Tag: thoughts

What’s wrong with being lukewarm? Isn’t being somewhere in the middle the right place to be? The safest place to be? I mean, who would ever complain of people trudging silently and patiently along, never bothering anyone? Why did the Bible deem it better to be cold instead of being lukewarm? Is being bad better than being not good enough?

I used to ponder about this when I was a lot younger, because I just couldn’t believe how being lukewarm can be very much like a sin for one to be reprimanded for. It was only later though that I realized the true gravity of the condition of people being referred to as such.

What is being lukewarm anyway? To begin with, we should make a clear distinction between being lukewarm and being average. Being lukewarm does not refer to one’s status or capacity in life, but in one’s state of inner consciousness and aliveness in spirit.

Being lukewarm is a state of passivity, of being totally crippled to move either forward or backward, of being stuck and not having the least desire or discontent that would prompt him to change and grow and really live. Being lukewarm is being oblivious to what is happening around him as he isn’t even aware of any activity happening within himself. He has reached a state of living where he can get by, and where he has been able to achieve enough that he is afraid of losing what little he has, and hence unable to risk anything to gain that which could really make him happy.

Truly it would be better if the person is in a worse condition. By then, he would have risked everything believing that he has really nothing to lose and everything to gain. It would have been better if he were miserable and in pain. He would have sought the cause of his troubles and remedied them, arriving nearer to his healing and salvation.

But for a man who doesn’t even want to move from where he’s always been, who is too comfortable to know he isn’t really happy, who is afraid to risk dying so he can find new life, for such a lukewarm spirit, what is it that can save him and bring him out of the comfortable grave he has made for himself? What can prompt him to laugh like he’s never laughed before? What can prompt him to weep as he has never wept? What can prompt him to love and find the real meaning to the life he so desires to save but unknowingly loses the more each time he chooses to be right in the middle and safe?

In our search for truth, we oftentimes dissect it as a flower is dissected into its many parts. We peel the petals one by one, we examine the stamen and the pollen grains, the pistil and the ovary. But in so doing, we see not the flower anymore, and we have destroyed with our own hands and curiosity the very thing that delighted our eyes and gave inexplicable joy to our hearts. In the end, we are able to know everything but the flower itself. We are able to know all things but that which is priceless, that which is pure and true and beautiful.

Is there nothing beautiful in this world anymore? Is there nothing at all that can delight us and give us hope? How many times have we felt we’ve seen it all, and there is nothing more that can inspire us the way things have inspired us before? How many times have we felt there is nothing more that can move us, that there is nothing more that can touch our hearts and bring our eyes to tears?

Were the people of old merely more sentimental, and we more practical in our thoughts and ways? Were the folks that have lived before us merely too unfortunate to have fewer things with which to content themselves, or have we found too many things that overwhelm us, and we have lost sight of those things that can truly make us happy?

What has changed? What has passed? Whatever faded that the more we grew and learned, the more we saw the shadows, the more our eyes longed for the beauty that faded through the passing of the years?

Was it really something that left us, never ever to return? The crispness of the morning air smothered by the urban smog? The pristine waters of brooks and streams, now ever rare as dark shadows crept even the mightiest of seas? The freshness of flowers in gardens now finding but lesser and lesser space in the city’s towering skyscrapers? Or was it something in our eyes that blurred our vision, such that we look and stare but we can no longer see?

What are we after anyway? What do we yearn to see? Is it beauty still? Is it goodness still? Or have we shifted our gaze from things eternal and pure to thrills that excite our senses but never satisfies us in the end?

Worse, we may not be looking anymore, we may not believe anymore that there is something beautiful in the world, in us, in one another. We are afraid to look. And everything we do seems only to escape the emptiness within that all the wealth and glitter of the world we have created cannot really fill.

Look within. There is wisdom and unspeakable peace that await you. Look again. There is still wonder in the single drop of dew that clings upon the faded petal of a rose. Look with a new pair of eyes and with a new heart. A heart filled with courage. A heart filled with faith, believing that there is still some beauty in the human soul, and in the breath of God blowing upon its creatures, making all things new, revealing all things beautiful.

This people will listen and listen, but not understand; they will look and look, but not see, because their minds are dull, and they have stopped up their ears and have closed their eyes. Otherwise, their eyes would see, their ears would hear, their minds would understand, and they would turn to me, says God, and I would heal them. – Matthew 13:14-15 (TEV)

Every parting has its own sorrow, even that of parting with a once treasured possession that has long lost its usefulness. And so in sorrow do I say farewell to my own that is not truly mine. Farewell to the mask and greetings to the heart, spirit and flesh that has long been concealed underneath its shadows.

What shall I find as I cross the uncertain bridge of life without my mask? Shall I find at last my lost memory? Shall I finally discover my ancient beginnings? Full of questions do I cross this bridge, yet full of hope do I walk towards my destiny.

I am like a child merely beginning its life, and yet I feel I’m also old, older than the ancient temples that connect mankind to its eternal source. I feel that I have lived from the very beginning of the earth; roaming, touching, changing, and yet forever remaining the same as the breath of theSpirit that gave me life.