Beautiful in Flight

It was a very boring Sunday when I sank my head under my pillow, thinking deeply of things that could somehow lift my spirit up. I hate being bored because I used to be a very hyperactive kid. I flipped up some DVD's to search for some worthwhile movies but I ended up lying on the couch again. 

Then suddenly, my nephew, Jimmy,  asked me to take him out to the mall. "Sounds like fun", I thought to myself. 

We strolled around the mall the whole afternoon. Still bored, I thought of bringing the kid to the supermarket to buy something to eat. Jimmy suddenly pulled my jeans when we came across a pet shop. The kid obviously wanted to see some animals so I took him in.

Moments later, I found Jimmy looking intently at a beautiful and colorful bird. I asked him if he wants me to buy him the bird. But he said, "The birds here are all beautiful, but aren't they more beautiful if they are flying free in the sky?"

I always knew Jimmy to be a  jolly and playful kid but I never know he had such wisdom for a young boy. The kid didn't just save my money from being spent but he broke the cage of idleness that has been imprisoning me the whole day. 

"That's right kid", I replied. "The best thing you can give to a beautiful creature is freedom."

"And that freedom adds to its beauty", He added.

Sometimes, we want things for ourselves. We want them badly that we will do anything just to get it. But the more we want to get it, the more it loses its beauty.

It's no use forcing ourselves to endeavor things that find its happiness on other things. You can't appreciate the beauty of the thing you love if you place it behind bars. 


In the same way, you can't imprison someone in your heart when he or she finds happiness in someone else. Letting go may be hard but it's harder to force yourself in a preoccupied heart.

Love gives freedom. Be happy to give the one you love some freedom, freedom to be happy. 

Birds are more beautiful in flight.

Will You Ever Cease?

How long are you going to continue running away from the horrible past that you yourself had made? You said that you have changed for the better but you turned out to be worse than you are before. Look at the things you have made. Look at the lives you have destroyed. Aren't you happy enough to see people suffering because of your selfishness?


You want to get the things you truly desire but you want to show me that you are generous.Take off your mask! What's your true identity? Why should you disguise yourself just to please me? You please me just to hurt me in the end. You lift me up just to throw me down from the peak. How long will you keep beating me down?

How many lies have you thrown at me? You made me believe that you truly desire to make me happy. How many promises have you broken so far? You say things with your mouth and throw them away as if you have never uttered them. Your promises are useless. They are noise in my ear.



You thought you own everything? Do you think I couldn't live without you? Don't think that I am helpless because I don't need any of your help. It's not you that's holding my life. 


The easier you said that I'm the only one that you have desired, the easier you went to your lovers and do to them what you did to me. Where has your dignity gone? Do you even have that just once? 


Despite the things that you have done to me, I still want to take care of you. I don't want to see you hurt but I will punish you with all my might. I want you to return to me. I was there when you were down. I brought you up from shame. I clothed you when you were naked. 

Come back to me. Return to me and I will return to you. Say sorry and I will remember your faults no more. You have been unfaithful. But behold! I am faithful. 


Come back to me. I am waiting for you. 


I love you.

When Memories Fade to Nothing

I already have experienced mourning for someone who is still alive, still moving and still breathing...

Losing ones memories of what you used to be seems to be an epilogue of death. You forget your age, where you live,  the people you are close with and acquaintances, and basically all the past events that happened in your life. You are born right directly to your present age unaware that you already have spent some time alive, a "before-life".

It's a tough break and a very hard thing to accept. Watching someone you love who have lost his or her memories would really move you to be compassionate. It's also sad when he or she forgets that you used to know each other and were really close friends.You would miss the friend you used to know and who used to know you too. That friend may be present around you but you still would wish that he or she might get those memories back so that you can reconnect with each other once again. A part of you would think that your friend have died even when he or she is still alive. Your friend has died along with the memories.

What then can you do if the memories can never be brought back? Well, friendship can always be renewed. A real friend is someone who is willing to give up his life for his friend. Start all over again. 

Memories don't last forever. They fade and die. They are just a part of the mortal realm. There is no hope in memories for they are just temporary things.

There is one memory though that would never fade -- the very Word of God. It is eternal. There is hope in clinging to it. Even if the memories of the world go down to the depths of oblivion, the memory in God's mind would never cease to exist.

The Parable of the Heart

When I was in kindergarten, the illustration in our workbook for the word 'sin' is shown above. It was depicted then as a heart with a hole. It reminded me of a parable...and an actual one.

I have a friend (probably the first one to comment this blog entry) who once has a very disturbing disability. She has a hole in her heart. It gave her difficulty to cope up with the fast-paced life of the modern era.

When she's happy, she couldn't  laugh as hard as the others do. When she's sad, she could not cry hard enough because it could only worsen her state and could lead to heart-attack and eventually, death. She became a burden in her family and it greatly affected her self-esteem and could have lessened her feeling of importance.

While the kids of her age were playing vigorous kinds of games, she preferred to play on her own relaxed way because she might put her life in jeopardy. She became a voracious reader because of her inability. It seemed like reading became her breakfast and dinner. She reads most of the time--novels, storybooks, name it and she might have read it too.

She needed hope because of her weakness. And Hope she has found when she began reading the very words uttered from the mouth of the One who created her. Coming from a Christian family, she reads the Bible very often. When she was young, she mastered the book of Genesis because her father would read both she and her sisters some stories before they sleep. The Spiritual milk of Salvation went in her system and she fell in love with the Savior, Jesus Christ. 

Her journey to the Kingdom of God jump started when she accepted Christ as her personal Lord and Savior. With God's guidance, she encountered the idea of deliverance. Eventually, she was delivered from her disability. Without any medical operation, her heart was healed and the hole was no more.

