HOPE AND PATIENT ENDURANCE May 20, 2020

The chapter I read for morning devotions today is Hebrews 10. It talks about hope and patient endurance. Indeed, this quarantine period due to the CoViD-19 pandemic has proven to be infinitely far more than a simple inconvenience.

Thank GOD I was able to receive pay for unused leave credits and cash-advanced ones up to the middle of this month (but will most assuredly tighten the belt for another month since, unless we go back to work in the next couple of weeks, no more income source is coming my way, and sadly I will have to break-the-pig for the hard-earned savings), there was enough for food and supplies, and a few weeks more.

But for the many who lost their jobs and/or source of income due to the quarantines, especially since according to a brilliant senator that even if they have, they never should, receive social amelioration from the government because they have jobs (well, technically many are not terminated, and they are not resigned, but however, they did not receive any form of salaries or ameliorations since they are “middle class”), this is indeed the end of life as we know it.

Truly we are living in the end times. And flipping through the pages of The Holy Word gives us the spiritual perspective to the daily news bulletins. As children of GOD, we are not raptured and preserved in a cosmic bubble, immune to the world’s tribulations. If one country sneezes, the rest of the world are dying from The Flu. And, koreanovela marathons, tsundoku attacks, or webtoons and comic immersions aside, we are still in the real world. However, rather than succumb to the sanity-challenge, and possibly wallow again in the depths of self-pity, despair, depression and hopelessness, thankfully we have a GOD who says, “...for the elect’s sake, those days will be shortened...” The funds may be dwindling, and we may soon feel some hunger pangs because the rice and grocery relief and whatnot we have last bought from the market are also fast disappearing, we can rest assured however that “The GOD who provides” is a prayer away, and “His hand is not shortened”.

Yes, hunger, disease and death are hair-breaths (or in this case, one to two meter-airborne droplets away, that favourably sticks on all kinds of surfaces, whether wood, metallic, fabric or plastic, or even our skin, and hairstrands), but our source of strength and hope is closer, since He is a whisper apart. Just as the things we fear and the things that claim our lives cannot be seen, hasn’t yet been fully understood, and foreseen can never be conquered even during our lifetimes, we have the assurance that the One Who Preserves Our Lives, though unseen, is undoubtedly heard, tasted and felt if we have the heart to perceive Him.

And so, we have this patient hope and fuel for endurance. That no matter how the future may turn out to be, we will be fine. If we hold on to this hope, we are blessed in everything, no matter the cost, no matter the bruises, no matter the pain, no matter the fear, because we know we have A GOD who never abandons us and who leads the way.