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Showing posts from 2011

Advent is Here!

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The Advent is here already! It has been a mild winter and it makes feeling more earlier to have the Season. Also, sadly, our advent cactus, two of them, did not even bloom this year. I told my mother in law to not to put those pots under direct sunshine. However, she did. Both of them do not have even one single flower bud. It is my second year to have the Advent in Northern Virginia. I know a little bit more what to expect to be in this busy season of the year and what and how to plan in my work. Our church has focused on this Advent with a sermon series of "What do you really want for Christmas". I know what I want for this Christmas. How about you? I want Peace in Christ in my family. Don't imagine that we don't have any peace in our home. :) We do. However, some members of my family seem still having been struggling to find the peace in Christ. I also want the peace. I have a number of times of experience that peace in midst of difficult times and middle of ...

The Table of Thanksgiving

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I am not an american yet. I have a greencard but need to wait 3 more years to apply to be a citizen. I did not grow up in here so, I do not know details about the history of America. However, I know well enough how people from Europe came to America, and a tradition of the Thanksgiving. I watched one of Charlie Brown cartoons about Mayflower and the first Thanksgiving at one of my girls school when I was volunteering. It gave me many thoughts on the pilgrims, the thanksgiving and the faith and prayers toward this blessed land. After watching the movie, I decided to bake a turkey as my first time in my life at our home for this year thanksgiving to share details of the thoughts with my children who are americans. I think that I have a responsibility to teach them a true meaning on thanksgiving that has been mis-understood in many ways in this world now. Seeing devastated situations when the pilgrims arrived in the State with a long terrible journey on the sea made me think deeper about ...

The Beauty of God's world

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While preparing the Fall Music Festival at my church, I have learned more and recognized more what the beauty of God's world has: diversities, colorful, and uniqueness. God created everything differently, even twins are not same. None of God's creatures is same. While I was walking lately, I noticed that even one single leaves are made up of many different colors, especially for those beautiful fall leaves. The colors make difference to be more beautiful. However, we, people, have sometime problems to accept that differences. Not only accepting, but also acknowledge that the other people's differences are also beautiful. If you think about harmony in music, the harmony can't be the harmony without any combinations of differents notes. When we combine those different notes, the beauty of sounds starts. If you hear unison melody all the time, you get bored right away and it does not give much depth feeling. I have been learning how to accept the beauty of God's wor...

As a learner

People who have hearts of desire to learn are beautiful whether they are old, or young. Whenever I have met those people, I get inspired. Those hearts are open hearts; open to be better, open to get rid of their old stuff, open to be renewed by learning. Those people have similar attitude and condition; always being active, alive, positive, and giving energy to people around them. I met a man who was retired from a good company, but still wanted to learn many things; he started to learn how to watercolor paint. And also helping others in a charity group. His face was shinning and young. I was surprised to hear how old he was; the vibrant face was from his ongoing heart to accept new things. On the other hand, people who do not want to learn or want to stay where they are right now are not beautiful: being inactive, passive, and amazingly they are proud of themselves in many ways. I have thought about myself in these two kinds of lives. One thing I know of is I want to be a person who h...

Alpha and Omega

There have been a number of tornados more than usual in the States during this Spring; They caused endless devastated stories, missing people, dead people, and destroyed lives. While reading those news, I have searching for reasons; really reasonable reasons. Well, I could find some articles from neurologists saying about cold air and warm air and so on, but it did not give me acceptable reasons to believe. I wanted to have reasons that lead to us to some kinds of clearly of why and what for beyond surface. Some people said that bad things happen without reasons. However, as I have read and read, I could not deny that God is the one all beyond those things. Just we don't know why. We might not know and understand until the end because we are not God. Sometimes, we make God as we want Him to be. We know that He is love. His love endures forever. However, I would like to ask what that phrase means. We might not understand His deep love toward us. I still could not understand why H...

Welcome May!

I know.... I haven't been writing since February! We already passed Lent, and Easter and now, we are in May! May is one of my favorite months of a year: in fact, May is called a Queen of the Months. May brings memory of deep fragrance of roses that I used to have in the yard at my parents' house. My grandma planted five different roses for each family members in my household. Mine was a black rose with deep redish strong one. One of my chores at home was watering plants in the afternoon. We had more than 100 pots of plants with flowers, orchards, and unknown plants. Grandma taught me how to water them with kind words like " you are a beautiful flower! grow well!"while I was watering them. Somehow, I was really good at it and enjoyed a lot. In month of May, those roses started blooming crazy. As you all know, the roses are not easy plants to grow: they need lots of care especially dealing with a little bugs. However, they smell gorgeous as they look. I also enjoyed pul...

National Anthem

Well.. I could not watch the Superbowl last night because I do not have a cable and no one invited us to come to watch either. :) However, I heard about big moments and stuff afterwards. One of things was the national anthem was sung with wrong lyric. I thought that I misunderstood and went to website to find out what is going on. Interestingly it was true, so I watched through youtube . What a shame! I am not an American but I love the national anthem. It is already beautifully written and inspiring without decorated notes or messing up the lyrics. Most of all, it is shame the singer was chosen to sing the anthem. Also, it is very interesting that only American national anthem has been sung in various versions. I never heard any other countries anthems were sung with any decorated versions. Especially, the song should be sung with great respect as I could tell. I know, I might be an old school person still but why I felt so shame to watch that happened last night. And it made me kind...

Vacation

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Have you gone to vacation lately? I haven't. I think that one of reasons that I have been having my body symptoms is from lack of rest. When I was in college, I used to go at least twice a year to the ocean area. My loving dad bought a time share for me to use it. He knew how much I loved ocean and taking a trip there for several days. I do remember that I sometimes went by myself, just sitting at the beach, hearing waves and watching people. The trip usually gave me pretty good refreshment and energy somehow. I love nature: ocean, trees, mountains, water falls, beautiful valleys, sky, and so on. I have thought about when I had a vacation or restful trip in any nature. Well... when we lived near ocean, we often visited beaches to have some fun time with my girls. However, I hardly remember when we went to somewhere else then. We went to Disney World several times but it was not exactly a vacation: it was more labor! I wish that we can go to some quite place surrounded by good natu...

Power of words

God has given us a special tool for only human. It could be nicely used to save people, or the other way. Even though most people do use them in daily life, none of people know how to use it properly in God's way. Yes, it is "words". Animals can communicate with their signals and sounds but human has language to communicate each other. However, I think that this tool can be the most dangerous to use without any conscious. That is why it is so dangerous. Lately, I have had chances to observe several people nearby how they speak, and chose words to express their thoughts and feelings. Interestingly enough, the words have been causes of hurting or loving chain reactions. Even though we know so well that we need to be careful what we say, it is very hard to control our mouth without our effort and disciplines . If we see how Jesus used His words to people, we could see how powerful it was. When Jesus cursed the fig tree, it dried up right away. It happened exactly to me once ...

Job

The book of Job is not my favorites among the Holy Bible to read often. I was trying to find some reasons why I don't like the Book while I was reading it for my Disciple I class. I have found some interesting reasons why I don't like that much. First of all, in my deep mind, I do not like to see and get through any suffering and painful moments whether it is mine, or others. Secondly, I do not like to have arguments what so ever. I do not like to have any conflicts especially among friends. Also, I don't like to get judged like that. Third, I do not want to think about loss of children. Even though God blessed Job doubled portion and gave him prosperity, did Job forget about those sons and daughters who got killed before? At last, most interestingly, I want to justify everything clear in my knowledge in any situations or any people. However, as you know the book of Job, it is confusing and hard to understand in a number of things. In fact, the book of Job teaches us to se...