Channels of His Love

I cannot contain Thee!
But My child...you were never meant to.

We are all channels of His love and blessings - a thunderstorm of blessings He means not for us to receive as rains from the Heavens and dam up for ourselves. He desires us to be open conduits of His grace, that it may freely flow and water those who most need it. To keep to ourselves that which is meant to be shared with others; to think only of self and believe only in our own discretion as to what to do with these gifts - this is a dangerous damming up of the grace that should never be withheld. But to open up ourselves as channels, to release the floodwaters and let them pour forth, is to do what He made us for, that He may be glorified through us, and that we may be glorified in Him as He allows us to participate in His great plan for mankind. And as He continues to pour forth and use us as His channels, so too does our capacity to receive Him grow, together with the awareness that this is exactly what we were meant to do.

"Without God, we cannot. Without us, God will not." - Saint Augustine

The Bread You Do Not Use

“ The bread which you do not use is the bread of the hungry; the garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of him who is naked; the shoes that you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is barefoot; the money that you keep locked away is the money of the poor; the acts of charity that you do not perform are so many injustices that you commit.” - Saint Basil the Great

Terminal Wait

On Saturday night, we went to see The Terminal. Without giving anything away, although it should be pretty obvious by now from the movie trailers, it’s about a man who is forced by circumstances to wait in the limbo of an international airport terminal. For nine months. Vince says it’s based on a true-to-life-story and that there is an actual stateless man living indefinitely in Terminal 1 of Charles de Gaulle – what a nightmare!

Anyway. The Terminal one of those weepy feel-good films that you forget about after a few hours, except that my sister said something that gave me pause (she has that uncanny knack): “The best part of it is that it’s about waiting.”

Waiting? Wait a minute, that’s the worst part of it – the nightmarish part,in fact! But yes, what else is there to do in an airport terminal but wait? Sleep, shop, read, people-watch…all while waiting. Many of us are all-too familiar with the experience of waiting for what seems like days to take a flight or to go through immigration, but this guy in the movie (and apparently in real life) doesn’t know when his flight takes off or the gates open.

Which is much like our experience of waiting indefinitely for things we hope to be or to have in this life. We’re not sure if we actually will be or will have these things, and yet we hope (especially when there’s not much we actually “do” about making the hope happen)…and wait. And wait and wait and wait, until we impatiently realize that whatever it is we’re waiting for might never actually come to pass…and then despair sets in.

Not so in this film. The most beautiful part about it is that it’s about finding contentment in the waiting. It seemed like all others were impatient for Viktor Navorski, for him to do something that would hasten his fondest’s desire yet ultimately cause him ruin, but our hero trusted in proper timing. He was waiting for something – in general, that freedom to escape from limbo – and yet, he found contentment in his waiting, busying himself with all the other things he was made for and meant to do: building character, building skills, building relationships. All of which, turned out, to be essential when that moment he was waiting for finally arrived. Actually – without giving anything away – when the moments, plural, he was waiting for each finally arrived. :-)

We’ve all heard about waiting on God and His perfect timing, but actually practicing “the wait” can sometimes get a little frustrating. If you haven’t seen the film yet (or if you intend to see it again), keep in mind contentedness in waiting, and the beautiful rewards of “active patience” – if I may call it that. God bless us all, as we put Him first above all else, and actively wait. :-)

“Put your trust in Yahweh and do right, make your home in the land and live secure.
Make Yahweh your joy and he will give you your heart’s desires.
Commit your destiny to Yahweh, be confident in him, and he will act, making your uprightness clear as daylight, and the justice of your cause as the noon.” (Psalm 37:3-6)

“Glory be to him whose power working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine; glory be to him from generation to generation in the Church and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20-21)

Blessings...Foiled Again!

I’ve been happily busy the last few weeks with all sorts of physically taxing (but spiritually rewarding) “Martha” activities, with relatively fewer “Mary” moments in comparison, so on Saturday night I talked to God about our day off. I had planned to attend the second session of the Feast with the He Cares family and several HC teens, and then afterwards just veg out with the Lord (which usually entails marathon naps - in between conversations with Him and meditative reading – or should I say conversations and meditative reading in between marathon naps, hehe). Instead, my well-laid out plans were shot as my veg-out afternoon was spent entertaining Kuya Joe Dean, the other volunteers, and 17 noisy teenagers (plus one out-of-place little monkey that answers to the name Ime) at our house from late lunch (the KFC we’d gone to for our post-Feast feast was booked for a birthday and jampacked, so we decided on an impromptu picnic in my Mom’s garden) to merienda to dinner. Apparently God didn’t mind not having my undivided attention that day. Anyway, as Sis Imee would say...”happiness!”

In the wee hours of Monday, I planned my day once again. Monday is my personal veg-out-while-working-at-home day, by accident of color coding, and I was looking forward to waking up late and staying in pajamas until I had to get ready for the 7:30 p.m. CLP. But, as usual, God had different plans. At 10 a.m., as I was en route to He Cares to drop off Mia’s baon for Montalban (after which I was supposed to meet my Dad to do the groceries), Mia called and asked me to put aside my plans for the day because they needed another car to accommodate all the volunteers visiting the site. Fortunately, my Dad didn’t mind the change of plans, and I was effectively “kidnapped,” pambahay and all, away to Montalban. We managed to evade the MMDA (what a miracle), even though we traveled back to QC later that afternoon during the traffic ban. ..and even if we’d been flagged down, we had a legitimate excuse: two doctors in the car on call, and one relocated Montalban resident we needed to “relocate” back to a QC hospital because of his gangreous foot. God’s plans, indeed – at least I managed to make it to the CLP without having to show up in all my dirty, sweaty, stinky pambahay glory. Tired, kidnapped, with plans frustrated yet again, but nevertheless still happy!

In the early hours of Tuesday, right before going to bed, I put my foot down…because later that day I actually had a schedule I fully intended to follow. Try to finish articles and revisions in the morning, attempt to join the Chinatown shoot at lunch, meet for a TV pilot in the p.m. But blessings (as opposed to curses)…foiled again! A certain little girl from He Cares was going to the dentist to get her teeth pulled that morning, but she refused to go without Ate Honey (who, strangely enough, is terrified of the dentist herself). I’ve done a lot of client “hand-holding” in the exercise of my profession, but never of the pre-dental appointment kind! Afterwards, two Kuyas were heading off to Divisoria to purchase supplies for the livelihood projects, so I jumped at the chance to join them while at the same time hoping that I could still hook up with the Chinatown tour…only to find out that God so very considerately postponed the Binondo “food safari” I’d have hated to miss! My schedule was therefore freed up to navigate the streets of Divi with the hopelessly clueless Kuya Mike and Kuya Vince (apparently Divisoria is still very much Ate’s territory, except if you happen to be Kuya Joe Dean or Kuya Oman!). Of course, my 4 p.m. production meet was compromised by the rains and the failure to locate certain materials, but my producer so very nicely allowed me to miss the meeting, and I was later to find out that it would have been a waste for me to go anyway, as no creative details were discussed! God really knows what He’s doing when He “ruins” our plans for the day and reschedules everything according to what He wants us to do! :-) Praise Him, always!

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts
and your ways are not my ways,
declares Yahweh.
For the heavens are as high above earth
as my ways are above your ways,
my thoughts above your thoughts.” (Is. 55:8-9)