Lenten Season…

February 21st, 2010 The author

The last Wednesday marked the beginning of lent in the Church’s liturgical calender ; a season where we prepare our hearts and minds for the passion, death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior. Lent is typically marked by a season of penance, where recall our thoughts and minds of all the misdeeds we have done and we also prepare our hearts to celebrate God’s gift to us (his son and the Resurrection) by offering up sacrifices.

Sacrifices typically can come in all ways, mostly people opt to fast and abstain from meat or food. For me, what I’m doing for lent is quite simple ; I am going to plan to say the Rosary on my knees for the next 40 days.  This exercise will not only help build up my spiritual stamina, but it will also give me that much needed time of prayer. I am also planning to go for daily mass, at least once or twice a week.  This is actually the first time I am making a conscious effort to do something during lent. Usually, lent for me basically means more activity in Church - i.e Way of the Cross. 

So far it has been rewarding. The fact that I make it an effort to say the rosary on my knees helps me focus more on God, and less on earthly things. The pain I get from my legs help me in a small way offer up my sacrifice to Christ. Like I said, this is the first time I am perfoming any sort of mortification  (Don’t get hung up by  THAT word, even a simple fast or abstaining from sugar in your coffee is also considered mortification!) and it has been really good.

Anyway I just hope and pray I can continue this on until Easter

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How God changes the heart…

September 4th, 2009 The author

I know I was supposed to write about Love in my last entry, but I think I will shelf that for sometime, got other things to write about 

We just recently finished our annual Youth camp over the weekend and there was something that took me by surprise. You see, one of my colleagues had actually joined the camp, and I didn’t really know it. In fact I never did think that this colleague of mine, or any of my colleagues for that matter would be interested in God and spirituality

Afterall, these kinda things were usually meant for hopeless cases, those simple-minded peasants who didn’t know how to control their own destiny

Given, the nature of my company’s employees, I had never expected that she would actually be interested in such things. I guess in part it’s also due to previous experience where I once approached a colleague of mine who was attending RCIA whether he would be interested in joining our youth group and because the response was not so encouraging, I kinda deduced that most working people would not be interested.

Afterall, who in their right mind would blow off their Friday nights and weekends to attend church activities?

And so you could imagine the look in my face when I saw her.

What on….

“Hey Prash, so where do I park and register?” she quipped me

“Umm…what are you doing here?” I asked, with my low-tone voice

“Huh?”

“Yeah you can just park there and there!”  I rapidly replied as I quickly snapped out of my astonishment look and begin pointing around.

And so, as the camp progressed, I kept a close eye on her, and I could see that she was transformed by the end of the whole camp session. She even went up to give her testimony, sharing with the audiance on how this camp has being meaningful to her.

I just sat there and wondered how on earth a person like this, (she was my senior by the way), could be so engrossed and impacted by such a camp. I mean fine, maybe I thought it was just one of those ‘feeling high’ things ; you’re all pumped up to serve God and be as close to him and His people as possible.

5 days have already gone,  and I still get text messages from her saying how impactful the camp has been.  While I’m still trying to grapple with it, I think perhaps what I’m really experiecing is a real-live testimony that God can indeed change hearts.  Ever since attending the camp, it seems like my friend has obtained a new lease of life. It’s as though she can somehow ‘breath’ again ; it’s as though she has found new hope in the midst of this calamity world.

While she’s going through her own discovery, I guess I’m discovering mine, and the discovery is simply this - God can change people, and when he does, you’re never the same. Perhaps God is using my colleague as a real testimony that He can transcend beyond corporate walls and career-minded successful people. Of course I have read such stories of God doing so, but never had I come across something like this. Never had I seen a colleague, or for that matter any colleague be so impacted by God.

To me, this is just a testimony, to show and prove that God’s love can penetrate through hearts. It’s a testimony proving that ‘Our hearts will not rest till it rests in God” . It’s a testimony proving that “Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and all else will be added unto you”.

It may not have happened to me, but through my friend, God has worked another miracle in my life.

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you ; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” - Ezekil 36:26

“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, behold he is of a new creature; the old things have passed away and new things have come” - 2 Cor 5:17

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Who else do I have besides You?

