I remember being tired out in the summer — sure, we didn’t have to get up very early in the morning or rush to get to school through the traffic but we still had to wake up early, though. My mother did not believe that there was any value in inactivity. Summer was all about learning new things — how to make fruit salad, how to cook adobo, how to cook sinigang, how to wax and scrub the floor the “proper” way (meaning, her way).
It was always in the summer when my mother insisted on piano lessons. We had no piano at our house when I was young so I had to walk up to the Bible Seminary which was atop the Children’s Sunday School rooms at the Mandaluyong Bible Baptist Church. There was an old upright piano there with yellowed ivory keys (yes, it was that old — in the 1970s it was not yet a crime to possess anything made of ivory).
In the summer and the entire Bible Baptist Seminary was on vacation, the lecture hall was dusty, musty and humid. The piano was next to the window and the window gave a view of the red tin roof of the Bible Baptist Church below. After lunch, when I usually had my piano lessons from Sis. Ruthie Gillego, I could see the heat waves rising from the roof and I wondered if piano lessons were not really my mother’s idea of torture. It wasn’t fun — at all. Even Sis. Ruthie would doze off, sometimes, while I played, but it was a brief snooze as she usually woke up when I hit the wrong notes — that happened a lot because I hated to practice. I just couldn’t see the point: my fingers were stubby, I was too slow at reading notes, and I really just could not see the point of me learning the piano. I didn’t want to learn the piano, period.
Sometimes, in the morning, just to get away from chores, I would tell my mother that I would practice the piano, but really, I would sneak into the auditorium and listen to Ate Dinah Secillano practice. It was a puzzle to me how anyone could play so effortlessly and so beautifully — the way I played, it sounded like an elephant pounding the piano keys. I whined and complained to my mother about it — I had no talent for it, why work so hard on something that I will never be good at? And to this question, my mother would inevitably reply, “because you never know how God will use you. You must learn all that you can so that God can use you in anyway He wants to.” It was the same issue every summer.
After lunch, when we were younger, it was nap time. However, in 1973 when my Dad began pastoring in Las Pinas, three times a week each summer, my mother would put what was left of the breakfast pan de sal, a teaspoon, a bottle of coke filled with water, a plastic glass, and a jar of cheez whiz in the backseat of our car. Then, she would make us all ride in it to go to Las Pinas.
We would all fall asleep during the ride. Sometimes, she would leave the littlest kids at some member’s home to play while she went on visitation or Good News. She always insisted that I go with her. It was boring, let me tell you, walking, knocking on people’s door, talking to people, praying, opening the Bible, my mom teaching the person something and then praying again before we left. Then, we would get out of there and go to some other home and do the very same thing all over again — sometimes, three times in one afternoon!
Saturdays were the worst! We would walk to Moonwalk or to Admiral or to Tatalon and gather children and in the heat of the mid-morning, we would teach them to sing “Si Hesus ang Daan” or “Si Hesus ang Pangulo” and a verse. We would go and make three such Good News stops in the morning and three in the afternoon. The houses did not have indoor plumbing, there were no drainage ditches so on the sides of the path which was just packed earth, there would arise the lively smell of human refuse.
Sometimes, while my mother was doing these Good News classes, she would see some woman sitting and watching and after the Good News classes, she would go by and sit with the woman and, again, it was John 3. I had to carry the heavy Tagalog or English Bible and open it. I would point with my finger at the verse while I read it, or while the person read the verse out loud. Sometimes, the person my mother was talking to would cry and realize his or her need for salvation and ask to be helped to accept Christ. Sometimes, we would be rudely turned out. Sometimes, we were told that we weren’t welcome, we couldn’t come in, magagalit ang nanay, asawa, kapatid, tita, lola, whatever.
I seethed.
I could be watching TV. I could be curled up reading Nancy Drew. I could be doing something more fun, but, no, my mother dragged me to these things. I grumbled and whined and complained. I always asked why I had to do it. I would tell my mother, “when I go back to school, my teacher will ask us to write an essay on what I did all summer. All my classmates will write about going to the beach, swimming in Los Banos, going home to the province and riding a carabao, and what would I write about? Nothing! I am doing nothing but sit in somebody else’s living room listen to you explain John 3 until I have memorized John 3:1-16 (I can still recite it from heart today!). This is not normal, mom. Can’t I have a normal childhood?”
