Last Sunday, I went to the Church of the Holy Trinity to distribute flyers for the upcoming July 16 Christian Life Program or CLP, a starting point of joining Singles For Christ (SFC). After that I attended the last mass for that morning.
There is a particular phrase that struck me on that day’s gospel (Mark 5:38-43) and it was “Talitha, kum” an Aramaic phrase which means, Little girl, arise! That was the priest’s source of sermon and became the essence of the homily. The priest enumerated several things we normally lose. We lose faith, we lose hope, we lose trust, we lose our loyalty, and we lose God. Most of the times, we lose values when we encounter difficulties and adversities in our lives, when we live in turmoil, when we become lost sheep.
That whole day, I held on to that phrase. I kept on repeating those words in my mind so that I can reflect to it and how can I evaluate my life making it as the main thought. Surprisingly, I was able to remember those words until now. “Talitha” means little girl so I set aside my work first and looked for an Aramaic word for “brother”. I stumbled to the word “akhui”.
How many times we mislaid our faith? Hope during the dark times of our lives? Trust? Love for God? Many times right? It seems that we always feel abandoned and helpless when we are bombarded by trials and started telling to ourselves, “why does it always rain on me”? It’s not always that you acknowledge problems as God’s way to strengthen us. Most of the times, we always have this first thought that we misunderstood the purpose of every trial that we encounter. We just later on realize that maybe it’s given to us to teach us something that is lacking in our lives. It’s normal for us that when we have problems, we first tell complaints. We didn’t thought at first to call God for discernment and spiritual guidance. I was able to tell these things because I myself is also guilty with these.
Inspite of having these sort of doubts and questions, complaints and grumbles, faithless and hopeless moments, God never ceases to tell us, “Son, get up!” But I asked myself, do I always respond to God’s call to stand up again when problems made me down? My answer, NO… There are a lot of moments in my life that when bumped into difficulties, I complain. I can’t even comprehend the utmost purpose of the problem and even fail to understand it fully. I normally fail to stand up and recover immediately.
Sometimes, I tend to isolate myself from other people. I tend to reduce my time for service. I tend to neglect prayer time and reading the scriptures. The thought of isolating myself from other people is my way of giving myself ample space to internalize and be alone for quite some time. As I see, it’s my way of taking a rest from a long sturdy journey, journey for holiness with full of hindrances, failures, heartaches and pains. I don’t know if it’s the best way to reevaluate one’s self but that’s the only best way I used to do, until now. And I don’t know if its God’s destined or preferred way for me to get up and move along.
I do still struggle to grow spiritually. It’s been a couple of years when I have decided to pull myself out of the bad box of this world. It’s been a couple of years when I vowed to try my best to be always on the bright and right side of everything. It’s been a couple of years when I really started growing. It’s been a couple of years when I have decided to commit myself for God’s service. I guess what I have done is not yet enough because I do still see that there are still some things that are lacking in my life. And it’s been a couple of years that I am still trying to figure these things out one by one and understand each fully and wholeheartedly. To evaluate it, I really do changed a lot. But I know for myself that there are still a lot of things to be done.
Our lives here on earth is like what mountaineers do, striving to reach the top, with a lot of struggles and hindrances. We slide downward sometimes, move slowly, lag behind and even stumble really hard. Everybody is doing their best to reach the utmost summit. But the thing is, we still struggle to move upward, rather than thinking of quitting, going down and turning our backs, and that’s one of the most important things that God wants to tell us, learn to get up, then continue the journey for in every step you make, you will gain a lot of lessons. As the famous quotation goes, success is not measured on how many times you have achieved and earned, but how many times you tried to get up when you failed. If we want to be successful spiritually, then we must learn to how to get up after falling.
As for me, I do still need to widen my heart for God. Not just to let more of His blessings and goodness enter into it, but to have more room for God when trials come, to call for Him always and feel his guidance and encouragements every time I stumble and fall.
God bless everyone!
