While many of my people are expected to understand and speak this second language, I must admit that there are times when I get stumped. Frustration can eat me up real quick as I mutter under my breath, What is that word I’m looking for? It’s funny how I sometimes joke around by using the fancier word “pulchritudinous” when I mean “beautiful” or say “altruistic” instead of “selfless,” yet there was this one time when I couldn’t, for the life of me, remember the term for that thing that keeps on spinning in electric fans. (In my desire to snuff out the dead air, I said the first word that came to mind when I was describing to somebody a cool—pun intended—electric fan without it. Propeller! I imagined myself in a game show and all I had for clues were the following: revolves, spins, attached to a mechanical device. Propeller?! Pathetic, I know. I blame it on today’s current events, what with the former FG embroiled in the helicopter controversy. Propellers are all over the place, you know.)

Most of the time, I just laugh at my blunders. Sure, some previous blunders proved to be costly and humiliating (I work in publishing, after all, and am responsible for many books that see print) but my default reaction is to avoid bludgeoning myself to death whenever evidence of my imperfections rears its ugly head. Among many, I am directionally challenged. I will go the opposite way twice, and sometimes even more, until my brain remembers which way to go. But there’s hope for me. A personal GPS device that people can wear on their necks is being mass-produced already in China. How did I know? I tested the prototype. I got lost on my way to our bathroom only once while wearing it.

Who among us, descendants of Adam of Eve, can claim to be perfect? Who among us, citizens of this rapidly changing world, can claim to know everything? Not me, definitely. But I do not consider myself hopeless either. For the only hopeless person is the one who carries a homemade sign that reads Dead End, which he stakes to the ground everywhere he goes. As for me, the directionally-challenged me, I know for a fact that no Dead End signs can stop me on my way to reach the end of rainbow. I am wearing my ruby slippers after all, from Dorothy who used the pair on her way to the Emerald City.

Am I ever worried about getting lost? Not really. To help me with my vocabulary, I’ve tucked under one arm the latest edition of Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. On the other, my personal GPS device from China plus some extra batteries.

No big deal, you might say. But then we know how the world is a harsher critic when a Christian is on stage. A photograph of two unmarried adults holding hands can send the same shockwaves as if it was a snapshot of them naked in bed.

Last I read, the man owes his publisher money for violating their morality agreement. (I do not plan on rambling why this couple shouldn’t have done what they did. They’ve received enough castigation already and I am not about to flog them forty more times.)

The first thing I remembered doing when I came across this article was to cringe. Oh no. Not another ammunition for the world to shoot us with. Many other stories came before his. The disgraced preacher who was apprehended while enjoying the services of a prostitute in a parked car. The country singer who left his wife and embraced the homosexual lifestyle. How many stories of famous Christians do we know whose catastrophic descent into shame made us blush?

I can breathe a sigh of relief. I am not a high-profile figure whose one wrong move can potentially land me on the front page of a newspaper. This writer is just an ordinary Christian who struggles to make it day after day to walk the straight and narrow way.

But sometimes while walking I feel like I’m on stilts on a cobblestone pathway. Life.gets.hard. There are days when I don’t clearly deserve a medal for being a good person. I procrastinate in answering another’s letter. I hold off facing a particular task I don’t feel ready doing. I get frustrated and simmer inside even if it doesn’t outwardly show. I ignore God deliberately when I feel He is being unfair. And pride. Should I really get started on pride? Just like Eustace Scrubb who had to endure the peeling of his dragon skin, bit by bit, by Aslan, I go through the same too. It hurts when God confronts me regarding my own pride. Ten times out of ten I have no excuse.

If I could only tack post-its wherever I look with the written words, “It’s all about Him,” I would. But I can’t. What I can do,instead, is to revel in the wonderful, beautiful truth that God still changes people inside out. That it’s not the end until we see the closing credits. That for every person we encounter who prompts us to mutter under our breath, “What an obnoxious human being!,” God looks at the same person and says, “If only you realize how much I love you.”

Everybody needs a reason to believe that having a bad day today does not disqualify them from having a good tomorrow. Every one will fail, one way or the other. Therefore, we all need to believe that something, no, Someone bigger than tiny us is under control. We can trust Him. Others call it exercising faith. For me, it’s like God offering to rid me of my stilts while He walks with me all the way through. I can take His hand.

“I was looking at you since we were waiting to board and I felt God told me to give this to you,” an old woman told me. She, a Filipina, a grandmother to two young children who she left in their seats in the Eva Air plane, probably mustered all the courage in her tiny frame to talk to me. “I don’t usually do this,” she said, “but I just had to talk to you.”

The next thing I knew, she handed me some sheets of paper, photocopied. I stole a quick glance at it, read several key words and Bible references, and volunteered the information,

“Oh, I’m also a Christian.”

