Sometime 2001, I was chosen as among the best writers of Didache, a magazine of Bible reflections. Below is my winning piece:
Saved by the Bell
My friend, Chona, found herself in Bacolod with nothing to do on the day after her birthday. She was alone in a plaza and thought to herself, "There must be a good reason why I'm here."
Chona sat on a bench and saw a sports tournament going on. What was different about this tournament was that all the players were handicapped. Imagine, a race with blind people as the runners! How did they do it? To each player, a bell ringer was assigned to run ahead of him so he would know where to go. "It must take a lot of trust to follow one's bell ringer," she thought.
Chona was amused when one of the bells got broken, so the runner began following the bell ringer of the other team! And when suddenly, several ice cream vendors began ringing their bells, there was bedlam!
In life, there are so many bell ringers around us. Do we follow the noisy gongs, the incessant buzzers, the golden bells of this world or the soft tinkling of the Shepherd's bell?
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Yup, in this noisy, noisy world, do we take time to listen to God speak to us? As I say this, I feel convicted because many times, I was too busy for the Lord.
Sorry, God. Please keep reminding me that You are my bell-ringer.
There is a second point to this post. Were it not for the Didache editor then, you would not be reading this. You see, up until then, I knew I could write but I didn't know I could write well. It took my winning the award to make me realize that I truly had a gift for writing.
Thanks, Ton Sison, for being my "talent discoverer". What about you? Don't you know that you, too, have the power to see the gifts that others have that they are blind to?
Chona sat on a bench and saw a sports tournament going on. What was different about this tournament was that all the players were handicapped. Imagine, a race with blind people as the runners! How did they do it? To each player, a bell ringer was assigned to run ahead of him so he would know where to go. "It must take a lot of trust to follow one's bell ringer," she thought.
Chona was amused when one of the bells got broken, so the runner began following the bell ringer of the other team! And when suddenly, several ice cream vendors began ringing their bells, there was bedlam!
In life, there are so many bell ringers around us. Do we follow the noisy gongs, the incessant buzzers, the golden bells of this world or the soft tinkling of the Shepherd's bell?
-----
Yup, in this noisy, noisy world, do we take time to listen to God speak to us? As I say this, I feel convicted because many times, I was too busy for the Lord.
Sorry, God. Please keep reminding me that You are my bell-ringer.
There is a second point to this post. Were it not for the Didache editor then, you would not be reading this. You see, up until then, I knew I could write but I didn't know I could write well. It took my winning the award to make me realize that I truly had a gift for writing.
Thanks, Ton Sison, for being my "talent discoverer". What about you? Don't you know that you, too, have the power to see the gifts that others have that they are blind to?
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