August 2nd, 2009 The author

I have this persistant issue that has been bugging me for quite sometime now - it’s to do with people who live with their parents, specifcially my friends who live with their parents ; more specifically my working colleagues who live with their parents.  It’s not an issue of hatred, or anything like that ; on the contrary its more of a feeling of envy and to some degree, isolation. 

Yes I am envious of such people, envious of those who don’t have to spend a cut of their pay check on their car ; envious of those who practically get to live rent-free under their parents’ roof with the pretext that ’someday when I have saved enough money I will be my own home’.

I wish I too could sometimes live with my parents, well I guess I should say that in past-tense. Why? Cuz with mum no longer around, and my estranged relationship with my dad, it gets lonely. You sometimes forget what it is to have a home - home just becomes a distant memory. I know I might sound a little melancholic and emotional with my words, but seriously you try losing someone so dear in your life, someone you’ve known your entire life, and you try picking up the pieces and see if you can walk straight.

I am trying, and day after day I struggle. I guess this has what has given rise to my sensitivity of such people who I perceive as “having it all”. I am envious because I used to once a upon a time have all that, the love of a family, the protection of my mom to always advice me in any major decisions in my life.  Now, it seems I have lost it all and for the first time, I feel like an adult, I feel the weight of being responsible for my actions.  While I have great siblings, I still feel the isolation and the lonliness at times. And it’s not their fault, primarily sometimes it’s my own doing, my own yearing for my own kind of solitutde.

But at the brink of losing it all, that’s when I realize that there is hope. That’s when I start counting my blessings. That’s when I start realizing that even though I lost mum, I still haven’t lost Him. Yes My Big Daddy may not be able to come down and talk to me like a mortal soul, but He is still around and He talks… if I let him do so.

And I guess having Him around is one way of my walking through my life. He helps me work straight, though not all of the time and it’s not because He doesn’t want to help, it’s more of me wanting to stand of my two feet. I used to have this same mentality when mum was around. But like I how I used to find comfort in knowing mum would be there to suppport him, somehow I have learnt to find comfort in knowing that He too will support me. I just gotta have faith.  I don’t blame you if you don’t subscribe to this, heck at times I too find it hard to adhere to my own ‘preaching’ but sometimes its through, I mean who else do I have?

O LORD, you have searched me
       and you know me.

 ² You know when I sit and when I rise;
       you perceive my thoughts from afar.

 ³ You discern my going out and my lying down;
       you are familiar with all my ways.

 ⁴ Before a word is on my tongue
       you know it completely, O LORD.

 ⁵ You hem me in—behind and before;
       you have laid your hand upon me.

 ⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
       too lofty for me to attain.

 ⁷ Where can I go from your Spirit?
       Where can I flee from your presence?

 ⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
       if I make my bed in the depths, ^[a] you are there.

 ⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
       if I settle on the far side of the sea,

 ¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,
       your right hand will hold me fast.

 ¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
       and the light become night around me,”

 ¹² even the darkness will not be dark to you;
       the night will shine like the day,
       for darkness is as light to you.

 ¹³ For you created my inmost being;
       you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

 ¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
       your works are wonderful,
       I know that full well.

 ¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you
       when I was made in the secret place.
       When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,

 ¹⁶ your eyes saw my unformed body.
       All the days ordained for me
       were written in your book
       before one of them came to be.

 ¹⁷ How precious to ^[b] me are your thoughts, O God!
       How vast is the sum of them!

 ¹⁸ Were I to count them,
       they would outnumber the grains of sand.
       When I awake,
       I am still with you.

 ¹⁹ If only you would slay the wicked, O God!
       Away from me, you bloodthirsty men!

 ²⁰ They speak of you with evil intent;
       your adversaries misuse your name.

 ²¹ Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD,
       and abhor those who rise up against you?

 ²² I have nothing but hatred for them;
       I count them my enemies.

 ²³ Search me, O God, and know my heart;
       test me and know my anxious thoughts.

 ²⁴ See if there is any offensive way in me,
       and lead me in the way everlasting.

Thank you lord for being there for me even though I failed to see you  :)

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