A NOTE ON PRAYER

GOD answers prayers. I know and I believe He always does. But there are times in my life that I felt He does not respond to most of my prayers. And when I believe He answers one of my prayers, I wonder if it is really the one that I have been asking from Him, because sometimes the same thing turns out awful later on.

That’s how I felt when I got kicked out from a premier law school due to grade deficiency. I asked then, if having qualified to the college of law was an answered prayer for a better career, a better chance to help other people, and a better life for my family in the future, then why did He allow me to fail? Why did God take back the chance He had given me? It was easy to say that what went wrong was really my fault. I did not study hard, or law school wasn’t my strongest suit, or I did not want enough.

But for every struggle I had then for my class I would always seek God for help and guidance. And during the deliberation of my case by the appeals committee, I prayed hard and even made a covenant with God of a commitment to serve His church, the usual thing I do when I hit dead corners.

But I lost. The committee did not give me another chance. I became the chaff (those who did not meet the standard of excellence) separated from the grains (deserving scholars).

Then I began to wonder how prayer works, and how it makes my relationship with God become stronger with or without the answers I would expect to receive.

It’s easy to say God did not hear my prayers after all. But that’s being unfair to Him. In fact I was the one not being fair to Him, as if I was using Him and saying to this effect: Lord, you gave me this chance, so you should be there for me, I need you, and please help me do this thing. What if I had uttered instead: Lord, here I am, do whatever you want me to do, or Thy will be done, Lord. Would that make a big difference?

Winners or Losers 

Every time I watch a basketball game on television, I see that players doing the sign of the cross before they play or after they made a shot are as common as sounds of whistles for every on-court violations. And players coming from either team are all praying to the same God.

When players from one team prayed “Lord help us win this game,” and those of the other team prayed the same, to whom will God listen? And when a team wins, the players raise their muscular arms saying hallelujahs to the Lord, while the losers contemplate on why they did not get that divine intervention.

I think the world is highly polarized with winners and losers—in every field, in all walks of life. But no one can really say if one had won or lost it all. And looking back, everytime I failed in an undertaking, lost a turn or missed every opportunity that would make me feel good, I would think my prayers were not answered. Maybe because I didn't have a deeper relationship with God. And I could not do anything but wait for another round, and for another. I never considered myself religious, but through it all, I haven’t stop praying.

Lessons from Job 

I don’t believe that any misfortune that happened to us is a form of punishment from an all powerful and benevolent God. Nor is there any application to life the scientific thinking that things react because of a corresponding action, or simply, we suffered because we caused things that make us suffer.

In the bible, Job is not being punished when all his children and material possessions were lost. Job is a righteous man and faithful to his God. This only confirms one point—that the problem, misfortunes and suffering in this world is beyond our understanding. God loves Job but He has to test him.

God isn't under obligation to say “yes” to every prayer. (That's a good thing considering some of the things we request!) He may be testing us all along.

And sometimes God, who has much more wisdom and foresight than we do, says “no” to our most profound requests. But that doesn’t mean we stop from there. If time goes by and we still cannot see that our prayers have been granted, we can ask God why. We can persist on this if we do not agree with, or understand His answer. If we persist, then God will explain in terms that we will totally understand. And this can only be possible through constant prayers.

And when He does, we will know that God did hear us, indeed, and that He did for us much more than what we asked of Him. Had I realized this earlier, I would not have griped at all during those trying times of my life.

A DREAM IN A WOODEN BOX

“THE TV’s gone...” my mother said that afternoon I arrived from school. I was 9 nine years old, and watching my favorite cartoon shows was always something to look forward to after a tedious school work.

Now what I saw was an empty TV stand, like a decapitated superhero gone and lost forever. The eldest of my three brothers had to explain to me that Father was forced to sell the television to a neighbor because he badly needed an amount to pay part of his big losses in a mahjong game. The guaranteed amount was equivalent that time to a half-cavan of rice which would have been enough for our week-long ration.

