God' timing

from foreverchurch.com

God's timing is not the same as ours. In Greek, it is called the Kairos time - the divind time wherein everything falls into place.


I often see man's common struggle is time. Some people think "There's not much time" do to anything or that "time is too slow" for anything to pass.


2 Peter 3:9 shows us how God's timing is different from us. There are moments when a loved one is too slow in  getting converted, or that the "one" you're praying for has not arrived yet - and you think you're been praying for it for far too long!


God's timing is there already. In Ecclesiastis and Isaiah, we see this well pointed out.


Everything has its perfect timing. God never delays (Habakkuk). Prayer for financial breakthrough is outdated already because God has already blessed us! Prayer for healing is just as outdated, because we have been healed two thousant years ago. Oftentimes, the only thing that "slows" things down is you.

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The curse of being good

 Recently, my dad and I had a simple conversation on FIBA and the Philippines’ lost chance of making it to the finals because of team Iran. “We didn’t win, Dad,” I muttered as he was saying the game was really good. “Yes, but at least we showed them we can. We almost made it.”

Almost.

I was astonished at how my dad accepted the defeat as if it was victory. He even continued by saying that we should take pride in being good at basketball despite our height deficiencies.  

A few months ago, the Azkals made a name by defeating the defending champion, Vietnam, in the Suzuki Cup. People got suddenly interested with the team. They made headlines everywhere – something only Pacquiao does regularly. But during the play against Indonesia, my heart burned as I saw the promising young team got defeated. People, though hurt, celebrated the Azkals’ defeat like it was all the team’s worth – making it to the semi-finals. I wallowed in dismay, honestly, because I saw the game and it was so heartbreaking. I was never really a football fan until a friend showed me how left out the Filipinos are in terms of the most popular sport in the universe.

The conversation with my dad brought me to remember the quote I often hear in the church. “The good is the worst enemy of the best.”

Onyok Velasco

People often get contented with being the second best, and as I have observed, the Filipinos are all too excited for it, like we know we are good, but always only second to something better. When Onyok Velasco lost the gold in the 1996 Olympics, we tried to contest we deserved the win, but we slowly sank in the reality that we can always be cheated at – after all, we’re just a third world country with a booming population of achievers who always almost make it.

Miriam misses the title

We have a long list of “Almost-but-not-quite’s.” We have Marian Quiambao, in a win I know she deserved so well. It was followed by Venus Raj, losing to the title of Ms Universe by a (couple of) notch. The list is endless (though I can't seem to find them all hehe). Our history has been bombarded with seconds that being first is too alien, too farfetched that upon achievement, we create demi-gods, a testament to our seemingly unbelief for our talents.

Venus Raj

I think one of the things we should get out of is our acceptance at being second. Second is never first. Never forget that. I was asked by my boss who the second best golf player in the world is. I said I didn’t know. I had no idea. He said, “Exactly.”

Filipinos are good. We deserve to be number one. This is not being arrogant, this is being truthful. Facts that we are second continue to plague our lives that I get tired of hearing it. The truth is that we are good - and I pray for the day that when asked again by my boss who the best person in the world is now, I can proudly say, a Filipino, “that’s why you hired me.” Then he can unabashedly say, “Exactly.”

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There's no other way

Yesterday, when my colleague experienced the re-baptism of the Holy Spirit during our praise and worship, I suddenly realized one thing – LIFE HAS NO OTHER WAY BUT GOD’S WAY.

I have seen cases like this: One gets “converted” then backslides for a reason or two, then after years of going nowhere and proving nothing to God, the path God has set for them is once again revisited.

This recalls to mind Jonah’s story (found in the Book of Jonah, of course) and how Jonah ran away from God’s assignment only to realize that he can never outrun God. The Book of Jonah reminds us that God is a big god, and His ways are beyond our ways, His thoughts higher than our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9) and we can never really do anything “of our own accord” to outlast Him. His patience is supreme, His righteousness abound, and His love for us really is beyond human measure.

