I am currently reading the book “Faith Works” by Jim Wallis. In one part of the book he quoted the letter of the Trappist monk Thomas Merton to a young peace activist named Jim Forest in 1966. The message of the letter spoke to me, and I am sure it will speak to many of those who are also working for social change among our evangelical protestant brethren.

Dear Jim,

Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.

You are fed up with words, and I don’t blame you. I am nauseated by them sometimes. I am also, to tell the truth, nauseated by ideals and with causes. This sounds like heresy, but I think you will understand what I mean. It is easy to get engrossed with ideas and slogans and myths that in the end one is left holding the bag, empty, with no trace of meaning left in it. And then the temptation is to yell louder than ever in order to make the meaning be there again by magic. Going through this kind of reaction helps you to guard against this. Your system is complaining of too much verbalizing, and it is right.

The big results are not in your hands or mine, but they suddenly happen, and we can share in them; but there is no point in building our lives on this personal satisfaction, which may be denied us and which after all is not that important.

The next step in the process is for you to see that your own thinking about what you are doing is crucially important. You are probably striving to build yourself an identity in your work, out of your work and your witness. You are using it, so to speak, to protect yourself against nothingness, annihilation. That is not the right use of your work. All the good that you will do will come not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God’s love. Think of this more, and gradually you will be free from the need to prove yourself, and you can be more open to the power that will work through you without your knowing it.

The great thing after all is to live, not to pour out your life in the service of a myth: and we turn the best things into myths. If you can get free from the domination of causes and just serve Christ’s truth, you will be able to do more and will be less crushed by the inevitable disappointments. Because I see nothing whatever in sight but much disappointments, frustration and confusion….

The real hope, then, is not in something we think we can do but in God who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see. If we can do His will, we will be helping in this process. But we will not necessarily know all about it beforehand….

All the best, in Christ,

Tom

⁷ But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. ⁸ What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ ⁹ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. ¹⁰ I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

¹² Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. ¹³ Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 3:7-14

My Grandfather’s Old Stuff

My grandfather used to collect old things when he was alive. He had a number of old furniture scattered all over his house. He also had this old coin collection that I really loved, with some pieces going back to the early 1900’s.

Most of his collections were really practical, like old nails and screws. They came in handy when I had carpentry projects in school. He also kept old boxes and plastic bags tucked away all over the house. You never knew when you’d need them. He has this old pig pen at the back of the house that got converted into storage space where he kept all the other stuff he kept. Tin cans, bottles, pieces of wood, GI sheets, steel bars—you name it—my grandfather kept them all there.

But a lot of the things he kept really boggled the mind. He still kept broken appliances that didn’t work anymore. He had expired paint lined-up on a shelf. He even had small pieces of metal stacked in piles on the floor all rusted up. My mom would offer to have them sold at the junk shop but my grandfather would not allow it. Somehow, he could not let go of old things. He wanted them always close by. Even if they weren’t of any use anymore.

We only got the chance to get rid of his old collection when he died many years later. They weren’t worth much anymore. We even had to pay someone to take them all away.

Things to Keep, Things to Throw Away

There are old things in life that are worth keeping. There are things with enduring value that shouldn’t be thrown away. Just like antique hardwood furniture, or jewelry, or even antique Spanish-era décor.

Niko loves narra furniture, and she started to collect them for our home. She inherited a very nice living room set made of narra, made by hand by her grandfather. From then on, we only bought narra pieces to furnish our house. They only grow in value as time passes. These things we keep.

But many things in life lose their value with age. Products of dubious quality lose their utility too soon and quickly turn into clutter. Niko and I received an electric turbo roaster when we got married. We used it only a few times, then it got broken after a few weeks. It still looked nice, and it was such a waste to throw it away, and I was thinking, maybe I can have it repaired somewhere… I really had no idea where. Anyway, it stayed in our kitchen for a few years—as clutter. Niko had the strength of character to throw it away after a while.

Mental Baggage, Heart Clutter

Sometimes it is difficult to decide which of the things we possess are of enduring value, and which ones are clutter, or worse, junk. The same is true with things we keep in our head and in our heart. We collect all sorts of views and perspectives, values and beliefs all through our lives, from the myriad of media and information sources available to us, and in our various interactions with people we love and respect. We keep most of them stored in our hearts and minds without evaluating whether they need to be kept there or not. Without being aware of it, we may have collected so much baggage in our minds that makes it difficult for us to make moral and ethical choices. We may have accumulated so much clutter in our hearts that makes it difficult for us to discern what is most valuable in life.

