Friendster

My post got a reaction from one of my daughter’s friend in the church. My daughter told me that her friend told her that she did not do anything. I was laughing because I never thought I would get a reaction, or maybe I am but definitely not from a child.

I was concerned about the friendsterbecause one of our church membernd decon had a harrowing experience with Friendster. His wife was shocked when she found out that his Friendster profile and picture album was filled with pornographic photos. Someone or something violated his Friendster. That’s what I am afraid of that’s why I posted a warning.

I was also just expressing my irritation. So, smile my dear child, its not you :-)

Clogged Nose

My wife and I went to Baguio for a post Christmas vacation. We stayed at my sister’s house in the seminary (PBTS). I was happy because I would be safe from the firecrackers’ smoke and the noise of the New Year’s revelers. The cool climate of Baguio (except in the town where the pollution is at par (or worse) with Metro Manila) did give me a temnporary relief from my allergies. Unfortunately, when I came back to Cainta, my allergies came back with a vengeance.


I really need a rest from my allergies! My Gulay, I would gladly give a million pesos for a week without any allergies.

Clean Jokes

(Its examination week so I'll be pretty busy making tests for my pupils. To keep my blog "alive" I will be posting a joke here and there...)

A visitor to a drought area was engaged in a conversation at the local store about the "no rain" situation.

Yout think the drought is bad here," the merchant observed," but down south of here aways, they haven't had any for so long that the Baptists are sprinkling, the Methodists are using a damp cloth, and the Presbyterians are issuing rain checks!"

Hmmmmm…OO nga ano?

What if aliens were proven to exist, what will happen to our faith?

We have been waiting for the return of Jesus for thousands of years, what if two thousand years from now people were still waiting for Jesus?

Sometimes I can’t stop thinking about these things.

Happy New Year!

My daughter's friendster

I am having a headache with my daughter's friendster. We cannot open it becuase the e-mail adress and the password was changed by someone or something. I told her if she shared her password with anyone else and she told me she gave it to her friends and now one of her friends changed the password and we cannot acess it.

This is a lesson that I hope my daughter learned. Whoever changed her frindster's password, I hope will restore it.

Christmas and New Year!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

My wife with the some of the youth that we are praying for.

Our church held the traditional "simbang gabi" or morning worship from Dec. 16-24. The service was attended mostly by the "new" youths (or the new beleivers group) in our church.

After the service I went to my early morning walks, and I found them there taking a walk with some of the "old believers."

Senti-mental

My friend asked me if he could borrow my photo albums because his brother is getting married in Australia. His brother needs some old photos of the gang. His brother will use it for a PowerPoint presentation which would be shown during the wedding reception. I gladly lent him my photo album. I also asked if he could scan the pictures because they are losing their colors.. It’s important that these pictures are preserved because these pictures documented our youth.

Whenever we have our barkada reunion, we always go back to our adventurous youth. I would bring out my photo album there would be laughter, sighs and misty eyes…

Every summer we would go to Tanay, Rizal for a three day camp. We did this every holy week. For three days we were in the mountain with no adult to watch over us; we loved the freedom. There was no electricity and the only sound we could was the call of the birds and the sound of the river. We scared each other with ghost stories until none of us could move or even open our eyes.

We didn’t even have a proper tent. All we had was a piece of canvas that we tied to a tree. We could only keep silent as we hear critters dragging empty sardine cans.They even dragged our pots and pans into the bushes.

There was a time when we brought a bottle of Chinese wine (sioktong) so that we could experience being drunk. Unfortunately, the sioktong was too weak for us, so all it did was to whet our appetite.

We cooked crabs, snails, and we ate papayas and bananas.

We shot birds. I could not remember ever me hitting anything at all! must be my eyes...he,he,he

There was a time when we did not know that there was a storm coming. We were sleeping when we heard the wind, thunder and lighting and the river getting angry. We were wet the whole night. When morning came, we were shocked to find that the river was raging and we cannot cross it. We had to climb the other side of the mountain so that we could go home. When we arrived home, I found my sister praying for our safety.

That was an unforgettable experience and it bonded our friendship.

We sang a lot.

(My daughter was laughing when he saw this picture of me.)

We did this for three years. Unfortunately we became adults and some of us got a job, some went to college; the camping stopped. Though we always tried to go camping again, work and study prevented it. Now, every time we have a reunion we always talk about going back to Tanay to visit our campsite, to relive our youth. But we never got around to doing it.

But someday we will go camping again...

Meekness is not weakness

Meekness does not necessarily mean weakness. There’s an interesting incident in the Bible about Jesus that is interesting because it’s interesting:

John 2:15 So he took some rope and made a whip. Then he chased everyone out of the temple, together with their sheep and cattle. He turned over the tables of the moneychangers and scattered their coins.

I was thinking how could a person who had all the fruit of the Holy Spirit could do such things; “Chased everyone out of the temple and whip their asses off…” I could never imagine a person who has love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control do such thing.

Maybe its because I am thinking that if a person possesses all the gifts of the spirit he/she will become a pokerfaced, cold as to be unhuman and more like a zombie, afraid of showing any emotions lest he showed immaturity. I was thinking, maybe a person who possessed all the gift of the Spirit is a wimp, afraid of not offending anybody; and a cartilage-less jelly fish, unable to decide and unwilling to take a risk.

