In a final examination in college, a student who figured he didn’t do so well, wrote on his exam paper, “Blessed are the merciful.”
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After reading the student’s exam paper, his instructor wrote on the top, “Final grade ‘F ‘(Failed).” Then he added, “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.”
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Failures should not break us altogether. After recovering from a honest evaluation much like that student, we should come out resilient like the proverbial bamboo tree – stronger, wiser, more mature.
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We’re at the threshold of a brand new year. We would do well to pause and THANK the Lord for the graces received and pray for his continued blessings and guidance.
Let’s include the failures and disappointments. Life, after all, is not all “sugar and spice and everything nice.”
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Let’s muster the will power to reform ourselves. For, as somebody rightly put it, it’s not so much knowing the truth about ourselves, but DOING something to change for the better.
THERE’S ALWAYS HOPE
There’s an American TV personality who reveals how he was a heavy drinker during his glory days, and how, for 20 years, he was hooked on alcohol along with drugs.
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Finally, one morning while facing the mirror seeing the wrinkles on his face and droopy eyes, and realizing that his life has had no direction, he asked, “Sid, do you want to live, or do you want to die?” It dawned on him that his life was wasting away by drinking and popping pills. That broke the ice.
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He decided to stop the downward skid to self-destruction, and started to reconstruct his life and his relationship with his wife and children.
“I didn’t realize during those 20 years,” the contrite man confided, “that I had stopped appreciating my wife, and I couldn’t even talk to my children. Our family is a lot closer now.
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“I know I can’t make up 20 years of domestic fighting and drinking in a couple of years, but I’m trying very hard.”
The above story illustrates that no matter how badly we have fallen in life, there’s always hope. We can rise again as long as we’re alive.
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One of the New Year’s challenges is: Start a new life or make your life better.
Remember that popular Filipino Christmas carol? “Bagong taon ay magbagong buhay nang lumigaya ang ating bayan.”
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LAFF WITH GOD. Dear God, all I ask for the New Year is a FAT wallet and a THIN body. And please don’t mix them up… like you did last year!
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On New Year, a man made a resolution to come straight home after work instead of having a good time till the wee hours in the morning. Elated, the wife said: “Glory be to the Father!”
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But after a month, he returned gradually to his old habit. Once as he returned home at past midnight, the wife sighed: “Glory be to the Father ….AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING…”
Persevere in fulfilling your resolution.
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A GRACE-FILLED NEW YEAR TO ALL! (Fr. Bel R. San Luis, SVD)