This should save her the effort of trying to win me over to God’s side with her 3-point spiel on how people can get to heaven. Not that I would have minded but I thought it would be better to stop her that early from preaching to the choir.

We engaged in small talk and I told her about how I also help produce reading materials for people, I working for a Christian publishing company. She, on the other hand, spends most of her time looking after her grandkids while her daughter and son-in-law are away at work. Since she stays home for most of the time, she found a wonderful preoccupation: watching TV.

It is on TV that she stumbled upon the Family Radio ministry. She’d religiously (pun intended) watch their program, which ran 24/7, and attributed her growing knowledge of God to it. If I had a time machine then and could’ve fast-forwarded to at least seven weeks, I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear what she told me.

May 21, 2011. The world expires. Good-bye to life.

My first reaction was alarm. Oh no! She is misguided. Nobody knows when Jesus is coming again. He Himself said that only the Father knows.

Then it was my turn to speak. As lovingly as I could, I shared with her how no human being can speak so authoritatively about such things. Yes, I love God, I believe the Bible and I am sure that yes, this present world will end someday. And yes, there is heaven to look forward to. But there is absolutely nobody who can mark the end of the world in any calendar. Many have tried, but failed.

With a will firmly set as a flint, she did not buckle and insisted, gently though, that I read the photocopied material that explained why 2011 calendars should only have five months. I accepted it but not without doing my own pleading,

“I will pray for you. And if we reach May 22, would you please reconsider your beliefs?”

She paused for a moment and smiled. I smiled back and said thanks. With concern in my heart my eyes were fixed on her as she made her way back to her seat.

How interesting this up-in-the-air conversation had been.

I don’t have harsh words to say about her and other doomsayers. Many of them are sincere about what they believe in or else they wouldn’t risk being labeled as nuts as they boldly announce to whoever has ten seconds to spare what is going to happen to the world.

Are they brave? Or just foolish? Should I feel disdain towards them for propagating what they think is the truth or should I feel compassion instead and allow this feeling to spur me towards loving people no matter what their size, shape, color, or religious inclination?

It is easier to be smug, sit with the Pharisees and watch other people fall into their own destruction. Aside from doomsday preachers, I’m talking about people around us who are stubbornly heading towards the wrong road. Don’t we silently wish we’d have a taste of the delicious satisfaction of being able to say someday, “Hah, you deserved that, foolish you. I told you God will come and get you. See?! “ I might not have verbalized these words to anybody but I have recited these words, again and again, when my only audience is myself. Yet I want to purge these ugly words from my heart, the poison of condemnation from my lips. I may never be on their side in the case of circumventing the truth or their deliberately turning a blind eye to what God’s word says is right but it doesn’t mean I should stop loving them.

Oh, Lord, how hard!

I’m really hoping the world doesn’t end tomorrow. Because I need more than a day to change and strip out of this robe I am wearing, and love people—really love them—better.

“If given the chance, I’d sing to any audience, big or small, with ten people or ten thousand, because that’s what I think God made me do.”

“I can weave words the way a weaver works with threads. Every tapestry, every literary piece I fashion with my pen, I offer to God and hope that He is pleased.”

Yes, we’ve all been gifted differently. In heaven there are no cookie cutters. There is something that each of us can do, what we are good at. Some of us can shine in a classical concert, with our bow caressing the strings of the violin, while some of us can quietly work in the corner, unseen by many, carving pieces of art out of blocks of wood.

“This is my ministry,” one might say. But can ministry mean more than what we can do with our hands? Is doing ministry confined to what we can do two times a week, on Sundays when we have to go to church and on another day of the week when we do something in the name of Christian service?

For a long time I thought that my primary ministry was wrapped up in words. You know, write, edit, help aspiring writers or longtime authors. I love anything and everything related to words and to publication. I wouldn’t invest fifteen years of my life (and counting) reporting for duty if I felt otherwise.

But I might have been too myopic, too wrapped up in my own preconceived notions of my definition of ministry to actually see how big my ministry is. How it is something that I do not just do when I log in for work and something that I stop doing when I log out. Ministry can be done 24/7, wherever, to whomever.

How I wish I could claim ownership of these brilliant thoughts that came from a modern-day prophet who has walked this world and left in haste. He’s been gone for more than a decade now but his words are as potent today as he first uttered them many years ago. Award-winning musician and songwriter Rich Mullins, who took a vow of poverty, had this to say about ministry (Click here if you want to read his entire message):

Stop thinking of what you’re doing as ministry. Start realizing that your ministry is how much of a tip you leave when you eat in a restaurant; when you leave a hotel room whether you leave it all messed up or not; whether you flush your own toilet or not. Your ministry is the way that you love people. And you love people when you write something that is encouraging to them, something challenging – those kinds of things. You love people when you call your wife and say, “I’m going to be late for dinner,” instead of letting her burn the meal. You love people when maybe you cook a meal for your wife sometime, because you know she’s really tired. Loving people – being respectful toward them – is much more important than writing or doing music.

