MAy 26, Tuesday tale part 2

May 26, 2009
TUESDAY tale Part 2:

When I thought about destruction of a life, I would imagine bloody and horrifying killings, such as the scenes in the movie “Kinatay” by Brillante Mendoza, who incidentally won the best director plum at the 2009 Cannes film Festival. Or of frenzied Abu sayyaf beheadings.
But death can be slow and painful as well, take someone who died from arsenic poisoning. History tells us that Napoleon Bonaparte, Van Gogh, Korean royalty and officials and other personalities succumbed to it because of its chronic use as a medicinal/beautifying/ and unsuspecting poison.
This is how a person can be who is poisoned with sin. Sinning becomes a cycle, where a person, trying to find significance, security, happiness, plunges headlong into decisions. Such decisions could be investing much money into questionable businesses, or those he is not prepared to handle but involve large monetary returns. Or it could be consorting with people who offer love, pleasure and companionship but are against their values and morals. Some others, on the extreme, deliberately feed themselves with addiction to hobbies, retail therapy at the malls, gambling, alcohol, sexual perversion, pornography, you name it.
After a while, when the results of the decisions done are now causing detriment, distress, and falling apart of the person’s life, he/she would shake their fists, blame themselves, blame other people (ie, their activity partners, lovers, sellers of the items they are addicted to , the Internet) and God, for ruining their life.
But after they are somewhat delivered from the poor state, they would launch into another form of destructive cycle.

Jesus is sympathetic to the sinner, to one caught in the sins and follies, like what he was to the Samaritan woman, to Zaccheus, to the crucified robber at his side on Golgotha, yet he still hates and condemns the sin . He said Go and sin no more.

The principles, as outlined by J. M. Farro in the devotional “life on purpose” says the following to those, like me, like you, who may feel, “YES YES this is how I am” :
Put God first.
Trust God to bring the right partner for me at the right time.
Break the destructive patterns in me.
Use this period of waiting to nurture my relationships with people who will build me closer to my relationship with God.

I hope that with this reading, I will have the opportunity to strengthen my resolve, to break free from these destructive cycles I had been through, stop poisoning myself and get myself out of this rut.