Climbing Trees

A friend of mine who is based abroad posted a message on Facebook, demanding that I update this blog. Not too long ago, another friend commented that my writing style has changed; that the overly ornate prose that gets posted on the blog is almost unreadable.

One of the reasons that I haven't blogged in a while is that I've been so busy fulfilling my obligations with the Alpha Course, Philippines. I just came back from the Philippine National Police Values and Training School in the Naval Magazine, Subic Freeport, where, by the grace of God, I was able to share my enthusiasm for the Alpha Course, and not my aversion to the different vegetables, in all their healthy permutations, that the PNP staff forced on me. I feel disgustingly healthy.

In a not altogether unrelated note, my involvement in the Alpha Course is also responsible for the overblown sentence construction that I've been inflicting my readers with. Things have been happening so fast that I don't have time to edit myself, which results in blog entries with paragraphs as unwieldy as:

While I respect Mr. Pullman's right to espouse such disturbing views, I personally cannot condone Mr. Pullman's erroneous conception of Christianity and his inability to distinguish between regrettable acts committed by members of an institution and the principles which an institution commits to. He willfully ignores the fact that people who commit errors in the Church's name do not represent the Church as a whole. Men may err, but the Church, for so long as it is centered on Christ, may not.

The Golden Compass: Pointing the Wrong Way?

Allow me to make amends for both my failings by reprinting portions of one of my weekly letters to fellow Alphaholics.

Greetings in Christ! When I was going through the Gospel, I felt drawn, for reasons obvious to many who have met me, to the account of Zacchaeus, the wealthy tax collector in Luke 19:1-10. Here we read that "...Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector and also a wealthy man, was seeking to see who Jesus was; but he could not see him because of the crowd, for he was short in stature." Undeterred by both his physical limitations, and what I imagine to be much snickering on the part of the crowd assembled, "he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus".

These verses struck a chord in me, not because of my short stature, but because of the simplicity with which Zacchaeus addressed his problem in encountering Jesus. Zacchaeus could have pushed his way through the crowd in order to see Jesus. Zacchaeus could have ordered the crowd to part, for while there was very little of Moses in his demeanor at that point in time, he could have used the threat of his authority to part the red-faced sea of people who would have grudgingly acknowledged his power over them. Instead, Zacchaeus chose to climb a tree.

At times, the obstacles which prevent the mature Christian from truly seeing Christ are not spiritual. At times, the obstacles are oh-so-prosaic: work gets in the way, we never seem to have the time to serve the less fortunate, the dog ate our Bible. Whenever we find ourselves confronted by either a heavy workload, a lack of time, or blasphemous canines, I would like to suggest that we remember Zacchaeus. In order to see Christ, sometimes all we have to do is climb a tree.

And yes, the picture has nothing to do whatsoever with the entry. Or does it? Have a blessed day!