When the truth hits you, it hits you hard. I'm glad that for me, it has always been that way. I'm glad that whenever I realize something important, it doesn't just graze the surface of my mind but instead goes through it. I'm glad that whenever I have an epiphany of some sort, it doesn't leave a mark as small as a nine-inch nail rather it leaves an exit wound so big that it would be impossible to ignore.
Sadly, I learn some of life's most important lessons not through the experiences of others but by experiencing them firsthand. In order to learn important lessons, I somehow need to feel that freefalling sensation that jolts you to either sink or swim; either remain apathetic or do something about it.
I have experienced shedding tears for our country. I've actually felt what it was like to be desperate for a revival here in the Philippines. There was one time when I was in my room and I had just woken up. I began listening to a praise and worship song and suddenly I just broke down and cried because I realized how bad the situtation is in our country. It hit me and it hit me hard. The Philippines is slowly rotting away and giving itself to the corruption it had so openly renounced back in 1986.
The authorities who are supposed to be living examples of how to become Filipinos are the same people who are draining our motherland of Hope.
The middle-class people have given up on voicing out their opinions and more and more people are now just striving to get by instead thinking of building a future.
The masses have subscribed to the ideology that if a leader errs, he or she must step down or else be overthrown by a people power revolution. The Philippines has substituted a mild form of anarchy for democracy and the sad this is, we're not aware of it.
We are all Filipino citizens yet we can't seem to get along.
I couldn't help but anguish over the state that our country is in. You can almost predict what will happen if a politician screws up. To say that about the presidency is even an understatement. We all shout and scream at the people who we think are responsible yet we are deaf to our own conscience. We forget that when we point at others, three of our other fingers point back at us. It's frustrating because it's both all too simple and complicated for us Filipinos. I can't just say to people to start forgiving those who've wronged them because it is so unnatural. Yet forgiveness is one of the essential steps that what we need in order to turn this country around. I can't just come up to people and tell them to forget their pride because for some, pride is all what they think they have left. And for a few others, pride becomes more important than helping this country back on its feet.
I attended a prayer event last Saturday entitled D4G 11/11. D4G means "Desperate For God" and we committed ourselves to pray for the country every eleven 'o clock in the morning (or evening) for eleven straight days. I really didn't expect to give away any more tears but I did. I realized that as much as we would like think that we are good people, we really are not. I discovered that we have so much to be sorry for. We have so much strife and apathy in our land that when you realize it, the only thing you can say is, "No wonder this is happening to us today."
Pray for the country every eleven o' clock. Doesn't matter if it's morning or evening.
I agree with a certain Alexander Solzhenitsyn when he said that "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened." Russia back then experienced moral and social chaos during the Communist regime. He says:
Over half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened." Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened."
Deuteronomy 28:1 says, "If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations on earth." If you substitute the Philippines for the pronoun "you" in that verse, then God will "set the country high above all the nations on earth."
God is not a tyrant on a power trip. He is a loving Father who wants nothing else but the best for us. Some people will say that they'd rather have God Himself come down and just wave His hand and take out everything vile and unlawful in our country but the reality is, we're the only ones He is waiting for.
When a father asks his child not to touch a hot stove, He is saying that for his children's own good, not for his. However, if a child still decides to touch that hot stove, he will undoubtedly hurt himself. I believe that God will bless our nation if we turned from our wicked ways. But if we choose to ignore Him all the more, then we cannot expect ourselves not to get burned in the process.
When I picture the Philippines in this analogy, I cannot help but see a foolish child touching the hot stove again and again even when his hand is already covered in painful blisters. I wince as I continue to imagine the child's hand becoming more and more disfigured until it is beyond recognition. If that's what we Filipinos want, I'm sure as Heaven that's what we'll get.
