in progress
Ever since Obama announced his support for gay marriages in the United States, there have been a lot of comments and posts from people who either support it or who are against it (but then again, this issue has been hot for a long time anyway). Prominent people who are vocally against it are soundly blasted by the gay community (and by people who care about them). I must admit both sides’ statements bother me, well, mainly because I’m a Christian and when I read Christians saying hurtful things online (or hear it live for that matter), it hurts because it’s not what Jesus is all about. While sometimes I do think the same things, I’m not inclined to say them because such thoughts require further inspection against God’s Word (and good old-fashioned discretion), and I can expect the resulting backlash. And, it incites so much hate and anger from the people at the receiving end of the hurtful comment (because what do we expect? It’s not like we can get away saying such things), and there’s already too much hate in this world.
It got me thinking– what’s my stand on the gay marriage issue? I choose not to have one. I think I’ll just stay here, right in the middle. I don’t really know where I should stand in this issue, what I do know is that I don’t want to be defined by what I’m against for, nor be known for judging people (who does?). Love requires me not to hurt other people, to know their stories first before I get to have a say in their situation (if I have to in the first place). Jesus approached people differently, He didn’t have the same approach for every person he encountered in His ministry. Come to think of it, he was rather tough on the church people in those days…
While I’m still trying to figure out this whole, “What does love require of me?” thing, I’m not going to encourage more anger and hate– especially online, where it’s just so easy to get people going with a single post. I’d rather encourage and give grace and healing, light and love where there is hurt and ignorance and hate. I can’t say that I’m wise/wiser or I’m better than everybody else. Gosh, I’ve made more than a lifetime’s worth of stupid statements and stupid mistakes. By myself, I’m no better than anybody in this world.
All I know is, if Jesus were here today, he’d be hanging out with those we Christians call the “lost” and the sinners. And he would love them, they would feel loved, even if they are so different from each other. They would feel Jesus’ acceptance even as He would show them the way, the truth and the life. Jesus would certainly not be hanging out with the likes of us church people (who would probably wondering, “If he’s the Son of God as he says he is, how come he missed out on the weekly fellowship?!”).
If I want to be where Jesus is, I should be right smack in the middle, where all the action is, being the embodiment of truth and love. I would want to be His disciple, learning, observing (most likely baffled by his closeness with people who don’t have anything in common with Him but accepts Him just the same) and trying to do things just like how He did them.
I’m sorry if I’m rambling, I’m still trying to figure things out (help me?).
My friends (and I do have a lot of gay and lesbian friends– one of my closest friends is gay), if you’ve ever been hurt by a Christian, or by any of our statements or rash judgements, I apologize for us. Most of us (all) are still trying to learn our way through Jesus’s command to love one another just as He loves us (John 13:34-35), and learning is kinda messy.
Someday, maybe, there will be a time for me to take a side on an issue, but I don’t think that this is the time. Not at the cost of misrepresenting Jesus Christ to people whom He loves as much as He loves me.
“I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The one who plants, the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. For we are God’s co-workers.” (1 Cor, 3:6-9 TNIV)
As the eldest sister in our family, I grew up with my parents leaving me in charge whenever they were away. I’ve gotten so
used to being officially bossy that I actually became really bossy and started telling, not just my siblings, but also my friends and people to behave, be good, do what is right, do what you’re told. I would take it personally whenever they would get in trouble after warning them about it. It became such a burden for me, that I would often cry to God, “Why won’t they listen to me?!”
Yep. That was me. I apologize for the me from ten years ago, and for whenever bossy me pops out.
These days God and I have been working on the living with the tension between truth and love, to embrace the messiness of lives that are still in progress. This world we live in is broken and messy and it is God’s job to transform lives and for growth, not ours. As His co-workers (naks! Isn’t that awesome?!), our jobs are to plant the seeds and create the right soil for growth.
Are we creating a good environment for people to grow closer to and stronger in the Lord? Growth, as you know, is a messy process, filled with joys, spills and scrapes, triumphs and mistakes. Outward appearances and actions often hide what is going on beneath a person’s defenses. Are we quick to judge, to point out others’ mistakes and slow to forgive and accept people as they come? Or are we creating a place of absolute safety for the people among us and for the ones who are seeking Jesus?