I used to believe that it is just fine to pursue a career without consulting God. That is the message I got from the various influences closest to me when I was young. My dad always encouraged me to pursue a career in sales because that’s where the money is. My friends in the theater told me I’d be a good artist, just like them. The TV shows and movies I watched and the books I read all told me that I can do anything that I put my mind into. I just needed to believe in myself. I just had to ‘do it!’ And ‘do it’ I did. I decided I wanted to by very rich and famous, and I set out to do everything in my capacity to do just that. Besides, God was supposed to ‘help those who helped themselves,” right?

So when I started sensing that God was calling me to take a different direction, I couldn’t hear Him very clearly. I had the whole world of options before me, all available for the taking. But which one was God’s plan for me, I had no idea. To be honest about it, I wasn’t very interested to find out. My heart was all cluttered up with the things I wanted, I couldn’t discern what He wanted for me.

Worldly Garbage

It was only by the grace of God that I was rescued from my own folly. He had to block my way. He had to unravel my well-laid plans. He allowed me to go through a crises period, when I had to question everything I had accomplished up to that point, and really, truly ask what’s most important in life.

Most people call it the mid-life crisis. I call it God’s gracious wake-up call.

The Apostle Paul tells us in Philippians 3:7-8 that everything he had achieved in life, that most people aspired to reach themselves, he considered ‘garbage.’ They are not unlike the great collection of junk my grandfather amassed in his life. They were all meant to be thrown away.

Achievements in life are not bad per se. They simple are worthless compared to the things the Apostle Paul considered to be of great worth: that is knowing Jesus Christ, gaining Him, and being found in Him.

Gaining Christ

Paul realized all of his achievements in life would all eventually come to naught . If you still haven’t heard about the grim statistics, and whether you believe it or not, 100% of people die. And when people die, they leave behind everything they’ve ever gained on earth.  They are all junk in Paul’s eyes. To spend time on them, apart from Christ, is a waste of time—no, a waste of precious life.

How does one gain life, then? Paul tells us, it is only by gaining Christ. The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ is God’s Word incarnate, God’s expression of Love who became flesh (John 1:14). He came to offer up His life as a sacrifice for sin

“This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

1 John 4: 9-10

The highest pursuit in this life, therefore, is knowing and gaining Christ, because through Christ we gain forgiveness of sin, thereby restoring a love-relationship that God desires to develop with us. This happens as we identify ourselves with Christ, and become ‘one’ with Him, united with him in his life and death. And because Christ was resurrected after His death on the cross, so also are we resurrected to a new life after death—life eternal, life that has no more limits, life eternal.

Once we have life in Christ, our entire life can now be lived to the full in the light of our relationship with Christ, all the way to eternal life.

Throwing Away Garbage

Today is the first day of the new year 2011. Some say it’s a time for leaving behind the old and taking on the new. It is time to take stock of life, and think about what’s truly valuable in life, and what needs to be thrown away.

And achievements apart from Christ are not the only things that need to be junked. Old perspectives that put great value on wealth, or fame or pleasure or power above Christ are all worthless. Negative attitudes about life and destructive beliefs about self all need to be thrown away. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, says Paul (2 Corinthians 5:17).

This new year, let us make Christ the greatest treasure in our lives.

²⁰ I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Galatians 2:20

Caloy

Posted via email from Caloy’s Life Discovery

Instead of peace, there is so much conflict, whether between political parties, or people of different races, or even competing religious beliefs. Instead of mutual understanding and acceptance, there is the proliferation of war and violence.

Instead of wellness and wholeness, we see millions (billions even?) of people suffering and dying either due to lack of sufficient food, or ironically the complete reverse, due to eating too much unhealthy food or even due to the abuse of destructive substances.

In spite of all that’s happening wrong, I have this firm (stubborn) belief that human beings are capable of getting a few ideas right. Like beauty. I would like to think that most people know it when they see it, and will always prefer it over ugliness and the lack of order. Or even courage. Most people are cowards, but we all know a brave person when we see one. We have a deep admiration, even if grudgingly, for a man who stands for what is right even if it costs him his livelihood, his friends, or even his life.