I couldn’t understand why Father had to let go our most precious possession. It was 1973 when he brought home the bulky wood-framed Hitachi Solid State television all the way from Manila to Narvacan, our hometown about 300 kilometers from the capital. It was one of the earliest televisions in the poblacion.

The TV would become my father’s best friend, and his tool to gain new friends and acquaintances around town and attract more customers for our tailoring shop. The shop during the day would teem with people trying to glimpse at a show in the black-and-white monitor. A boxing match was a fiesta—when almost all men on the streets, most of them tricycle drivers, would come to our house to watch the bout.

And the TV would become my earliest schoolmate. From the classic grainy black-and-white Hollywood and Filipino movies to Japanese early animation series to Sesame Street and The Muppet Show—I had watched them all.

When we moved to the barrio after losing our tailoring shop to poor business, aggravated by my father’s gambling escapades, we easily disposed of our sewing machines, cabinets, refrigerator, but not the TV. My father’s “best friend” was purposedly set at the center of our new abode.

But not anymore with that afternoon I arrived home from school.

“You can now concentrate more on your studies,” Father spoke to me in a tone that was largely devoid of blame. But listening to him was hard when you have lost a “special friend.” The thoughts of losing the television passed over me like a wave of fever.

Every night, while I worked on my assignments in a room I shared with my brothers, I could hear our TV being feasted on by our neighbor and his family. I would hear their boisterous pleasure with a comedy skit, or sounds of guns and airplanes and cannons in a war movie, or slaps and sighs from heavy loaded drama in a soap, all flashed on the TV screen. I missed my favorite cartoons and noontime shows so much!

I was too eager to watch television shows even from our neighbor’s window, but I couldn’t. It pained me so much to cast an eye on what we have already lost. I rather crossed the streets two blocks away and watched TV at a rich relative’s house. But I couldn’t choose the show I wanted. I even obliged myself to be extra friendly to my cousins; otherwise, they would shut the door—or the windows—for me.

There were long months in our house that we didn’t have electricity, because we weren’t able pay our long-overdue electric bills. I could feel the hardship in our family, even more when my father resigned as a part-time teacher of a private school in the poblacion. He went into farming but he didn’t have much luck either. Unlike some fathers in the barrio who drowned their miseries in alcohol, my father would do well with mahjong or card games around town. And bad times showed no sign of abating.

Every night I literally burned my midnight oil studying my lessons. Yet, those were the nights that I heard that intense sound of our erstwhile TV from our neighbor’s house. Though most of our neighbors had also purchased their own televisions, our neighbor’s TV stood out in my own uncompromising nights.

I might not have watched so many TV programs in those years but I had read plenty of books I couldn’t imagine I would read in my lifetime. I completed my elementary and secondary education on top of my class, and I was a consistent scholar while in college.

It was the year I graduated from college that I learned that our old TV set was no longer in use, perhaps damaged by old age, now relegated to a dark spot in favor of new and better model. Yet, I never wavered in my determination to buy it back someday. And this had been a driving passion in my early life. 

IN the summer of 2004, I visited my hometown after almost a decade working in publishing houses in Manila. Years earlier or just after I settled down, I bought a 14-inch Samsung colored and cable-ready television for my new family.

Many things have changed in our neighborhood in Nanguneg. The roads were well paved and the old folks of my childhood were gone. Gone also were the thatch-roofed and dilapidated houses. In their places were concrete and bigger houses. Now every household had their own television sets.

The neighbor who bought our TV had migrated to the US a year after his wife died. The family of one of his two married daughers was all that was left in their old house. And I learned from my mother that that “antiquated” TV have been rendered totally useless, all electronic parts gone; and the wood-framed Solid State box was now only good for a four-footed cupboard for old tools.

“The TV’s gone...” I remember Mother repeating those words to me. Had I only known the truth earlier, I wouldn’t have gone this far. After years of wishing helplessly to reclaim our old glory from a wooden box, I gained something better than that—my pride.