The morning greeted me with the old paintbrush. Once again, Joey Velasco (whom I recently discovered died three or four weeks ago) touched the innermost sanctum of my thoughts with his gripping take on the prodigal son. Who would envision that the prodigal son could be an old man? Besides, the Father in the famous parable represented God, isn't it then possible to have an old man come back to his Father? After all his aimless wanderings in the world, and after tasting all the temporal things the world has to offer, he has decided to return to his Father even when he was at the sunset of his life. My eyes were further opened with the testimonies of two former inmates in New Bilibid prison (now active members of the church) who were given an nth chance, and was finally able to return home to their Father.
Afterwards, I was bombarded by the naked truth that though the ideal is to be responsible as a Christian, a lot of people fall short of doing so. A lot of people seem to try to take the fast and easy lane even if it takes them to bend a lot of rules. In the same manner, we should also be responsible Filipinos and not take the easy way out of the country just because the president did everything from increasing the prices of gas to combs. After all, we ourselves should take the lead in the country and not the president. We should live responsibly not just as Christians, but as Filipino Christians.
The bulk of the hustle and bustle came from the Deaf Ministry. Once more, I could only stand in awe at the Lord for blessing this struggling ministry to be accepted in the world. Not many Christian denominations are fully aware or fully up to the challenge of meeting the needs of the deaf, not to mention the disabled. Likewise, not many Seventh-Day Adventist Churches would be up to the big responsibility of answering the call to minister unto the deaf brethren, even though the Bible tells "Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth—to every nation,tribe, language and people." - Revelation 14:6
Yet the Deaf Ministry has developed once again as a caring group for people with hearing impaired.They have been constantly developing into an organized ministry, something that we, the hearing members could not even think of doing. New rules were set as we went along, at the same time, the ministry had a shot in leading the Youth Ministries program. It was a stand-out program with the whole congregation participating in the simple songs and lessons that we taught!
The culmination of the day was by far the best. Right now, my mind still could not rest. It has had its refill of information, emotion, and action. It's one thing to enjoy a Sabbath of service, but it is entirely another thing to strike up a balance between serving and being served.
Though the day had already expired, the mind seemed to be ready for input and that's just what I got. This was just one of the few moments I really appreciate with people in church. They'd be more than willing to listen to your burdens in all aspects of your life and at the same time offer you timely advise or offer you a listening ear. While those advises and topics that we have talked about simmer in my head, some of which could never be uttered out of the circle, one thought really stuck to my mind. While talking at Wendy's tonight, our pastor who was with us told us that as the youth of the church, we have to stand up and have a say in some of the matters regarding the directions of the church. It's the way we should be salts who would season the church with the way that it should go. How ironic that I was holding a bag of salt at that time.
I'm still holding it right now. It's true. We should be salts.
"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses itssaltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men." Matthew 5:13
Let us all continue in our respective ministries and keep all the corners of the church with fresh ideas to improve our spirituality.
when I first saw this blog post, I thought it is about the movie of the same title.... hehehe
ReplyDeletehahaha! I also thought so after writing the post. It wasn't intentional.
ReplyDelete