To this, my mother would say, “Is it normal for people to go to hell because you cannot be bothered to go out and tell them that Jesus Christ died on the cross for their sins? Is it normal for you who have been saved to just keep to yourself the good news that Jesus saves?” I was convinced that my mother was put on this earth to make my life miserable.
On Holy Week, there was church camp. We would usually sell old newspapers and old bottles at the junk shop so that we can have money (not for ourselves) but to sponsor a visitor, or a prospect, or a candidate for salvation or baptism. After Holy Week, there was the DVBS and then the Bible Research. There were evangelistic meetings. This was on top of Sunday School, Sunday morning Services, Juniors Fellowship, Sunday evening service and Wednesday prayer meetings and Saturday choir practice.
There was a time in the early 1980s when Las Pinas started two missions back-to-back so we conducted three DVBS classes in one summer (one in Las Pinas, one in Queen’s Row Subdivision, Molino, Bacoor,Cavite and one in Alaminos, Laguna); we conducted three Bible Researches. We had film showings. My mother organized and presented evangelistic plays. As a child, I was oblivious to the significance of all this — I just knew that it was a bother. It was pointless as far as I was concerned and if I were asked — I would have gladly done something else with my time.
One evening when I sat through yet another preaching at the Children’s Camp in Kaytikling, Taytay, Rizal, Bro. Wen Secillano was preaching. As usual, my body was there, sitting on the pew, but my mind was elsewhere. I don’t know if it was the force of his delivery (Bro. Wen usually stomped his feet when he preached to emphasize a point he was making) or the earnest softness of his voice as he explained (I thought he was explaining it directly to me and only to me). He said something like: you think you have a right to live your life the way you want to live it. You think that you have a right to your own life, the right to decide what to do with your own life and with your own time. You don’t. If Jesus Christ is your Savior, then He must also be your Lord. If He is your Lord, then He must have full control of your life. Will you give Him control of your life which He bought and paid for on Calvary? It’s His, because He bought that life when He died on the cross for your sins. The life you live now, it’s the resurrection life of Jesus Christ. It is His — will you let Him take control of it? No more living life your way, will you now live in the center of God’s will for you?”
I sat there and I could not speak — I could not argue, I could not complain. How selfish I had been thinking that I was wasting MY time and MY strength serving the Lord, when in truth, the time I spent and the strength I used all belonged to Christ — it wasn’t mine.
Christ gave His life for me unreservedly — and yet, I grumble and complain about doing all that as though it were a bother. I have been bought by the blood of the Eternal Son of God. I belong to Him and as much privilege as that gives me to become a child of God, it also means that I am not my own anymore. All that I am belongs to God, all that I ever will be belongs to God. Because Jesus Christ paid the price for my sin, Jesus Christ owns me — I can acknowledge His right of ownership over me or not but it will not change the fact that He owns me. And on this hinges the pleasure of God with me. God the Father was “well pleased” with Christ because He did the Father’s will, not His own.
As I sat there, I realized that I can only do one of two things: deny that I have been bought and insist on living “MY” life in the way I pleased because it is “MY” life, after all; or, acknowledge that Christ had bought me, I am His and He can do whatever He wants to do with me. The Lordship of Christ demands that I surrender to Him the right to choose for myself how I am to live. This was what being saved meant: saved from sin, saved from Hell, saved from the world, and saved from myself.
That was my turning point.
I was a self-willed pastor’s kid who was happy enough to have Jesus Christ as my Savior, but I was not willing to acknowledge His Lordship — until I understood what Christ’s Lordship meant. To be happy that I have been bought with His blood is just the first step. The next step ( the crucial one that will determine whether I will serve the Lord with gladness of heart ) was to surrender to Christ, and be willing to be led by Him. This is what is meant when the Bible says to “deny” oneself — it means to stop thinking that I had any right to live life as I pleased and to acknowledge that it is Christ who had the right to live through me.
Many more turning points came as I’m sure many more turning points will come — the self is difficult to crucify — it has to be crucified daily. At every turn, when I begin to think of my personal convenience and my personal desires, my ambition and my plans — even MY PERSONAL MINISTRY (there is no such thing — all Christian work and service is Christ’s ministry — we are only used by Him. He can choose someone else, too) I must deny my “self”. Not I, but Christ. Not my will, but Christ’s. It’s the most difficult thing to do but without it, all service is for nothing. All those summers with my mother taught me just that.