We have a lot of fear in this world, but we don't seem to fear our heavenly God who can give blessings as well as woes and who can grant us life as well as death.

The movie Forest Gump won the Oscar award. To us Chinese, the movie is better known as The Legend of Gump. Gump had such a saying in the movie, "I am not a smart man, but I know what love is." In comparison with Gump, there are far too many people who are smart and too few who know what love is.

In the eyes of the Americans, we Chinese are surely smart and full of wisdom. A couple of years ago, two professors from Harvard University published a controversial best seller. The book discusses IQ differences based on human races. According to their study, the average IQ of the Caucasians and the Asians is higher than that of the African Americans by 15. And the IQ of the east Asians (the Chinese, the Japanese and the Koreans) is 10 higher than that of the Caucasians.

Chinese people are really smart, perhaps a bit too smart, so they bring themselves a bit of ugliness and a bit of sadness.

We often complain about not having enough, and so we don't like to see others having a better life than ours.

We often like to hear positive words from others, but we find it hard to speak positive words to others.

The more we possess, the more we fear we may lose.

Equal value is a principle of commodity trade. The problem is that we have paid for a lot of things that are not worth paying for.

Sometimes we also realize we have a large appetite and we live in utter bitterness. We also hope to fall into deep Buddhist meditation. Life is helpless. Easy contentment may well be another form of helplessness. It seems Ah Q had a lot of wisdom. He was able to cope with helplessness. He was easy to be contented and he had a mild and smooth temper. He knew transmigration and claimed he would be a better being in twenty years. He felt really sad when he failed to draw a perfect circle, and yet he didn't seem to care loss of life. He believed in fate.

Man-made commodities are getting richer, and human souls are getting poorer.

The earth is getting smaller, and people are getting farther apart. Acquaintances increase and friends decrease.

We see more and more cosmetics and disguise, and we see less and less friendliness and love.

What we swallow is sweet and tasty, and what we spit out is bitter and poisonous.

Hens first or eggs first? This controversy has lasted for ages. We hope the world would get better day by day. Yet since today is tougher to deal with than yesterday, how can tomorrow be better than today?

Be ourselves. How many times do we yearn to walk our own path through the dark world? We seem to become a bit more understanding and a bit smarter than others. But nothing is new under the sun. Walking our own path can do no more than merely creating another set of footprints.

Here is an interesting question. Do you gain a day or do you lose a day for each day you live? Optimists say they gain a day, and pessimists say they lose a day. The reality is, gaining or losing, human beings are doomed to perish. Life is desperate, empty and absurd.

Human beings are without hometown. This world is not our final destination.

The fundamental puzzle of life is where we come from and where we are heading. The fundamental dilemma of life is we must live and yet we do not know why we live. We can become indifferent for a while, but we cannot be apathetic for life.

All are doomed to die. All are afraid of death. The real fear is we don't know how we will die.

We all have an infinite yearning in our mind. Nothing in the world can fill it up. Because of this infinity, everything in this world will become meaningless. Because of this infinity, the concept of next life comes to our mind and we find ourselves bound by religious sentiment.

The tragedy of life is that limited beings hope to take possession of the unlimited.

God is a spirit. He is invisible to us.

God says we have a spirit. We do not believe it.

We believe our bodies will perish and our souls will depart from bodies. But we do not understand that we can receive God's revelation through our spirit, and we can step into a new life by communicating with God.

Our spiritual lives become low and corrupt. Then we feel we are not very far from animals who can eat and drink, who can be happy and gay, who can seize and plunder, and who can cry and sing.

According to God, what makes us live is our spirit and what makes us die is also our spirit. Adam lived up to 930 years of age, but his spirit died when he took a bite of the apple.

We have a lot of fear in this world, but we don't seem to fear our heavenly God who can give blessings as well woes and who can grant us life as well as death. We bet our future on our own wisdom, wealth and health, but we are reluctant to inherit a better world.

Jehovah our Lord says: "I have set before you life and death" (Deut. 30:19). Jesus also tells us: "For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." (Mt. 7:13-14)

Are we among the few?

Man-made religion provides us inherited wisdom; Jesus gives us an everlasting life.

Adam had the choice to eat or not to eat. He ate and died.

Today we also have the choice to believe or not to believe. We do not believe, yet we still live.

We are still alive. That is because Jesus is still waiting for us.

The story of Gump came to an end.

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