"Praise the Lord.  How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and fitting to praise Him! - Pslam 147:1 NIV) "

In the year of 1997, I came to the United States in April, 7 months earlier than Grace and Miah for Miah's remaining classes and final exam to achieve her master's degree in organ performance.  During those 7 months I missed them a lot, especially it made me feel so painful not to witness the quick growing up moments of 3 year old Grace at the time.

One day, she left her singing voice at my answering machine.  The song, sung in Korean, was to be interpreted like "When I sleep in my daddy's arm, I feel like I'm a princess… Even if I hear my daddy's voice every day, I still like it, I love my daddy…"  I had everyone from my classes or church listen to this recording and told them how cute and smart my daughter was. 

With this experience,  I have thought about how much God will love us when we sing praises to Him.  As we love our children no matter how they do, but when they recognize our love and express their thankfulness, the relationship between parents and their children will be even stronger than before.  

When I have rehearsals with our church choir, I often emphasize on the importance of church choir's role in leading congregational singing.  Our duty shouldn't stop at singing one or two anthems for service.  Singing all together as the children of God in one voice is the highlight of service in my view.  Your ability of reading music or caring out the right pitches are not that important in this case.  If you have the love towards God and sing with your joyful hearts and mind in singing, that will please God no less than any world class choir can do.

Now, our church has decided to purchase the newly published Presbyterian Hymnals for our congregation.  This new edition of hymnal was prepared through prayerful efforts and process in selecting appropriate hymns, old and new in balance, representing our generation in 21st century.  Rich information and references for ministers as well as all worshipers.  Large print to read easily and more unison melodies with chord marks for contemporary style of hymns. 

With time passes, we should be up-dated to adjust ourselves to be effective leader in church ministries and having new published hymnals will be one of our investments for our efforts.  The Congregational Ministry team will introduce many ways of participating in purchasing these hymnals.  Hope we will become even more active in singing together with this new hymnal from now on.