I have always wanted to think that among the few things the world has gotten correctly is ‘love.’

Love is such a celebrated word that when i checked google, it said there are millions of websites that contain that word.

Surveys on Love

There was a survey done more than one year ago that asked people their beliefs regarding love. The survey found out that more than half of Filipinos (55%) believe in love at first sight. Even more interesting is that almost

Unfortunately, I realized how wrong the world appreciates love when I saw a recent SWS survey on Filipino’s definition of love. The survey said that seven out of ten, or roughly, three out of every four Filipinos would rather receive love than give love. It seems to me that only one out of four got the whole idea right.

The survey said that the desire to be loved was seen strongest among those who have been separated/divorced from their spouses, and also to those who have been widowed but have since remarried. They probably had traumatic experiences in their past relationships where they were giving more love than they were getting back. Now, they’d rather receive it from their partner than give.

In other words, for most Filipinos, love is seen as a one way street coming in rather than going out. Just imagine the kind of relationship that would make. Each partner wanting to receive more than they’d give. Each partner aching to get the kind of love and affection they feel they deserve, but holding back from giving the love and affection they should be giving their partner. Both end up angry at the other for not giving what their partners are supposed to give, and frustrated about not getting what they feel they deserve to enjoy.

No wonder a lot of marriages in this country are falling apart, or are simply hanging by a thread.

Information released by the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) stated that in there has been a decreasing trend in marriages among Filipinos from 1980 t0 2000. And whereas in 2000, only 4 couples out of 100 were living-in together, by 2008 this number has risen to 11/100. Then, while only 1 out of 100 couples were separated in 2000, this number has tripled to 3/100 by the year 2008.

So, less and less people are getting married. More and more people are living-in together. And more and more couples are breaking up.

Love, according to the World

All these statistics point to something significant. We may have a wrong definition of love after all.

Love is equated with powerful emotions of desire. That is why every February 14, all the movie houses of the world run chick-flicks galore. Those who can’t afford to pay more than P100 for a movie ticket would just go to a video rental and take out a love story, or even buy 12-in-one DVDs in a cheap mall or in a corner store down the street.

Love is also equated with sex. That is why every February 14, all the motels in whole wide world are having a heyday, with rooms used to capacity, a with even a long line of customers lining up for their turn for a ‘short-time.’ Sales of contraceptives hit the charts during this time. After all, nobody really wants to pay the price of a night of thrills with a lifetime responsibility.

On the contrary…

One of the deepest longings of the heart is to be known deeply, and to be accepted for who we are.

One time, I was having a haircut in our local barber shop. There is this unusually small guy in the shop, probably less than 4 feet tall, who was unusually assertive. And no wonder, because some of the barbers there were were unusually abusive of him as well. Imagine this small guy always being bullied and pushed around. I guess at a certain point in his life he learned it didn’t pay to just take in the abuse. He learned to fight back. And I imagine that all his life he was constantly struggling to be accepted for who he was. Not pitied but accepted.

I know of a beautiful woman as well. As a young woman she was the center of the attention and even the affection of men. In a way I guess, she was entirely conscious that she is looked at as an object of desire. But she faces doubts whether she is truly loved, or simply desired for her physical appearance. Is she merely being desired to be possessed or is she loved to be truly known?

The Story of Eternal Love

The good news is that there is one who truly loves us for who were are. Even if nobody else does. Even if nobody else will.

You see, Jesus knows us. He knows us from the beginning. Even before the world was created, he knew us. He was already thinking of us. We were already in His heart, even before Adam and Eve lived in paradise.

Not only does He know us, he loved us, from the beginning.

Love is a Command

If we will carefully read scriptures, we find that love is command, more than an emotion or feelings of desire.

I’ve heard it said among evangelical circles that love is a ‘choice.’ It is a movement of the will. It is also an ‘action.’ It is not passive nor waits for a right motivation.This is the reason why Christian weddings do not end with suggestions of ‘only when I feel like it,’ but rather, lifetime vows of ‘I do.’

But even this I believe is only only partly correct. There is a more fundamental definition of what love is. I’d rather take it from what Jesus says in scriptures.

Jesus himself confirmed the greatest command to be love. ‘Love the Lord your God will all your heart… soul… mind… strength. The second one is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself.’

