like you to do an exercise right now. If you are sitting next to each other, please look at each other and say the following after me. Husbands first, "I appreciate and love you for who you are. You are the greatest blessing God gave to me." Now wives the same. Thank you. Have you ever said that to your spouse before?

If you have, I hope you can say that to your spouse more often than before, if possible, every day. If it does not come naturally, just say it until you really feel like it. There is a saying; "Fake it until you make it." If you keep repeating the words often enough, your feelings will follow sooner or later because words have energy. Practice makes perfect.

I would like to conclude my sermon with the following reading:

Suppose there was a bank credited your account each morning with $86,400. It carries over no balance from day to day. Every evening deletes whatever part of the balance you failed to use during the day.

Each of us has such a bank. Its name is TIME. Every morning it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it writes off, as lost, it allows not overdraft. Each day it opens a new account for you.

Each night it burns the remains of the day. If you fail to use the day's deposits, the loss is yours. There is no going back. There is no drawing against the 'tomorrow.' You must live in the present on today's deposits. Invest it so as to get from it the utmost in health, happiness and success. The clock is running; make the most of today.

To realize the value of ONE YEAR, ask a student who failed a grade. To realize the value of ONE MONTH, ask a mother who gave birth to a premature baby. To realize the value of ONE WEEK, ask the editor of a weekly newspaper. To realize the value of ONE HOUR, ask the lovers who are waiting to meet. To realize the value of ONE MINUTE, ask a person who missed the train. To realize the value of ONE SECOND, ask a person who just avoided an accident. To realize the value of ONE MILLISECOND, ask the person who won a silver medal in the Olympics.

Treasure every moment that you have. And treasure it more because you shared it with someone special, special enough to spend your time. And remember that time waits for no one. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is mystery. Today is a gift. That's why it's called the present!!

We do not have time to worry or complain about small things in God's eyes every day. We should get over them as soon as possible so that we can move ahead in a constructive manner. Please remember. Only small minds are affected by small things.

Thank you very much for your attention.

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