Sunday, February 27, 2011

The calming touch of prayer


I read online the daily Gospel from the Bible regularly. Although I was a former atheist, I have learned to trust God and try to get guidance in my daily endeavor from the Bible. Like most people, I have had my own share of life storms but, probably unlike most people, I later discovered the calming effects of prayers. 
I made this discovery when I was working as a sub-editor in a newspaper, the National, in Papua New Guinea. My bosses then were Malaysian Chinese. One of them was a fault-finding fellow who would make a big fuss over a double period you have overlooked at the end of the sentence. 
Along with another Filipino, I was assigned to rewrite stories of the natives who were all new in journalism and had the tendency to write rumbling sentences. Because the reporters' copies were replete with vague sentences, we often delete sentences that we could not understand.
When I told him about the difficulties of rewriting the reporters's copies, he told me to ask the reporters to explain the sentence which I could not understand. I told him that it was impossible - it would take us the whole night to rewrite all the stories if we have to keep on asking each reporter. 
The following day, he sent me a termination letter effective at the end of my yearly contract that was supposed to be renewable for as long as I stayed in the grace of the senior editors. The fellow happened to be the editor in chief. I signed the termination letter without any fuss. At the back of my mind, I wanted to tell him, "good radiance."|
I did not hesitate on deciding to go back to Manila because my wife was having her own problem back home. Over the past few months, my better half had been asking me if it were possible for me to find her a job in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea's capital where I was based, because somebody was courting her relentlessly and she feared that the guy might use force to get her. 
Pressures from my job and my wife's predicament often gave me sleepless nights. A Filipino, who worked as our graphic artist, suggested that I should try praying. Although I was already trying to go back to my Christian faith which I had abandoned after I came across Charles Darwin's theory of evolution when I was in college, I found the suggestion quite bizarre.
He did not argue with me over religion. One day he took me to a Christian book store with a happy disposition. "I know you love reading, I thought you might like to read some Christian books." I used to scoff at Christian books after my college encounter with Darwin. But at that time I was willing to give religion another try after I had read the book "Peace of Mind" by Jewish rabbi Joshua Luth Liebman.
As I was saying, I have had my own share of life storms. And I believe almost all people have the same experience. Mine prompted me to read books in philosophy and even psychoanalysis when I was in the university in my quest to understand life, my troubled life in particular. So, when Joey Orteza, the brother of Filipino television scriptwriter, Bebeth Orteza, took me to the book store, I picked up some books that caught my fancy.
Looking back, I could have been guided by divine grace because I started enjoying the books I had picked up and went back for more every pay day. From my readings, I had discovered that I had been a nominal Christian when I was still in the Faith, a Christian who went to church in keeping with tradition and who prayed only to ask for selfish favors. It was a self-centered idea of religion. In my childhood, I never thought that we should also pray for thanksgiving or for other people. 
That's when I started to earnestly pray for the safety of my wife and for God to touch the heart of the man who was courting her that he will not resort to force because he was known in the village in Cavite province, south of Manila where we had taken up residence, to be a politician's lackey who would brandish high-powered guns during the election seasons. And that's how I first discovered the calming effects of prayers.
On my way back to the Faith, I have learned to understand that, more often that not, prayers will not prompt God to change the circumstances around us but would change our outlook toward our environment. I suppose that's what made Saint Francis d Assisi compose his prayer, "God grant me the courage to change the things that I can change, the humility to accept things that I cannot and the wisdom to know the difference."
To cut the story short - fearing that I could be writing a very long essay in a limited time - I completed my contract with my prayers often soothing my nights with sound sleep. There had been times when I told Joey that my faith sometimes wavered. He told me that we could also pray for stronger faith when we feel that it's wobbling, an advice that I have taken by heart,
I completed my contract thanking God that everything just went on smoothly. It was a few months before the local elections in the Philippines when I came home in 1994 and met the guy who wanted to have an affair with my wife. He had some bodyguards. The guy, whom I knew personally, was running for reelection as a village chief. When I met him, I shook his hands but, of course, did not vote for him.