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard, there’s this Chinese guy that used to work at a deli, or at a little bakery shop, pastry shop, across the street from where Billy Sunday used to preach in Boston. And people by the thousands were going to hear Billy Sunday preach. Between services this little coffee shop would be jam-packed with people who had just been to church, and the people were so cruel to this kid. He was a college student, he was trying to get along. He didn’t speak really good English and people were very angry at him because of that. People didn’t leave good tips and people would leave chunks of trash on the floor after they’d eaten. He was so sickened by Christians and Christianity that when he went back to China and became Chairman Mao, he was determined to wipe the church out of China.

What I’m wondering is what would have happened if people who were going to church, people who were discussing sermons would have been generous to him, would have been kind to him, would have in their dealings with him reflected the love of Christ? Sometimes we think that our writing and our music are so important that we have the right to run over people. Just please remember that we don’t.
Remember what St. Francis said:

“Preach always. If necessary, use words.”

When Jesus came to Earth, He did not come with much fanfare. There were no fireworks. Sure, He dazzled the people when He raised the dead, or calmed the storm, or multiplied the loaves and fish. But underlying all these miracles is one thing: He loved people. And the people knew it. They felt it.

Don’t you ever wonder how come sinners still felt “at home” with Him, being the righteous man that He is? There must have been something in Him. Maybe it was the way He spoke to them. Or maybe the way He listened.

I will spend the rest of my life wondering what He did.

But for the meantime, all I want to do is to learn how to love Him and then learn how to love like Him. I still have a million miles to go. There are still dusty parts of my heart that need cleaning, broken parts of my character that need fixing. I feel more bad than good. And no, I am not just being humble. More like being honest, really.

But God is patient. While I am still breathing, it means that He hasn’t given up on me yet. I want to love like Him, and I am praying that He will show me how. And what a ministry that will be.

We could’ve experienced so much worse tragedy than having cuts, bruises, scrapes, and a temporary headache, and for the car, a seriously-dented side. A friend wished that I wasn’t traumatized from the incident. I can honestly say that I wasn’t. Instead, I walked away from it seriously thanking God in whose hands we are in. The angels assigned to us must have held on to the car real tight for it not to overturn or hit another car on the highway.

I made a joke about now being able to brag that I have seen an airbag from the inside (although it’s not something I would wish for any of my loved ones to experience). But actually, I am bragging about something else: The love of God. I can feel it all around me, embracing me, keeping me warm in this literally cold (at least, for me) land.

Ultimately, there really are no accidents. Everything that crosses our path—people, circumstances, even heartbreaks—have been placed there by God. And only time can tell for what reason. But I have come to the point in my life where almost nothing worries me anymore. No credit to me though. It’s all about God. The more I realize how great He is, the more I realize how miniscule I am. He can take me to wherever He wants me to be, and I can depend on Him being the same: sovereign, loving, powerful.

Hollywood may depict God as the Chairman of the Adjustment Bureau, impersonal and capricious but I, the child of God, the receiver of His endless and matchless grace, know better. He loves me with a crazy kind of love. And this reality is what has been keeping me sane.

PS: Also worth mentioning is how our driver, Daren, kept calm and did not lose his patience at all. Even with this wreck, which wasn’t his fault at all, I still think he is one great driver and can give the jeepney drivers in the Philippines a run for their money.

It comes as no surprise to me that he can plod through my close to three hundred posts, he being a voracious reader. He lives and breathes books—history, fiction, inspirational, biographies, among others. Impressive, really, when his profession is not in any way related to publishing. Kudos to his mother, Evelyn, a schoolteacher, whose influence on him sparked his love for the written word.

I can tell you how he reads while pedaling away at the O2 Fitness gym, or how he devoured Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere after discovering how this book helped shape Philippine history. Or how, when he finds an author he likes, would be a loyal reader and read the said author’s works in chronological order.

Oh, I could go on and tell you how big a bibliophile—literally and figuratively—he is. But maybe it’s best to stop right here. All I really want to say is thank you for reading my words, Daren Jones. Thank you for making me feel that what I have to say—whether here in this blog, or gmail chatbox, or yahoo inbox—is important.

Who would have thought that six years after this blog was born that I’d be saying thanks to some guy who is not really just some guy? Now I’m wondering what I will say another six years from now. But as I tell this some guy, I’m living life one day at a time. Who knows how God will surprise me? He, the Creator of the universe, the One who charts the courses of rivers and each of our lives, knows best.