Then when Jesus issued a new command to His disciples, he said ‘a new command I give you, love one another, as I have loved you.’ Jesus commands us not to feel an emotion, but to love just like He did, He gave himself to those he loved, even His life. It means sacrificial love. It means love that gives and not thinking of getting. It is indeed an act of the will.

Why did he say that? What’s in it for me? Can one really do something sacrificial without any strong motive or cause? Is it at all possible to give without getting anything back?

If we think about it, we do have a reason for giving ourselves to our brethren, and that is, Jesus has already given us everything! We can afford to give ourselves up, because we’ve already received love in abundance from the spring of eternal love–Jesus himself!

And because Jesus’ love for me is, as one song says, extravagant, my needs are covered. I do not have to worry about anything. So when he commands me to love, I say, “It is a pleasure to love you back, with everything I am!” And “It is a joy to love others,” because I am deeply loved.

It is like my wife commanding me to come home. I willingly obey, not because I have to, but because I myself want to come home to be with her, to be taken care of by her after a long day at work. It is not a duty to come home, but a strong desire.

How are we to love, then?

We must place ourselves in this great love story of God. It is the story of God who from all eternity is the God of love–the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in perfect love for one another in complete and perfect unity. It is the story of God overflowing in love that he lovingly created the universe as his expression of beauty and order; the created man from his own hands and in His image–man and woman–as an expression of love. It is the story that includes the entry of evil and the fall of man, and yet in love covered fallen man from their shame. It is the story of God who chooses people to be instruments of deliverance–from Noah to Abraham to Joseph, all the way until the coming of Moses and God’s redemption of Israel from the land of Egypt. It is the story of the rise and fall of the nation of Israel, and the righteous yet merciful love of God for His chosen people. It is the story of how God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. It is our story today, the ongoing story of God mission to proclaim His love among the nations, so that all the nations of the world may come worship Him.

We are part of that story. We have our roles to play. And the single basic motivation, the driving force of our mission, is the love of God in us. And so we live and serve and proclaim the glory of God, as people who are dearly loved.

This is the motivation of the apostle Paul for taking the gospel to the Gentiles. It is the same motivation that prompted Martin Luther to take his stand against the abuses of the Roman church in the 16th century and freed the faithful believers from the burden of works and indulgences and be set free in Christ. It is the same motivation that William Wilberforce in the 18th century had in committing two decades of his life fighting against the slave trade in England and setting the African slaves free from bondage. It is the same motivation that Martin Luther King had in the 1960′s in pressing for changes in American society so that blacks may be given equal treatment as the whites, even at the cost of his life.

This is the same motivation that would empower us today to give up our lives, not only to live holy, prayerful and godly lives, but more than that, to be instruments of God in alleviating the conditions of the poorest of the poor among our Filipino brethren. It is the same motivation that would enable us to take a principled stand against corruption in government and the plundering of the nation’s resources for private gain, against the repeated attempt to frustrate and hijack the will of the electorate through fraud and terrorism, and against the evil forces of society that seek to kill, steal and destroy the life, property and dignity of the Filipino people.

Our expression of love for the world and fellowmen is a foretaste of God’s overflowing love from eternity. Our lives are a glimpse of God’s eternal glory. How we live our lives before others should instrumental in awakening a thirst for God’s love.

This we can do only when we are completely assured of His love, and as we come together in love as brethren to give glory to God by pressing on to restore and set aright the crumbling institutions of our nation, and as we disciple our fellow Filipinos in righteousness and obedience in Christ and in submission to the Kingdom of God.

I actually started this some time ago, but I hadn’t the time, the energy and the will in 2009 to post my thoughts on this blog.  Now i feel i should. It’s about time.

I’ve always had this very strong urge to write. But I kept being sidetracked by tons of urgent ‘to-dos’ and by looming crises at work last year. I’ve set aside my thought-life, I didn’t give myself time for disciplined thought and writing, and now I’m so much the poorer for it. I cannot set it aside any longer. I have to make room in my life for this. So help me Lord.

The issue though is, which of my many activities that i had been doing last year, do I no longer do to make time for this? This is going to be quite a struggle….

Hi. I am Caloy Diño and this is my latest weblog. I’ve been trying out some blogs before, like i’ve done at least two in multiply and another one in yahoo 360. This is my latest one yet.

I’m not quite sure yet how this one will turn out. I’ll see how it goes.