20 October

I remember hanging out with my adviser and schoolmate who've both became my friends because of the college paper. The three of us were bound by interests in literature, college life, and the academe as the three of us are now teachers. They are my group of friends who are different from my other bunch of friends because we don't normally find ourselves talking about our family, our favorite music, food, films, our own personal interests. We do talk of our personal lives occasionally but with more depth on our rebuttals that each got it on the norm. The mood often boarders on political activism, teenage angst, and the need to just sit back and see the world from another angle. It's nice to be 'abnormal' sometimes.

There we were, a year ago, having one 'abnormal' discussion in a panciteria on a rainy night. The two of them had their share of their view in life and its tendency to somehow become....well, empty. When it was my turn, I just forked noodles into my mouth because, frankly, I can't think of anything that happened in my life that can find it's place on our wall of depressions.

I do have my share in the bottom, down the valley. I have a feeling I've been treading murky waters for the past months, past days, three hours and 18 minutes ago, who knows? Since my sister found a job and I've stopped living with my favorite person in the world, since I've met good people who turned out to be the ones who can hurt me the most, since my dog vanished, since I faced with the possible libel suit. But the real tragedy, I found out, was when I became certain that I can do it on my own. When I thought that life is going to be good as long as I do good, when I absolutely depended on myself. That's when I'll totally crash.

^{Galatians 3:3}

³Are you so foolish and so senseless and so silly? Having begun [your new life spiritually] with the [Holy] Spirit, are you now reaching perfection [by dependence] on the flesh?

Jesus have invited me to live in His Kingdom and I already said yes. I am now living with the King, the creator and preserver of all things, the great provider, Almighty, Sovereign Lord and if I think, even for one second, that my earthly worries are things which are so big for me that not even my King would be interested in checking up on it, then I am living like an alien in His kingdom for I don't know Him at all and I don't have any right on such:

2 Timothy 1:7

For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.

It is by God's spirit, which He wholeheartedly have left for us to live in us, that I can overcome, that I can be joyful always, that I don't have to have a share of depression in my life.

Zechariah 4:6

So he said to me, "This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: 'Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,' says the LORD Almighty.

J.B.

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Philippians 4:7 The peace of God which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus

My QT book says that there is a part of the sea known as "the cushion." It is in such a deep part of the sea that it is never stirred.... regardless if the sea is agitated by storms, earthquake or other calamities.

The peace of God is like the cushion of the sea. It should lie so deeply in our hearts that no difficulty in our life can reach it.

I kept thinking... wondering... if only all those ondoy and pepeng victims knew God and had this peace....

I.T.