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Today's Gospel is from Mt. 6:24-34. "Jesus said to his disciple. 'No one can serve two masters; for he will either hate one and love the other, or he will be loyal to the first and look down on the second. You cannot at the same time serve God and money. 
"This is why I tell you not to be worried about food and drink for yourself, or about clothes for your body. Is not life more important than food and is not the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow, they do not harvest and do not store food in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than birds? Can any of you add a day to your life by worrying about it? 
"Why are you so worried about your clothes? Look at the flowers in the fields how they grow. They do not toil or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his wealth was clothed like one of these. If God so clothes the grass in the field which blooms today and is to be burned tomorrow in an oven, how much more will he clothe you? What little faith you have! Do not worry and say: What are we going to eat? What are we going to drink? Or: what shall we wear? The pagans busy themselves with such things; but your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. Set your heart first on the kingdom and justice of God and all these things will also be given to you. Do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."
Personal note:
For some people who might find this gospel hard to understand, I volunteer my own understanding of it. 
The gospel is in keeping with one of the 10 commandments to love God above all and "the lust for money is the root of all evil."
I think many Christians often misread the second quote "the lust for money ..." to mean that money is the root of all evil. The emphasis is on "lust" or "love" for money, and not on money itself. 
I could not find in a Bible any phrase that suggest that we should remain materially poor to be able to keep up with our faith. The way I see it, the Bible is simply telling us that we should put God first -  and not in the back burner- in our quest for a comfortable life.

My own attitude is to pray for divine guidance in all my endeavors and keeping our faith that God, the Almighty and the Great Provider, will always meet our needs amid our worries about the future which, more often than not, prove to be bogeys that do not come.  
I hope you have enjoyed reading my posting for the day.







Friday, February 25, 2011

Our life's journey and beyond



I read with keen interest the news about some Filipinos  trapped in the rubbles of an earthquake in New Zealand  a few days ago. The primary reason is that I am a Filipino and naturally interested in any major news involving Filipinos. The second reason is that my wife and I had planned  to move to New Zealand but had dropped the plan after her visa was denied in Dubai where our consultant sent the visa request.
My better half, a nurse, was offered a job as a caregiver in an institution, which I presume to be a hospice, in Auckland. It was a time when the world recession hit and the visa officer in Dubai said that the job offered to my wife could be done by the natives. We tried to rationalize the rejection with the thought that probably God, the Almighty, has other plans for us.
I am sad that some Filipinos who were reported to be taking an English proficiency test were among those buried under the rubble of a building where they were taking the exams when the strong quake rocked Christchurch, described as the second biggest city in NZ. It is tragic that the ill-fated Filipinos died in a foreign land where they had eyed to settle presumably to escape the economic difficulties back home.
How sad that they met their death while in their quest for a better life. But then that's what life is all about in this world - full of uncertainties. Too bad that science, which many people who had left the Faith try to put on a  new pedestal as some sort of a god, has not come up with an invention that could predict the future of each one of us.
So until science could invent such an instrument - which may take forever as  it has not even invented yet a simple gadget that can predict when and where a tremor would strike - we can only rely on our prayers to keep us away from harm. Our life's journey is fraught with dangers, but we who have kept the Faith know the calming effects of prayers
With that theme, I enjoin every believer to say our prayers for the early rescue of those who may still be alive under the earthquake's ruins and the repose of the souls of those who have taken their journey to the life beyond.










Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Gaddafi clinging on to power

It's pathetic to note how Libya's Muammar Gaddafi tries to cling to power at the expense of the people he has avowed to serve but has exploited insidiously. In his speech, he said that he was staying in his post as the eternal "leader of the revolution" and would die as a "martyr" rather than step down and flee to any other country as he has no position in the Libyan government to step down from. A lot of rhetoric that doesn't make any sense, a familiar double-talk resorted by despots obsessed with staying  in power for as long as they live simply because it brings them wealth.
Gaddafi crossed my mind after reading today's gospel in the New Testament about Christ admonishing people not to lose life's salt. Part of the gospel read; "Salt is a good thing; but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another." The way I understand it, salt here refers to good deeds or works like charity and other human virtues. 
When I think of Gaddafi and other despots like Hitler and the current North Korean leader, the biblical admonition that we should not love the world but live in it comes to mind. It's not only despots but also us who have the tendency to love the world, the mundane things that comes to us as more enticing than the intangible virtues like charity, humility and honesty. This made me think that this world is like a furnace designed to purity our soul on our journey to the life beyond.
In the Parable of the Sower, the Bible tells of the seeds sown in different kinds of soil or grounds. Some fell on shallow ground and die soon. I want to go immediately to the seeds that grow but were being threatened by the weeds that choke them because this gives me the situation in real life with the lure of mundane things trying to choke us. Our struggle is, to paraphrase the Bible, not to love the world but live in it with the salt of life in our journey to life beyond.
I have just opened this blog today and that explains why I titled this "The Salt of Life." From hereon, I hope that anybody who comes across this blog will like this posting and try to revisit me from time to time. I will also appreciate greatly any comment to my postings.