My prayer is that we continue to learn how to love, just as Jesus loved, with arms open wide for people who are the least like Him, the sinners– like you and me.
When You said, “Deny Yourself.”
I said, “I do that all the time.”
I do right, I eat right,
I try not to say the wrong things.
I make friends with all the right people.
I go out of my way to help people
(and try not to complain (much) when it’s too out of the way)
I give my change to the poor and 10 percent to church.
I try not to get upset when You don’t answer my prayers.
When You said, “Follow me.”
I thought You meant to just go where You might’ve gone.
I go to Bible studies, small groups, fellowships every week.
Sometimes I go to far places.
I go to church and pray and read the Bible
even if I don’t feel like it.
I didn’t really know what else to deny myself
Then You showed me when prayed,
“Not my will, but Your will be done.”
And when You told me that if I want to be Your disciple,
You said to take up my cross and follow You.
I didn’t really know what a cross was
until You brought it up Yourself on that hill.
(From Luke 9:23)
Thoughts from our church’s prayer meeting tonight, where Pastor Erick asked (as soon as I came in through the door), what is the cost of discipleship. And I replied, “Everything.” I didn’t know what I was talking about, and the question followed me all the way home.
Sometimes when I’m confronted by the cost of discipleship, I go for it– sometimes; sometimes I hesitantly walk away to “think about it,” and sometimes I try to haggle the price down.
Like what I’m learning from Andy Stanley’s current series at Northpoint Community Church, “Christian,” it’s easy to call myself a Christian because it can mean a lot of things, but do I dare be a disciple of Christ?
This is going to be an interesting season.
I’m at the Naia 2 Terminal as I write this. My flight is still five hours away. It’s a combination of being a little early for the appointed check-in time (three hours before the flight) and our flight being delayed for another two and a half hours. I have no idea why we have to be here three hours before departure– why can’t it be just an hour and half?! It’s not like our airport is that big anyway.
After a year and a half of international travel hiatus (wherein I became vegan, quit two jobs and changed career paths), I am back at the international terminal again by myself, waiting for a flight, watching people and killing time. I love it. Don’t pay any attention to my whining about delayed flights and ridiculously early check-in times. I love airports. Everybody’s in transition and it’s interesting to watch them try to keep themselves occupied until it’s time for them to go.
What am I going to do in five hours here in limbo? I could be doing a lot of other things (sleeping comes to mind) or maybe not doing other things (work), but I’m here, keeping my butt warm at the laptop station because at least the chairs here are padded, unlike the cold metal benches for the rest of the travelers who didn’t bring a laptop with them. I have no idea why they thought it was a fantastic idea to make the waiting areas as uncomfortable as possible. This airport is so cold. From its chilly air-conditioning, metal benches and tiled floors.
But I love it. Don’t pay any attention to my whining. It’s just something to do to while away the time.
Somehow I don’t mind waiting here because there I have a set destination in mind. The only thing that sucks are the delays. Kinda like life, except maybe we wait longer and we can go out and find better seats to sit on while we wait. Waiting is a lot worse for chance passengers though, you are never really sure if you made it to the flight until the last minute (this happened to me and my sister in Cebu… we waited for over 24 hours!).
Someone said that waiting is actually a courageous thing to do– I wonder if that applies for people who have no choice about it?
It’s a quiet work day today so I got a lot of thinking done (as usual), looking around finding God wherever I look. Unfortunately, most of my thoughts can’t be articulated (or make good reading for you). They’re what I call bubbles of emotions mixed with words and pictures that make a lot of sense in my head, but would make boring reading. In times like these I’m glad to be assured that when I bring an armload of these inarticulate thoughts to my God, they’re understood.
I’m not even sure if I understand them myself. But if anybody could sort through my mess, I know He could.
“I’ve heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return
Well, I don’t know if I believe that’s true
But I know I’m who I am today
Because I knew you…”
(“For Good” from the musical Wicked)
My church’s Single Adults Ministry has a series of special First Friday Fellowships called “Real Life Conversations” where we ask three people at a time to share their on-going life stories. Since we’re not exactly at the end of our lives just yet, but have gone far enough for a good sense of hindsight, Real Life Conversations are basically about works-in-progress. Each story shared is different, but what is noticeable is that they didn’t go through life alone. There were people– some helpful and some, at that time, didn’t seem to be helpful– who played big roles in each story’s progress.
