Escaping Family

Here's a cross post from my personal blog at www.carloople.com. :)

I attended a Christian small group last night together with my girlfriend, Mich. We were invited by our pastor (Pastor Dennis) in Victory Greenhills. It was actually a very pleasant experience and I always find it nice to meet new people. We expected to see around 5-6 since it was a small group but there were more than 15 in the group. Anyway, the topic was about God’s purpose for you in life. One of the segments in the discussion talked about the distractions that hinder us from fully realizing what we are meant to do in this world. After everyone shared their insights, I had a rather sad realization - a lot of us today ignore our families and we try desperately to escape from our homes to avoid all the issues, problems, and conflicts that happens in the house.

Inside the common Filipino household is an emotional, spiritual, and sometimes physical warfare. In some homes, this is a silent conflict and this is actually one of the most dangerous manifestations. Silence means that people want to give up already, or that they are simply not concerned anymore with what’s happening in their respective families. Instead of trying to communicate and resolve our problems at home, we distract ourselves with work, games, friends, and for some - even service to their church/ministry. Our passions in life become addictive drugs that we feed on that perpetually blinds us from the things that really matter.

Personally, I’m guilty of this because I find myself really focusing more on my professional career and my own life. Maybe in the coming days I’ll try to strike up a meaningful conversation with my father or mother about some of the issues hounding our family right now but that’s for another blog post.

So what now is the solution? There are so many ways to deal with problems. If we exercise the same level of creativity and resourcefulness we exhibit in our work or hobby in trying to solve the issues at home, I’m sure we will be able to come up with a workable plan.

Let’s get back to the question - what is God’s purpose for you? Maybe you don’t have to look far to find that out. Before we even talk about being the savior of the Philippines, ending hunger, finding the cure for cancer, or being a priest - let’s pause a while and think. Maybe our true purpose starts with our families at home. Sometimes the simplest things can be the most meaningful experiences in life and they can also be the most daunting challenges we will ever face.