I submit to His divine says, and for whatever reason God has last night for showing things we never expected - but hoping for anyway – makes me more in awe of His power and ways.

To God be the glory.

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Tech stuff have lessons too

WARNING: The entry below will be very hard to read.


This is a lesson on wants.

Last week, as Ii ws cleaningmy keyboard, an activity which for years I’ve evaded doing, I accidently pouredout alcohol on  some of the spaces. Th liquid slowly seeped ionto the keybvord skelton ttht  I didn’t know it was my keyboar’s last remaning moments. And because it’ th nnioversaryoff our church, I had to immediately turn on the laptop to edit ssome of th finl video aniomattions I was preparing for the service that afternoon.

When I turned on th laptop and klyed in th password, some of the letters were tripling up as I tryped them. It was excruciating as I  hd to guess a  couple of ties how many letters  got typed in and how many were tto bb erased.

I should have taken that a a signal of my impending pain.

Only aft getting inn did I rrealise I migthave poured out alcohol into the keyboard. I immediately turned the laptop off aand switched on the eelectrcif fan to dry the inside up.

Acording to legends and  personal experiences, when liquid enters your  hardware, just leave to try for a long period, probably for days, before yyou turn it on again, and it worked well for y ipod, which was included  in one off the laundry pins inside our washing machine and came out al suddy and sparkly clean. I lefit to itself for two months.

In my case with the laptopo, I was very patient nd turne it on after  30 minutes.

Annd whjen I used  my  keyboards, the formerly tripling letters were unresponsive nd I  had to resort to reminiscing to movce on. I  never imagined how hard life is without an “e” or a “y” and most especially,the  function of ENTER.

Andd for, one week has to pass by before I could get my hands on a porble  keyboard ttached to y laptopp’s usb port. This is typerwritten without much revisions to rmind myel that I havce been tking mykeyboar  for granted. I seem to have forgotten how essential kebords are. I havew ben prying for a replacement and for days, I told myelf that shoud the replacement arrive, I will finish on some articles I have working on etc. But ow tht it is here, I stared aat th monitor blnkly never r knowing which to dso first. This is insane.

Lesson: Never take anything for granted and never deire for something when you’;re still not readay for it. Cox when it comes and you’re not ready yet, it will all be a waste o time. Like this.

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Summer Rains and Vegetables

Summer Rain

It’s summer. That’s not news. It’s raining during summer. Now that’s news. I don’t know about you but choosing which of my long-sleeved turtlenecks to wear in May is kind of weird for me. And walking barefoot on flooded highways makes me cranky, especially if I could be swimming in a beach somewhere outside Manila.

Lately, it has been raining. It’s May, a summer month, and we just experienced our second typhoon. Second. It’s May. From January to May, two typhoons came already. And May hasn’t come to its mid-month yet.

Having been an environment junky, I’ve often formulated my own versions of the weather phenomena. I’ve always known myself to be science-leaning and thought that by reading some random articles online through what I deem to be reliable resources, I can go my way and formulate litanies. I’ve read in the US Environmental Protection Agency website that changes in “land surface can have important effects on climate.” Hmm. My link-y brain goes like “So the increased deforestation in our rural areas and their conversion to villages for the rich can be blamed for rains during summer?”

That’s it. Just to have something to rant about during one of my bored bouts of too much brain activity, I now come up with a stand on the conversion of agricultural lands to villages.

Forget the expensive houses. Forget security. Forget the urbanization of rural areas. I need heat when it’s supposed to be there. I need sunshine when it’s legal to demand one. Give the healthy soil to the vegetables. We have no right to live on it with our multi-million mansions.

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Welcome to my world (or wires and sound)

Wires that make me happy (colored after our church's motif)

I've always hated wires. The mere sight of wires, especially the uncoiled ones that look like my hair without mousse or oil, makes me uneasy.