In our lives, a lot of people have helped to shape and guide us into who we are today. Some of them are still here and some have moved on. It may feel lonely sometimes because people flow in and out of our lives, just as we move in and out of theirs.
In the past six months, I have moved out of two jobs and two offices. The first one was from Metro Society at ABS CBN where I had been managing editor for three years. It wasn’t an easy move to Summit, where I eventually resigned and moved to another job a few months later. And now I’m with Stratworks (the office is just a few blocks away from my apartment). It’s hard being a new girl, and sometimes it’s just weird to realize that your old work places have moved on in your absence. Work– much like life– moves on, and while we do miss each other, I haven’t seen most of my office mates since I left my old offices.
But it’s funny. No matter where I go, new things and experiences call to mind lessons learned from the old jobs. I’ve been a freelancer for a several years too. I remember my old bosses, editors, and fellow staff members fondly because I have learned a lot from them. Some of them I still work with in occasional projects. Some I only see on Facebook now. But either way, I don’t think I can thank them enough for the time I had working with them.
Of course, there are more people who have made their mark in my life. But that’s for another post.
For now, here’s to colleagues who have come, stayed, and moved on.
Thank you. I thank God for you.
I first started blogging in 2003, mainly so I could get used to writing for an audience.
I’ve been keeping a journal since sixth grade, so writing about myself and my thoughts have never been an issue. Writing for myself was easy. I didn’t have to make an effort to be understood, or to be grammatically correct. In the privacy of my journal, I wrote down my observations and opinions of other people without any fear of hurting their feelings or being wrong. But blogging… I didn’t know who was reading. It scared me a little, yet I wanted to be read. It thrilled me whenever people would comment on my blog (this was before twitter and facebook, mind you, and I don’t think you could plug your blog in Friendster), but word got around and soon I had a community of readers whose blogs I read too.
(I even sort of met my 2nd boyfriend through my blog—he commented on nearly every post, even if I hadn’t met him yet. When we met, it was like we had known each other for a long time already because of our blogs.)
Blogging changed the way I wrote—especially now. It streamlined my thoughts and the topics I wrote about. While I am far from pandering to my audiences (I never knew exactly what they wanted me to write about anyway), I sometimes write about things that they expected, what they said they liked reading. I stopped mentioning real names, unless with permission, and in a way, have taken a blogging persona that, while is not too far from the everyday me, is someone who is much more glib, wiser (I do try), more interesting, and godlier (because it is called Godspotted, after all). I don’t know if this how it should be, but it’s becoming this way.
And don’t get me started on Twitter and Facebook.
As Christians, whether we mean to or not, correct me if I’m wrong here, we do play to an audience too, right? Or even if we don’t, we are very conscious of the people who know that we are Christians, and in a way, this makes us be better people than we would have been. We dress more modestly, we don’t say bad words (unless by accident), we don’t drink (or drink too much), and we try to be nicer than most people.
In Hebrews 12:1 it says, “We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses…” And we are. People are watching. Most of the time, people only care when we screw up. But much like Jeremy Lin, Tim Tebow (look him up, he’s a Christian football player), and Manny Pacquiao (who had just recently announced that he’s been born-again), we bear the name of Christ into a world that holds us under a higher standard just because we say we are Christians. They might not subscribe to what Jesus is all about, but they do measure us up against his teachings, and have some sort of investment in us when we succeed or fail at it.
Weird huh?
We certainly know we are Christians. And we know—much more of what goes on behind the scenes than the rest of the world does—how much we struggle, fail and screw up in being one. Hence, we are a lot harder on ourselves sometimes.
Being a Christian is a tricky balance that we need to pull off every day. We are encouraged at church to live for the Audience of One, but we certainly shouldn’t ignore the “multitude of witnesses” that surrounds us wherever we go. How then, can we sanely go about it?
Jesus, with his beatitudes (All of Matthew 5-7), has outlined for us how to be his followers in this world. It’s hard, and sometimes it’s like it’s against commonsense, but Jesus says that we are wise if we do what he says.
