Today is the fifth day since the typhoon. Help from all over is pouring in. But the devastation has been so widespread not everyone who needs help is getting it right now. There is great difficulty is getting the aid in many places because the infrastructures have been severely damaged. Things will probably get worse before they start getting better, with hunger and diseases stalking those affected. In the midst of all the aches and the pain, I scan the news and scavenge for things to be thankful for. I am grateful for . . . .
- Stories are emerging from the affected areas of how many put their lives at risk to help and save others. Even when they have lost everything, people were still willing to help and doing so when they could.
- Many police and military officers, social workers and other government workers were at their posts doing their work at the height of the storm.
- Everyone is reaching out to help: bakers are offering baking lessons with the proceeds to go to relief work; dance and yoga instructors are doing the same; prisoners at the national penitentiary went on a fast for one day and asked the food to be given to the hungry in the affected areas.
- Big corporations and the affluent have been giving very generous amount as payback for all the good times they have had in the affected areas.
- Even the poor and those who have less in life have given up their meager pan de sal and sardinas to give their share in the relief effort.
- Help has been coming from all over the world, from the little children that put up a lemonade stand to raise money for those affected to the countries and governments who have by now given us more than a billion pesos and counting.
- Shared lives, in good times and in bad, in joy and in sorrow, we have stood as a community.
- Love and care that knows no boundaries, specially in times of adversity,
- A sense of gratitude and deep appreciation of life seeing how fragile it can be.
- Resilience and humor that help us go through and survive the most severe trials and tribulations.
- An abiding faith and undying trust that things will get better and the best is yet to come.
- Songs and music to lift our spirits even as we pick up the pieces of our broken dreams and shattered lives.
- Grace, unending and unmerited, to bring us to the next level, wherever and however that might be.
As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him.
Luke 17:11-19