So being the head of the technical team in our sattelite church breaks all my limitations as a person. My love-hate relationship with wires dates back to my college days when one of my roommates was our university's tech person. He would (yes, we were shamefully coed in our condo) create his works-of-art in a space in front of the airconditioner and solder wires and metals to death. We would choke in the process (we do not open our windows that much because we felt that the ac was made for functioning 24/7). After his midnight work, which was done not for a school project or org program, he would leave everything he used lying on the floor. His "workstation" will be littered with electrical tapes, small cut wires, long wires, plastics, soldering iron, and sometimes the remains of his creation if it survive his experiment.


And I, being the lone responsible person the house (hehe), would clean up after him. Anyone assigned to clean for that day would often leave the workstation alone, so I was the only one brave enough to wander in 
its territory.

My (Our) beloved mixer - I took this even before Ktn's photo ha

It wasn't trauma, it was a perverse past. The wires remind me of twenty minutes of hunchback-ing the floor with the small walis tambo we bought in Baclaran on the week we first moved in. Our walis was the miniature one used in cars, around 24 inches tall, so sweeping brought in terrors of backpain and discomfort.


God has ways of breaking our limitations. When called me to the tech ministry, I was not only challenged - all the sound spinning lessons I have in my head were done only in my head - but I was also humbled. When God said I can do it, I knew I could do it.


So I studied and re-studied a lot about the tech world. I subscribe to online newsletters, listen and watch audio-visual techniques until I can function well in the ministry and eventually teach other people to learn it as well.


I was empty, and God started to slowly fill me up with what He has in store for me.


I have not reached the highest excellence in the ministry He has entrusted me yet, but I must say, I've grown to appreciate how He guides me. He is a loving God. Glory to Him.

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Ruminations on Mood

From Brainless Tales

It shifts shape like soft clay and the moment you think it has taken its final form, you will find yourself losing its materiality again.

It has its own phases, pretty much like the moon, and it’s so hard to comprehend, like you are cursed to think and think about it. Mood is a tenacious term and ‘tis sad to think I belong to the gender that carries it randomly as the channels on your cable tv.

Someone told me as a girl, I am bound to reflect the age-long discrepancy between man and woman, and mood – mood swing – is the single most repulsive thing men don’t understand in us.

I guess it’s a fact, but I know it’s not a truth. I am not a moody person. I don’t let others suffer from my own suffering, experience hardship when I feel hardship, experience pain when I have pain. Though I would often be affected by, let’s say, profound things like a dead rat outside our house this morning, which was revolting yet the sadness of the reality that its life has ceased to exist subsisted in my daily memory.

The apostolic response requires people not to act according to one’s situation but according to God’s directives. We are not supposed to be swayed by circumstances, be depressed by problems or just be plainly affected by anything. Our response to things is the shaper of our environment, having been granted the power to do so. This entry is all about that. I don’t like to affect people negatively, but to impact lives in the right way.

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Go Faith

I can’t shut my head. For some strange reason, my head keeps on talking non-stop even at the last moments of my waking. Like it’s a 24/7 telecast of thoughts and quiet discussion between me and myself on things random and forced.

For the past few days, I’ve juggled myself between designing (those simple gradient thingies I am creating now are therapeutic) and writing (I maintain three live blogs and two dormant ones) and in-between all that, I am learning two languages (three if you add my daily conversation with Ktn and readings of another acquiantance’s blog) and photography (making, pretending to make and teaching to pretend to make photos).

These things keep me busy. But somehow, the enemy still sees a chance to subdue me for a moment. A simple color, thought, or music notes will eerily bring me back to something I know I have forgotten already.

The message in the Mentorship Night was clearly pointing to that: if, by any chance, you (and me) encounter a moment when the enemy seem to be winning, always remember that your faith and foundation should be made stronger. Increase your faith so you will also increase your faith in yourself and eventually become stronger than what the enemy is making you believe.