It’s this picture that I usually visualized about a person who possessed all the gift of the spirit. Of course, Jesus was a meek person but he is also a strong person, and he could be tough (rough) when the need came. David Jeremiah has this to say about Jesus in the temple: “Jesus is the prime example of a meek person. Was Jesus weak? Well, go back and watch him as He cleans out the temple. With a whip made out of cords, he drove everyone out of the temple courtyard in extremely short order. No one struggled with him. No one challenged him. I find it hard to believe some wimp could have accomplished this. No one wanted to mess with the Man from Nazareth…

I was reading a commentary from Wesley (thanks to e-sword) and this is what he says.” Having made a scourge of rushes - (Which were strewed on the ground,) he drove all out of the temple, (that is, the court of it,) both the sheep and the oxen - Though it does not appear that he struck even them; and much less, any of the men. But a terror from God, it is evident, fell upon them.” Ha, ha, ha, I can only imagine the terror of the temple money changers and the peddlers experienced.

I believe this verse showed the very humanity of Jesus. It’s good because at least I know that he is completely human (as well as God) and it shows that he too experienced anger justified as it is, still the incident shows that Jesus was not a stoic. His explosion showed his strength and authority. Of course it wrong to make a rule out of what happened in the temple. (Whip people when you’re angry because Jesus had done it…no, that’s wrong.) I am just imagining how Jesus must have looked then. But still it’s comforting to know that our Lord not only felt and showed pain, love, hunger but he also showed anger, truly amazing.

Pacquiao

How many sermons were shortened because of last Sunday’s Pacquiao bout?

The last time Manny Paquiao defended his title, our preacher unashamedly admitted to the pulpit that he is going to make the sermon a little shorter because of Manny’s fight. I admit I was a little shocked at the thought of Pacquiao’s fight getting precedence over the service on the Lord’s Day. But I understand, or I don’t, or maybe I can’t.

I have nothing against our boxing champion. He acn beat the hell out of all the Mexican for all I care but there’s something surrealistic about the Filipino’s obsession with Manny. Maybe it’s because I am not a boxing guy. I believe the sport is the devil’s sport. (My father was an avid boxing fan and if he were alive today, I think my father would also shorten his sermon.) It’s gambling, violence, sex, and hedonism all rolled into one.

I think boxing is the remnant of the Roman gladiatorial fights. You have two warriors in the ring trying to smash each hurt each other, drawing blood and getting cheers for every punch landed and blood spilled. This sport brings out the animal instinct in us, especially for the men.

But to each his own…But I believe the Filipino youths deserve a better hero to look up to.

When Bad things happen to good people…

Are you capable of forgiving and loving God even when you have found out that He is not perfect, even when He has let you down and disappointed you by permitting bad luck and sickness and cruelty in His world, and permitting some of those things to happen to you? Can you learn to love him and forgive Him despite his limitations, as Job does, and as you once learned to forgive and love your parents event though they were not as wise, as strong, or as perfect as you needed them to be?

And if you can do these things, will you be able to recognize that the ability to forgive and the ability to love are the weapons God has given us to live fully, bravely, and meaningfully in this less-than perfect world?

This is the conclusion to Rabbi Harold S. Kushner’s best selling book “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”. I got my copy of his book from a used book shop. I picked it up because of the title and the writer. Though I didn’t know that Kushner is a famous rabbi, I was more interested to find out what a rabbi thinks about the problem of evil.

The book is a good read. It explored the problem of evil based on the rabbi’s experience of losing his son to progeria, or rapid aging. The book is mostly a confession, and according to the rabbi, it is not a theological book. The book was not written for scholars, in fact I believe it’s the most accessible and honest book that I have read about the problem of evil. But I was surprised to find out that a rabbi, of all the people, would deny the omnipotence and omniscience of God so that he could live with the knowledge that his God is a loving God that his God is not a cruel God!

He is right to say that we do not need to defend God. But he is wrong because I think what he meant, by reading the book, by not defending God is to betray God. Tsk,tsk,tsk this is what happens when one goes to the other side of the problem of evil. I can not find comfort that we are living in an imperfect world made and governed by an imperfect God! I would rather find comfort in the fact that we live in a fallen world made and governed by a perfect God.

How do we explain suffering then?

It’s just the way it is, it’s because of the fallen nature of man—we are imperfect beings living in an imperfect world! I would not dare go to explaining and giving analogies but that’s just the way things are and I do not have to defend God in the same way that I have to emasculate Him so that I could find comfort in the fact that God has nothing to do with sufferings. I am more than willing to accept that God caused our suffering and that God is cruel because we will miss the point of redemption and salvation if there’s no suffering.

Suffering is a human concept. It is only an organism that has a concept of a deeper meaning of pleasure, not just animal pleasure that can experience suffering. Animals cannot suffer. They can be tortured, they can experience pain but do they suffer the way humans do. Animals kill their children yet do they show grief? For the animals, suffering and joy are the same. They are part of their instinct.

My point is there’s something in us that make us suffer. Its not pain but its how we deal with pain that make us suffer. Without faith in an all powerful God, our suffering will be unbearable. Job has said it very well, “God may kill me, but still I will trust him and offer my defense.”

God is not asking us to defend Him, God is not asking to defend ourselves, God is not asking us to defend our faith in Him, and God is not asking us to do anything at all but to have faith in Him that He is in control.

Suffering is something we have to live and deal with. To explain suffering and to rationalize it is something we cannot do, it is best to admit our frailty, it is best to admit our helplessness when faced with suffering.

Of course the Rabbi is Jew hence he do not believe in The Messiah, but the suffering of Jesus on the cross, for us Christian, is a proof that God knew our suffering.

But there’s one thing I agree with in the book. It is the need to forgive God. In our sufferings we must have the heart to forgive God, not because he has sinned against us for that is not possible, but we have to forgive God because even if we understood Him and have faith in Him, our suffering caused us to unknowingly and sometimes knowingly build resentments against Him.

Yes, I agree with the Rabbi that we need to forgive God, too. Not because of what he had done or not what he had done but because we need to accept Him as He is-God.