And in the end, it’s all going to be about Him, whether it’s six years, six decades, or six generations later. Because of all the authors this blogger knows, she trusts and is blown away by the Author of her life the most.

—————

What defines us? Is it our past, our present, or our future? Should our failures and mistakes give anybody the right to brand our forehead with the word “LOSER”? Is there any valid reason out there for us to resign ourselves into living a life of hopelessness that will only end when we breathe our last?

Since last week, thanks to Yahoo, I have been mesmerized by the story of Ted Williams aka the Homeless man with the golden voice from Ohio. Although it was his voice that initially drew me to his story, it was his heart that kept me glued. Here’s transcript of the interview (well, part of it) he gave over the The Early Show aired at CBS last week:

God has been so good. It [2010] was the year I found God. So it wasn’t a wasted year. I had no idea that something like this will happen to me.

[On his 92-year-old mother he hasn't seen for 20 years] One of my biggest prayers is that she will live long enough for her to see me rebound. . . God kept her around and kept my pipes around to just maybe have one more shot to be able to say, “Mom, I did it.”

God is good and the only difference between now and when I had some sort of a heyday or successful life is now I’m more appreciative of life, I am not taking it for granted and I am thanking the Lord everyday. Even if this didn’t happen, when I was still on that road, I thanked Him and I had this hour with God. Sometimes I would make 25 dollars, sometimes I’d make 25 cents in an hour but at least I would talk to God.

What a story! I am far from being a homeless person loitering the streets, carrying a cardboard, advertising my voice and begging for loose change. But here’s the deal: I was once a beggar, not unlike Ted Williams.  Even if I had a roof over my head and food on my plate, I was as needy and as hopeless as the homeless person longing for a permanent place to stay. Once in my life I realized that no matter how many treasures I accumulate, how many awards I collect, unless something significant changes inside of me, I will always be  as poor as I came here on Earth. Naked I came from my mother’s womb, with nothing on my hands.

Before I’ve gotten completely way off track and too stubborn to admit that I—this wandering, hopeless and sinful soul—am lost, God found me.  You see, He’s in the Lost and Found business. Good thing He never gives up.  People might be stubborn but we are no match for His stubborn, stubborn love.

No, I am not a nomad whose tent is all tattered and torn from all the traveling in the scorching desert nor am I a migrant worker toiling in a foreign land. I am rooted in the soil where my ancestors walked—where the people I meet on the streets look just like me. I have no trouble understanding the words I hear whether they come from a businessman in a crisp suit or a bus conductor aboard the daredevil buses plying EDSA. The home I speak of, the home I long for, is not found in any map. But before I tell you where, let me first share why.

————

Have you ever committed a mistake of epic proportions that made you wish for an earthquake to split the ground in two so you can be swallowed whole?

Been there, wished that.

This happened to me just recently. I’ll leave out the details but suffice it to say that I had to send out a distress signal much like saying, “Houston, we have a problem.” Now if I had a choice, I would rather have chosen for my heart to be weighed down by ten tons of lead than by the accompanying emotions of remorse and grief post-catastrophe.

“This confirms you’re still human, Beng,” my boss said to comfort me. What she said was true but it still stung. It hurt to feel my fragile shell of imagined invincibility crack and break. After almost all the air got sucked out of my lungs in shock, I staggered through the rest of the afternoon. Every ounce of my energy was funneled into my efforts to stop myself from crying. I clocked out of work twenty minutes before time.

With no appetite, I skipped dinner. In bed, I tossed and turned. My thoughts, like a caged lion suddenly let loose in the jungle, refused to be tackled and pinned down.

And that was when I first started to think about home.

I might have been home then, that is, the place where I live, but no, I wasn’t really home yet. When pain and sadness overcome me, what has never failed to give me comfort is the hope and reality of heaven—my real home. This world is not it yet. Every person is born holding a blank ticket to somewhere. Thanks to the gift of free will, we have the rest of our lives to decide what kind of ticket we want it to be.

Going back to my longing for the home, there are days when I am consumed with awe, wonder and excitement. Aren’t you glad that someday our cheeks will not be streaked with tears anymore? Someday, we will say goodbye to the moon.

————

My heart is beating for home this Christmas. God has never felt more near. The Celebrant’s name says it all: Emmanuel—God with us. Retracing my steps, re-reading my words, something tells me that maybe we don’t need really need to cross to the afterlife to get to where we want to be. We can feel most accepted, loved, cherished, and forgiven while we are still on Earth.

Because Jesus walked on earth, home can be anywhere as long as He is in our hearts. And as I listen to Bing Crosby sing, “I’ll be home for Christmas,” I can smile and tell him, “I’m already there.”