CHANGE

There is another beautiful message in the gospel today. In my fifties by now, many things have changed in my life. Since from my child in Mapang, Rizal ZN, to our transfer to Sibutad ZN, to high school and college, working in the bank, moving around the world and becoming a missionary, so many many things have changed. Changes that brought positivity and great joy in my life. But there were changes also that brought pain, death in the family, hardships in studies, rejections, broken relationships, difficulties in the mission, harassments and many forms of pains and hostilities that almost brought downfall in my life. But all the same, whether negative or positive, we have to welcome changes. You see in the gospel today, people were very much admiring of the temple in Jerusalem- the altar decorated with precious gem, very expensive stones. The beautiful temple was adored by people and it became the centre of worship. But so many are just admiring of the beauty of the material concrete temple, the building itself. Jesus made it clear to them that time will come when the temple will fall and not even one single stone will remain. It happened! People could not believe that a strong, mighty and beautiful temple will fall. Since then, things have changed a lot. But it could also mean other temples, our tempe of pride and hypocrisy, temple of greed and selfishness, temple of arrogance, of domination or temple of wealth, honour and fame. We build so many temples in our lives, thinking that we would be secured. But sometimes, our man made temples are actually the cause of our downfall. We become confused. In fact, I had this recent experience, as I wrote in the last weeks, I felt I was walking in a thin line. I prayed and prayed yet, I was dominated by my emotion. Emotion could be tricky at times. That is not what Jesus wants. Jesus is asking me to endure. I guess, the real key to avoid breaking of our personal temple is ENDURANCE. Shy away our human perception of temples, but allow the Lord to work wonders. Truly, God calls me in that way, stability and balance, to be faithful to Him in spite of the many hardships in life, that He is always present, and that He will bring CHANGE in my life too. With these positive virtues, we offer to God our fallen temples, and we start rebuilding ourselves again and again. It is beautiful to imagine, the Lord is there, working within us, rebuilding our being, our inner temple, stone by stone, again and again, day after day. As I am going through the same, I realised that indeed, my life story is sacred, because I rise and stand again, rebuild myself with the hands of the Lord.