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.