Now, my friend can laugh as hard as she can. She can also cry her heart out to her Father in heaven. She now has a joy that is abundant, a smile that is real, laughter that is jolly and tears that are kept in the heart of the Lord.

The story of my friend is a parable portraying the whole church. As what my kindergarten book depicted sin, everyone of us has a hole on our hearts. We all have sinned against a Holy God and we are worthy of death.

Living in sin is like living the way my friend used to live when she still has the hole in her heart.  We cannot do glorious things that the Sinless One could do. We cannot have REAL joy and all we were chasing for were just elusive and are not eternal. If we become sad, we are endangering ourselves death because the Bible says that worldly sorrow brings death. We are basically DISABLED if we have sin in our lives.

God loves us so much that He gave His only Son to us. And not just that, He also took from us our sins, shame, guilt, and all our DISABILITY. All we have to do is to accept Him as our personal Lord and Savior, just as my friend did.

Lord Jesus Christ delivered us from our old selves in the cross. He renewed our  broken and 'holed' hearts. He filled us with His Holy Spirit just like the way he sealed the holes in our heart. Sin is no more and so as our disabilities.

Living in Christ is like living the way my friend is currently living. With Christ in our hearts, we can have real joy and real ABILITY through Christ who strengthens us.

And that's the parable of the heart.

A Sigh Worth Laughing At

It was a Monday when I decided not to enter my afternoon class for some reasons to go to the orphanage-shelter early. I haven't eaten since morning that day and my stomach was really complaining to me with violent grumbles. I arrived early at 2 pm in the afternoon, a time when most of the youth are still in school. 

Coincidentally, it was also the day when Hannah scheduled to bring two of the kids, Rose and Gang-gang, to Ayala. She arrived just minutes after. Ate Joie allowed her to bring the kids only if this boy, JR, would go with them. I thought handling the three kids alone would be tiring for her so I decided to come along with a helping hand.

And I thought it would be easy...

 The kids obviously haven't gone much to a mall such as Ayala. They were so full of energy, kids as they are. We brought them to Time Zone and they played their hearts out.  They just can't have enough that Gang-gang asked the terrified Hannah for more games (poor wallet). So to avoid further damage, we went to buy them some snacks at the Supermarket. 

It was really heart-pounding when two of the kids, Rose and JR stopped to watch Barney at the corner and Gang-gang strayed away by herself. I became nervous and the thought of losing one of them sent chills to my spine. I told Hannah to stay with the two while I go and look for the missing scapegoat. With God's help, with I big sigh, we went out the Supermarket complete without someone missing.

We ate the snacks we bought at the Terraces. I enjoyed the view as much as the kids do (including Hannah, as the "kids" haha). They were so rowdy and wild. They went on running around, sliding when they're not suppose to. I can't take the fun away from them. They're just kids after all.

We went to National Bookstore so Hannah could buy something for Christmas. I took the kids at the storybook department and they made me an automatic Bisaya translator for some of the books. Realizing that it's almost late, we decided to go back to the shelter in order to catch up with the bible study.

It was really a hilarious experience. God taught me a very...tiring lesson about being a parent. He also showed me how it was like to be a shepherd. The kids were sometimes (actually most of the time) hard-headed. They remind me of how I treat God most of the times being stubborn to His will. 

THEIR Family Day

It has been a long time since I came back to my old school in secondary level. The school was celebrating its annual family day. I had to attend wearing red since my brother is in his fourth year.

I was bewildered by the colors and was surprised by my empty feeling. There were so much suffocating memories around the place but my emotions were nostalgic. It was as if I have never been a student in the school. I remembered the places where I used to play and study but it feels like it wasn't I who was there. I remembered the teachers and the friends I used to know but it feels like as if it wasn't I that the knew all along. Everything seems to be old yet new.

I can't help but to ask myself is this is what the things are supposed to be. Days come and days go. Friends come and friends go. Nothing in this world lasts forever. Even memories I once considered precious became like worthless grains of sand in the hourglass of my mind. Time passes by and their value changes.

I can never change the past that I had. Regretting them just can't help. It can only worsen the emptiness of worldly emotions in my heart.

Curse of Injustice

How would it feel like to watch your son and your house burn in front of you? How would it feel like to watch a newborn baby die because of injustice?

I have seen so much injustice in the world. The rich get what they want. The poor are begging in the streets. The rich has the power to give bribes and heartaches to the poor.

Prejudice is the closest cousin of injustice. Most of the hospitals today are not allowing admissions for the poor. If they see that the patient won't be able to pay his fees, the hospital would just ignore him and set him aside. They prioritize the rich people knowing that they could add more to the digits in the hospital's account.

 It is really demoralizing to know that the human rights are being violated in a person's most desperate hours. Danger come along when we least expect it, so as poverty. If the two misfortunes come hand in hand, hope is gone for the person whose god's name is "money".

 Sometimes, it is really painful to watch your brethren writhing in pain because of injustice. I can see the causes of their misfortune as an eagle sees the world below. The land is cursed because of sin. It was all because of sin that the people are brought low. If they can only open their eyes to the truth, everything would turn out fine. 

I too am not spared from the curses. My family is struggling because of poverty. However, because I placed my faith in God alone, He has been always around when I needed help. I am more than blessed to know that my Lord God loves me as His own.

But how about the other people? Jesus Christ died for them too. They just don't know that grace has come upon them; mercy has been showered to their hearts and love has been sacrificed for their sake.

I've never been a humanitarian in my life. God filled my heart with His compassion.Since God's spirit is within me, I can almost feel the exact pain that the people He Himself loves. It was totally new to me. I cried when I heard the news about a fire in Manila where two have died.

It's amazing How God sets up everything for the ones He loves. His words reassure me that hope is found in Jesus Christ's name. Victory has been declared even before the war has ended.