In his letter to Titus, Paul said that the same saving grace that was given to us also enables us to do obey God and do what is right (Titus 2:11-12). Every principle that we need to navigate through this world is found in the Bible. We are equipped to live a life that is both pleasing to God and man.
Of course, this doesn’t make it any easier. Jesus never said that it would be. But He also said that He has overcome the world, and He is with us, until the end of the age.
Hebrews 12: 1 continues, “…let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”
So let’s keep on blogging, working, running, walking, and living!
Loving God:
This is different from believing in God. Of course, one must believe that God exists before he has a relationship with Him, but there’s the difference. One can believe that there is a God, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that he loves God. Loving God means that for him, God is someone who is so personal and close enough to love. Loving God means that he believes the best of Him, no matter what the circumstances may initially lead one to think. Loving God means that he is in constant pursuit of Him to know Him more. He trusts God to know what’s best and obeys Him even when he doesn’t understand. He honors God in his dealings and relationships.
I don’t know if that made any sense. It all sounded better in that imaginary conversation with that imaginary friend who may or may not like me in my head.
This leads me to my own reflection on my own relationship with my God– the God who I know loves me despite–or maybe because– of who I am. I don’t understand this love, and sometimes I don’t trust it enough to catch me when He tells me to jump. But there are times when I let myself bask in it and rest in its security. If I were to define my relationship with God, my first label would be “it’s complicated” because if anybody would ask me about it, I wouldn’t know where to begin. But I think for Him it’s simple enough: I’m His child, He knows everything there is to know about me and then some, and He has made up His mind to love me, no matter what I do. Of course, that does’t necessarily mean that everything I do pleases Him, I’m sure they don’t. I think I even sadden Him whenever I sin on purpose. And while this knowledge sometimes doesn’t keep me from sinning (to my chagrin, especially now that I’ve actually admitted and written it down), this makes me realize just how close and personal God can really get.
I know that I am talking about the all-powerful God who still gets His way and does things His way, whose plans are never thwarted. He is that big and powerful to be everything that He really is– up close and in a Creator of the Universe kind of way.
This love humbles too, because it puts me in my place.
Right now, He is my God-who-is-with-me-in-limbo.
“how are you feeling now?” my friend asked me online just a few minutes ago. I guess she was referring to my day yesterday wherein I wasn’t really feeling all that great, and after a couple of years of not having depression, it was strange seeing it rearing its sad face peeking through my metaphorical window, asking if it’s ok to come in. No, it wasn’t ok to come in, and the whole day was like a roller coaster wrestling match (sorry for mixing my metaphors) with self-pity as I just kept on praying and pleading for more of the grace that I already know was enough and that was already given to me.
“My grace is enough,” He assures me time and time again. Even if I didn’t open my Bible, I know where it is, where to find it. I always went back to it. And throughout the day the grace that is always enough covered my big and small mistakes, carried my unwilling ass from one task to another. Raised my spirits when I just couldn’t even lift the corners of my mouth for a smile.
Things are changing again. And while I used to boast that I thrive on change, the in-between time is sometimes so uncomfortable.
I’m at a crossroads again. Weird, wasn’t I just here a few months ago? Did I miss a turn somewhere? But lead on Lord.
Mondays child is fair of face,
Tuesdays child is full of grace,
Wednesdays child is full of woe,
Thursdays child has far to go,
Fridays child is loving and giving,
Saturdays child works hard for his living,
And the child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.
(Monday’s Child, traditional)
Children of the 80s, remember that Mighty Kid Christmas commercial where the kid in the car gave his shoes to the street kid? The memory still makes me teary-eyed because it was a rather selfless act in a holiday where sometimes it’s about receiving presents. And he was a really cute chubby kid so happy with his shoes until he saw someone who needed them more.
Anyway, my friend is organizing a gift campaign to give shoes to the children in poor communities. all you have to do is pick a kid (or more) by tagging or leaving a comment under his/her pictures. and you can receive his/her shoe outline via email. buy her/him a pair of shoes. I can organize a one-time drop-off at my friend’s if ever you guys want to join. 
I participated last year and it was nice to go shoe shopping for children who I know don’t get new shoes all that often.
so, game? It’ll certainly make their Christmas.
To see the Facebook album click here.
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