I know I have progressed a lot from last December - the lowest moment of my spiritual life - but the enemy knows as well that I progressed, I am also open to be subjected to more testing, which I am ready to face head on, especially now that I am reaching the 8th level in A.C.T.S.

Go faith.

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MRT Blues 2

In riding the MRT I choose to stand. Even in an empty coach, I would still choose my favorite spot – that corner nearest the last door from the driver in the women’s coach. There, I’m completely safe from being crushed to death every time MRT gets flooded by passengers. Standing there, I could read, look the salivating guys from the men’s coach, pretend I can’t move when being pushed over by space-hungry ladies who actually often forget they wear their companies on their ID laces or blouses. I will never forget an embarrassing situation when I almost kissed a woman in her mid thirties when the driver totally forgot he was driving a mass transpo and made an abrupt break to the end of a station. My face was already too close to the woman’s face in the first place because I could not find any more space to put my head in. Her face was the next possible option.

I never wanted to me an actual sample of Katy Perry (oh, Katy, what a shame you are to the Christian world) and like a possible kiss with a women I barely know. But that intimate moment made me think. If I were a terrorist… Never mind. Erase that.

The reasons I like that spot are simple.       

   

1.      Unobstructed view of the metro. Manila is beautiful city; with its sky always almost dim that you’d wonder if it’s always gonna rain. But it’s not the clouds that make it dark, as a city denizen, you should know by now that we are people of pollution and we simply cannot live without carbon emissions and smoke belching.

2.      I can go out the door anytime there need be and there are not much ladies to push. I just need to squeeze my fattening self to the side part and free myself from possible stampede.

3.      I can put my baunan bag at that-space-at-the-end-of-the-coach and actually act as if it contains explosive. I do this. I would put my bad there, text someone, look around, look at the bag, move away a little, and occasionally inspect it to add more suspicion. I particularly  like this when the men’s coach beside ours are the ones without the driver’s compartment, and the men – squeezed as they are leaving them no room to move their heads– have no choice but to see all my actions. One of these days, I may actually bring an extra bag and leave it there. For fun.

4.      I can read. Sitting down makes me look/notice at the crotch area of women at my book’s edge. Reading while standing in that corner makes me face the wall and have the world to myself again. Plus, I actually have an audience on the other side and I can act as an ambassador of reading to a typical MRT commuter.

5.      Sleep. I actually almost fell over the steel railing because of the lack of it.

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Childhood

Practically raised alone, I spent most of my life learning things. My idea of a typical school day would be being picked up by my mom’s students to hang out with her at the multi-level school just behind ours during lunch and go back for an afternoon of ballet and/or ethnic dances. My weekends would be spent in front of the TV, eating the mashed potato I learned to cook on my own, waiting for my parents to go home wondering whatever pasalubong they had for me. Sometimes, it’s singing the karaoke, while blocking out my old yayas from my parents’ room, aircon blasting and simply waiting for them to arrive. Sundays would be mall days.

My idea of sport: playing outside for any street game that will allow me to exercise my infantile muscles and have my legs wounded. My mom hated it so I would always wear jogging pants or pyjamas outside. Most of them became torn on the knee part. I became good at running. I never knew I developed it there. I would hang out with boys because I thought them to be mature. I never knew I got it there as well. We moved houses and I left my old playmates. I learned street volleyball in our new community, back when my eyes could still see the ball. I taught children dances, made dance numbers. Made it a career. I never learned how to ride a bike.

Then I spent less and less time outside and chess became a challenge when one day, the school had a tournament, and known to be kind of intelligent, I begged my father to teach me. I learned overnight having registered that afternoon and fought. I made it to the semis and got kicked out by the sister of my former crush. It was a feat, but I never fought again.

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Walking

I like walking. Apparently, a lot of people do as well. I recently discovered that my friend walks at our office street, a long way from his workplace, just because he likes walking.

And I completed Baguio on foot already.

Now, I want to take walking seriously. Really. Now. Really.

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