But in that moment, just as she was about to pull the blanket over me, my eyes burst open! She looked at me as I blinked several times and then closed my eyes. Still, although my eyes were moving, my body was completely stiff and lifeless. My mother wept, “You struggled with all your strength to open your eyes so you could see your mother one last time before you leave. Thank you, my child. Goodbye.”

She could not bear to bury me since my eyes were still responsive. So after she covered me again, she sat down next to me and kept watching. She thought in despair: What’s the use if he is alive only in his eyes? When life has gone from his eyes, too, I will carry him out and bury him.

40 minutes later, she lifted the covering once more and saw me open my eyes and blink again! Since my eyes still had life, she felt hopeful and could not bury me. She kept me covered with the thin comforter and peeked at me every now and then. I was so weak that I would only blink a couple of times and then close my eyes again. She could not do anything but watch me; she spent the whole night like that. 

The next day, her mother-in-law asked, “Have you buried the child?” 

My mother replied, “I wanted to see his face one last time before burying him. And when I lifted the cover, he blinked his eyes. So I wondered if he might live. I spent the whole night awake, watching him.”  

Then her mother-in-law chided her, “How can the child live? It’s not as if he’s alive. He’s only blinking during his final moments before death. He won’t survive past morning and will likely die before noon. Just go prepare breakfast.” 

After my mother had set the breakfast table, she went back to check on me. She saw that my fingers were also moving! As time passed, the swelling of my face subsided, and by that afternoon, I was showing signs of recovery. Miraculously, by the third day, I had fully come back to life! Only then could my mother believe that it was God who had saved my life. A person coming back to life is truly a miraculous and joyous event. 

After that incident, she named me “Myeong Seok (명 Seok)” because she felt that I would live a long life. All my siblings’ names were given by my grandfather, but I was the only one who was named by my mother. She was deeply inspired by how I had died and come back to life.

The Chinese character for my name, Myeong, means bright. Just as both the sun and the moon bury themselves behind the clouds and then surface again, my life also dipped and resurfaced in the past. The sun and the moon shine only during the time allotted by the Creator. A good name is one with a good meaning; the Bible says this too. 

I realized that the Lord had named me through my mother. In later years, while I was carrying out the work that the Lord had entrusted to me, the second letter of my name, Seok 锡, was changed to Seok 析, which means to split, to interpret, or to be intelligent. This is based on the scripture in Matthew 3:10. In this way, by delivering the Word of God together with Jesus, I made a history of splitting good and evil and separating the new time from the old time.

This is the story behind my name, the story of coming back to life. You, too, need to live up to the meaning of your name. Satan made me ill and tried to take my life away, but because the Lord saved me, I live my life only for him. Even now, I live every day following only God’s Will, thanking Him, and realizing how He has saved my life.