Obedience

Dear Vera,

Whenever I drive your mom to her office, we passed through a number of stoplights. These are beautifully lit signal lights of red, green and yellow, placed on the road to let drivers know when to stop and proceed. On one occasion, your cousin, Dale asked me why I stopped the car. I told him that the light just turned red, and that means “stop” for us.  I know he didn't understand what I meant, because he insisted us for us to go.

Love, these stoplights are the shallowest test of obedience. You’ll even notice that most drivers do not follow the sign, especially when there’s no car coming from the opposite direction. However, when there’s a traffic enforcer in sight, they definitely obliged. Let me tell you one important thing, as Christians, we are to obey laws even when there’s no one looking – even if we’re the only one in the intersection when the stoplight turned red. Our integrity should not be compromised.   

Obedience is one of the most difficult values to uphold. Remember the story of Adam and Eve, if we are to account our first sin, it will be “Disobedience”. We are too proud of our so called “freewill” to the extent that we disregard the laws given to us. I know that one of these days, you will somehow disobey daddy to some extent. But surely, I will forgive you.

But let me focus on the reason why Obedience is good for you:

As parents, we set rules not to harm you or put you to boredom. We created these rules out of love. Our purpose is to raise a God-fearing daughter:  strong and faith-driven enough to survive storms. God already has laid His plans for you – our main goal is to prepare you to walk with Him. Any good that comes out from those values we planted will be just the fruit of our faith.  Thus, your obedience will prepare your good future with us and with God.

I hope you appreciate these words.

Love As Always,

Daddy 

Dealing With Your Worries

My Dearest Vera,

We were so worried the other night.

     You seem to feel uneasy throughout your sleep. In a good day, you probably will start hitting the bed at around seven in the evening. But maybe it's our fault that we let you stay up and laugh for almost the whole afternoon; love, your laugh can turn any bad day into a blessing.   We ran out of ways to appease you as you were crying almost every hour. Your mom and I took turns in cuddling you to sleep. We were definitely worried; we don't know what to do. Of course, we cancelled our early morning meeting with our couples' group because we want to be with you. At five in the morning, you had a mild fever. Suddenly, I remember that I need to pray, worrying won't really help especially when there's something we can't do. Our group leader, Anthony, together with the group prayed for you to be well. Surprisingly, you woke up your mom by poking her face and giving her your signature morning smile.

     By the grace of God through prayers, you became well. Love, most of the time, we being human forget that we need not worry about our life. By acknowledging God us the center of our life, we always walk with him. Thus, building a good relationship with him enables us to converse with Him directly and without hesitation. Worrying, most of the time, consumes us that we forget to hold on to a stronger foundation, our faith.

     Later in your life, you'll worry too. I have made it clear in my past letters that you will not live a storm-free life, but a storm proof one – there’s a big difference. But don't let worries sit on your heart for so long, Close your eyes and pray. Prayer is a declaration; it comes from the intentions of our heart.

Your prayer doesn't need to be in a perfect grammar, anything that comes from the goodwill of your heart will do.  When someone says that you just need to recite a prayer from a booklet or a piece of paper that someone wrote, please brush it off - prayer is not a standard spiel. Close your eyes, love. Feel the presence of our heavenly father and speak out... When Jesus died on the cross, he opens up our communication with God directly - that only through Him our prayers will be answered.

     Remember these things, Love. As you grow to your faith you'll probably know more. Our church will be there to equip you as you build your Christian foundation. But, we have a long way to go, my love… a long way to go. Keep the faith.

Love,
Daddy

Valuing Relationships

Dearest Vera,

How are you, Love? 

Last week you eagerly showed me your crawling skills. It’s kind of different than most babies do; you pushed yourself up from the floor and then folded your thighs to an almost kneeling position and then thrust your self to a lying position again. Repeatedly, it’s a reminiscent of how little frogs leap – but you are no frog my love, you’re the loveliest gift from God.

You are different. Everyone is different.

Unique probably is the right word - hackneyed and over used throughout my generation. But love, don’t over value uniqueness just like others did;  that instead of being a cut above the rest, they were instead cut off from the rest, without knowing that the relationship that they should have valued most were destroyed beyond repair.   

