what makes people pray?

I would like to share with you the special music to be offered during our worship services for the next two weeks. All of this inspired music will be happening in my absence as I am currently in Korea visiting my family.

The Oakton High School Madrigal Choir will visit to share their glorious music at 9:15 AM and 11:00 AM this Sunday. They will lift up several songs in various forms of music. I am sure that it will be a musical offering, not only to the Lord, but also to Mothers!  At the 8:00 AM service the SonriseSingers will share, “Great Are You Lord” as an offertory.

Then, on Sunday May 20, it is confirmation Sunday, and there will be special music offered by a student trio, including Hannah Berlin, Sarah Smiths, and Christine Cox at the 9:15 AM and 11:00 AM services. And, Stephanie Introne will play a lovely flute piece for the offertory at 11:00 AM.

I pray that the Lord may enrich your spirit with beautiful music during these worship services.

On a personal note, I arrived in Korea on Tuesday. The last time I visited was in 2006, and I can see how much has changed during those six years. I am acclimating myself to new ways of using public transportation while I stay at my Mom’s place located outside of Seoul. Seoul is like downtown New York--full of people, cars, neon signs, and huge buildings.

I have noticed some major differences on this visit, particularly when I attended a dawn prayer service with my Mom at 5:00 AM. The church has two dawn prayer services from Monday to Saturday and it runs more than ten church buses. They were big tour buses to take people to the dawn services every morning. It came 4:40AM in my Mom’s neighborhood. All those buses were full of people. I found that other church buses were on the street at that time to take their members to their prayer services. When I went into my Mother’s church, I was surprised how many people were already in the sanctuary praying before the service started. They have about 10,000 members. The sanctuary holds 2,000 people at once and it is three stories tall. While hearing people’s prayers around me, I questioned myself and wondered what make people pray like this? Even though I pray almost every morning, I was deeply challenged when I witnessed this. And surprisingly, this church was not considered a big church in the town. There were several similarly large churches nearby. There are even more in downtown Seoul. I am not inspired by the size of these churches, but by their congregants’ willingness to get closer to the Lord. I don’t believe that only people who are praying in church are more faithful. However, I could tell you that their hearts are close to the Lord.

We studied and made new efforts with prayer during Lent this year at Floris UMC. I am not sure whether or not I prayed more during that time, but am sure that I did not pray like these people. Around 200 years ago missionaries from America came to Korea to spread the Good News, and several of them were persecuted and died in this land. I think those sacrificed lives helped make this happen in Korea now. Their prayers and their lives still run through the churches and people’s hearts in Korea.

I pray that the power of the Good News also restores people’s hearts in America. Who knows, we might have to run huge church buses every morning!