Being Present

I love to spend quality times with people especially my family and friends. Since I been home for the holiday, I have had quality times with my parents and my little brother. I define quality times as being present and giving the attention to the person I am with at that moment. Today, I had great privilege of spending quality time with my dad. As someone who is working toward being more patient, one thing I love to do with my dad is go fishing. I love to fish with my dad because I get to have deep conversations with him while getting to the place to fish and then when we do fish I feel so calm and being present where I am with my dad. I learn so much from my dad about myself through the stories he tells me about my history through knowing more about my family or what it means to be a Christian or we just talk about the current events that is going on at the moment. Growing up, I went to visit the hospital a lot and my dad was the one who drove me to the hospital visits. I love the times we had together even though it was only driving back and forth from the hospital visits. When the hospital visits stopped my junior year of college, I missed driving with my dad; however, that soon was replaced with going fishing and I love it! Spending quality time with my mom includes cooking, my mom has a cooking license from Korea and she is an amazing cook (at least I think she is.) My mom is teaching me how to cook Korean food these days and I am attempting to make Korean food when I am DC. Of course, it doesn't come out as how my mom would cook it and I am better at following instructions from my mom when cooking then me trying to cook myself. I think my brother got the cooking gene and he is wonderful cook. When I am "cooking" and my mom is instructing me about how to cook, I feel present with my mom and we get to spend quality time together. For my little brother, we have conversations whenever we are in the living room or driving in a car and I learn so much from my little brother. He is so insightful and wise in his age. He is in law school and just the other day, he was telling me about criminal law and the process it involved. Of course, it went over my head since law is not my specialty but I love the conversations we have! As much as I love having quality times with my family and friends, I think God wants to have quality times with me. I think I get so busy into what is going on in my life that sometimes I neglect having quality times with God. Being present in presence of God. How does that look like? In Psalm 46:10, the verse says, "Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth." To be still and be in awe of presence of God that is everywhere. While driving to get to the location of the place my dad and I was going to fish, I saw the remnant of what Hurricane Ike did to the coast land. It was sad sight to see and I was amazed at the force of natural disaster. If a hurricane can cause such disaster, I am utterly amazed at what God can do more than that of a disaster if He wanted it to occur.  Being present before God, I think for me that's giving all of myself to Him. "Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." Deuteronomy 6:5. Being Present. I hope that you'll spend quality times with people you love and be present this Christmas time. Thanks for reading!