Value your relationships more than things. This will enable you to share freely the blessings that God gave you. It is God’s plan to bless you so that you can bless others. In that way, you can testify to His Glory and share the gospel.  Remember what they told you in church? That Jesus went down to have relationship with us. He did not just go down for the sake of seeing the Jews, neither to just enjoy life on earth.  Even His great commission, to make disciples of all nations, was pegged into building relationships.

Your mom and I had gone through many broken relationships – for the reason that we and our friends grew apart as we grow older.  But there’s one relationship that we are currently working together now – and that is to grow our relationship with God.  Unlike any other, this relationship will fulfill great things.
 

I think you’ll never appreciate it until you become a fine lady, but we want to dedicate our lives guiding you with God’s words so that you can endure any storm. Don’t worry; we don’t expect you to see the whole picture now. But reading more of my letters, perhaps, will help you understand our actions and principles in the future.

Loving You Always,

Daddy

Bad Things Happen

My Lovely Vera,

How was your day? I hope it is not the same as Daddy. I have experienced a lot of challenges this week. First, a kid rammed our car with his bicycle – I press the brake because I already saw him approaching, apparently he was looking somewhere else. He and his bike were unharmed – but it will surely cost a lot to fix the dent.   Then just a few hours before I wrote this letter, I discovered that our car’s tire was nearly flat because three nails went into it.  When the tire guy inspected the damage, it seems that Daddy needs to buy a new one.

Bad things will happen, love.  The magnitude of challenges maybe different as you grow older. Still, these challenges are essential for us to live.  Daddy became a Christian yesterday - officially, but you might ask in the future – Why does God let bad things happen to His people?  Let me tell you one thing I learned from our church:

“Christianity does not promise a storm-free life. Every life will occasionally hit by storms. Christianity promises that if we build our lives on biblical foundations, the storms will not destroy us”

Mostly challenges were either caused by disobedience of man to God’s will and or the frailty of man over his flesh. But surely, with Christ-teachings as our foundation, our responses will not of those that will displease God. Instead, we’ll walk according to His will with the faith that everything is being prepared for a greater purpose.

Probably, love, you will ask again; Daddy what’s our purpose in life?  I might bore you with countless explanations. But I am thinking of planting these words to you, that in the future as you grow older you’ll find the most adhering answers to your questions:

“God created man out of love – The two main purpose of man is to love God and love others.”

Remember that these words are not my own. It is a paraphrase of my readings about Love in the Bible. You’ll learn more as you read the Gospel. Make it a daily habit, love. It will surely pay-off in the future.

Warm Hugs,

Daddy 

My World Today

My Dearest Vera,

Days after you reach eight months, you are learning fast to babble different syllables. Although you still speak gibberish, I can feel that you’ll be a talkative girl. 

As my first letter to you, I’ll tell you about how the world works today, during my time. I know that you are too young to appreciate, but let me describe everything in a child-like manner so that you’d be able to grasp when you start reading.

The world today is in a brink of collapse – supposedly like a sand drifting out of the box or lego blocks shattering when you threw them off the wall. If I am to divide the world into four groups, every part does not agree with each other. Relationship of man to its society and man to God are both falling apart. 

There is also a great wealth imbalance. Imagine that you have ten friends. One of them owns a bag of candies and does not like to share with the other nine. You and your friends have to beg or do ridiculous favors just to be spared with one candy. Since most candies are held by one, nine of your friends would fight just to get one. I’m deeply saddened that countries have to throw unnecessary fights, but if just become good stewards of God’s creation – a lot of negative impact can be prevented.

Tomorrow will be a big day for Daddy. I’ll be attending the Victory Weekend. You’d probably know this when you become part of the Kid’s church. I’ll be rekindling my relationship with God through the grace of our lord, Jesus Christ. 

I’ll explain this more to you as you grow older– but the essence of man’s faith can be read in John 3:16 – better open up your bible now. I have really prepared my heart for this. My mentor, Arnel, played a good role in walking me through my faith. Someday, when you are as old as Daddy now, you’d recall what I did (or I’ll be doing in today's context) and feel so proud that your Daddy made a good choice.

I am ending this letter now. I have to meet your mom in her office so that we can go home fast… I’m sure that you’ll welcome us both with the biggest smile.

Love as always,

Daddy