Random Reflections

Pray Like Jesus Many of us struggle with prayer.  We don’t quite know how to start or what to say.  Prayer is as essential to the spiritual life as air is to our bodily life.  Without air, we die physically.  Without prayer, we die spiritually because we are cut off from our source of life, […]

Picking-Up the Broken Pieces   The Filipino game Hampas Palayok was derived from the Spanish game of Pinata.  This was a popular game in children’s parties when I was growing-up.  The mechanics of the game are simple.  A traditional earthen pot called a palayok is filled with candies and other goodies and suspended in the air. A […]

To Be Great is to Be Little   A couple of years ago, I attended a high-level seminar where most of the participants held a C-level positions (CEO, COO, CFO, etc.).  You can imagine that all the participants in this seminar were all hotshots in their respective fields; people who are very accomplished in the […]

Under Renovation When I used to work in the supermarket industry, we would often have to renovate stores after a certain number of years.  It was necessary as the passing of time necessarily led to things getting worn out, breaking down, become faded or shabby.  During the construction period, there were board-ups to cover the […]

Is There a God? I was once out on a date with a guy I liked very much.  He was a stock broker based in New York.  We were having a great time until I said something about God and prayer.  At that point his face darkened and with disdain, he asked me: “Are you […]

Transfigured “And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white” (Matthew 17:2).   What if people could see us for who we really are?  What if all the veils, the masks, the fronts that we put up just suddenly fell away?  Would people be shocked?  […]

Star Wars: Lessons in Love and Fear Star Wars was one of the most successful film series ever made. It finally closed with its last episode in 2019, “The Rise of Skywalker” to disappointing reviews.  However, this does not detract from the timelessness of the themes underlying the entire series, that is, the classic battle […]

In the Eye of a Storm On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him.  A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat […]

Biking Uphill When I used to bike competitively, my coach would spend many hours with me training for the hills. His philosophy was that the hilly part of the course is where you can make great strides. This is when everyone slows down, lose steam, or momentum. For one who is accustomed to hills or […]