Yoon's musical note

It's hard to feel or enjoy the Holy week or Easter as well as Christmas season truly as a person who serve a church as a music director. Even though I pray deeply, on that particular services, or occasion, I have to be alert to do my job well done. I have to think about a number of things; how many copies I need to make for musicians, how many choir members will show up, their seating chart, songs in order, and so on. Therefore, after all things done, I usually feel tired and missed the feel of the day. Like today, a day after Easter, I feel sometimes total lost. Where is my Easter? Where is the Holy week? While I was feeling something missing, I started hearing a hymn that the choir sang as an offertory yesterday. "'He lives, he lives, Christ Jesus lives today. He walks with me and talk with me along life's narrow way. He lives, he lives, Salvation to impart. You ask me how I know He lives, He lives within my heart." Yes, my Easter is in my heart because Jesus

It has been harder than I expected. I knew that I will have some hard time to feel normal for a while but I have been sad more than I could deal; my tears have been running without any warning, and my heart has felt so empty. Living far away from each other is hard, and it gets harder when parents get older, especially one of parents passed away and the other one lives by herself. I and mom cried for awhile before we left to the airport, prayed for each other harder that God may lead us to live together someday soon. It was a true blessed time for two and half months that my mom visited us in here, but still separation never gets easy. Actually, it gets harder. It was really hard to leave her when I visited Korea last May, and I cried for whole time on the air. My mom is seventy-seven. Life is too short to live in a long distance that we could see each other that often. What for? Why am I here and she is there? I have been thinking and thinking how I can see her soon again. My heart

The Season of Christmas has been a little bit different for me. When I lived in Korea, most Korean churches have Christmas day worship services in the morning on 25th. Especially when I was in a high school choir and adult choir, we had a caroling tour for all night on 24th. Due to my church size and members were from all over area near Seoul, we rent huge buses to go to the caroling. We put the announcement in a bulletin to make routes among those people's houses which usually took all night to be covered. We started caroling from nursing homes and hospitals near the church which is located in downtown Seoul around 5:00 PM on 24th, and sang whole night visiting those houses who registered through the church. We arrived at the church early morning on 25th without sleeping but sang at the service in the choir loft for the Christmas service. The challenge was how to be awake during the service especially the sermon time. However, we managed to do all those things and came home after

One of my daughters shared with me how frustrated she was when she was facing unfair treatment from one of her teachers. She cried while she was telling. I hugged her and shared that life is unfair and it is. We need to learn the unfairness is not our fault, and just move on. The conversation went further with a question how she could love someone who treats her unfairly without affection. And she started complaining how hard to live as a Christian. I nodded my head, told her that it is hard to live as a believer in Jesus, and even Jesus warned us many times through the Gospel that it is not going to be easy. Lately, I have thought about problems among most Christians right now. Especially watching the process for election lately my thought has wondered why it is so hard to live as Christians without compromising, making excuses but with ALL IN. We have become too smart to put all in in our faith. We say that our first priority is God but we decide to go to see the football game on S

It has been a very busy but focused month, September. After sharing my motto of this year (2012-2013) at the choir retreat, I truly have been trying my best to apply my motto; BQQ. Best quality, best quantity to God. I asked a same question like a habit whenever I have moment; "Am I doing my best in this situation spending time?" Interestingly, a majority of killing time has been disappeared; such as watching funny shows through Internet, spending time at Facebook etc. Most of all,  reminding myself to live my best to glorify God in each moment has made benefit on relationship. I even remind myself the question while I am with my girls. It has helped me refocus on conversations, and listing carefully. And when I listen carefully with my full attention, I noticed that I remember better and think of the conversation often afterwards. It helps to understand and pray more for the person too. Someone asked me how come I came up with the motto. It is a long story but short; I have

While praying for my church and music ministry this morning, God has given me a image of "back to back" ministry. I often image about a team work as holding hands together. However, God showed me this morning that instead of holding hands together in a circle, we need to be in circle in back to back position as a team minstry. I was thinking why it should be in back to back position and got answers. First of all, we can cover other's back and ourselves better. If we look each other holding hands, our backs are not covered any. And it is not helping to move forward but rather inward. Secondly, we can also get supports more in strong ways from others back. If you think about it, when we lean each other back to back, it helps you to maintain strength. Even though one or two people can get tired standing straight, the others can hold them up still. Last, we can work without worries because we have strong supporting team members. Sadly, I have felt sometime lonely doing works.