Walkway Reflections

This picture and the one below were taken on Good Friday
at the Bonifacio High Street.
This lovely sprawling mall was nearly empty
except for people who were going through the Walkway and
the clean up crew who were busy cleaning the pavement,
and the granite tile floors of the decorative fountains
found throughout the place.

Global City, April 2, 2010

I'm back in Manila.

After spending just a week in Bacolod City, I arrived in this city on March 31 to do a series of Financial Foundations and Ancient Paths seminars in Alabang New Life Church.

My friend Trudi is with me.

It was quite significant for me that on the last day of March, I was in Manila for the first day of the seminar entitled Building a Strong Financial House. This is a powerful and extremely relevant video teaching series given by Craig Hill, the person who gives senior leadership to Family Foundations International (FFI), based in Littleton, Colorado.

FFI is a non-profit Christian ministry and world-wide organization that works alongside thousands of local churches to help rebuild and re-establish a culture of blessing to God's people in their relationships, marriage, family, finances and life purpose. This is done through "life-impacting experiences" in a seminar setting, as well as resource materials and tools in over 40 nations around the world.

This is not really the best time to be here. On Holy Thursday and Good Friday, all the stores are closed, even most eateries and restaurants. Even the trains stop for four days, and resume only on Easter Monday, when the whole metropolis comes back to life. Because it is a long weekend, probably seventy to eighty percent of the population go up to the mountain resorts, or down to the famous beaches of La Union and Batangas.

But I love it!

There is no traffic in the city, and it is quiet.

The serenity all around enables me to hear the voice of God more clearly!

Although this trip was unplanned, when I received the invitation to return to Manila so soon, there was a yes in my heart to do it.

In January of 2009, just two months after my husband passed away, I received a clear call from God that He was bringing me into a new season of my life - a season of healing and restoration, and being a life-giver, a servant to be an agent of healing for the bride of Christ, the church.

God seemed to be telling me that He was putting me in a spiritual greenhouse, pouring a healing balm over the areas of my emotional wounding, that I myself might be a vessel of redemptive healing in the lives of people that I encounter.

When you begin to have a fresh perspective into the events of your past, you gain an understanding of why those things happened, and you realize that God gives you authority to speak into the hearts of people God sends your way.

Years ago I never imagined that this was the kind of life in store for me.

Somehow I thought that my life was all about myself, my dreams, and my ambitions. Well, in a real way, it still is.

But, in many ways I also feel like being a doctor or a nurse "on call." A servant who must always be ready when the Master calls. It is really a dying to self, a thousand deaths on any given day. It really is no longer all about me. It is all about Him.

It was not always easy to live life this way... and I would sometimes still find myself longing for a neat, well ordered existence, where "there is a time and a place for everything."

Since the first seminar was scheduled for early evenings, Trudi and I had the daytime to spend as we wished. On Holy Thursday and Good Friday, we went to the Global City to do an interactive "Stations of the Cross" called The Walkway.

I must say that it was a most beautiful way to welcome the arrival of April into my life!

If you have been following my blog closely, you will understand that I practice the spiritual discipline of celebration quite naturally. There is always a reason to celebrate - the coming and going of the seasons, the beginning of another month, the closing of the year, a birthday... anything at all gives me reason to pause, and celebrate!

Trudi and I went through all fourteen stations of the cross on Holy Thursday, and it was so meaningful an experience that we decided to come back the following day.

Below are pictures of the Walkway brochure that I pasted in my journal.

Due to space and time constraints, I won't be able to write all about it on this blog, but I will share a few stations that have impacted and touched me deeply.

The stations were so beautifully done, and it gave people a place to be in touch with the agony and the pain of Jesus during his last hours here on earth, as well as experience the joy and glory of Jesus who rose victorious from the grave on Resurrection Sunday.

If only for this experience, I believe that God sent me back to Manila at this exact time.

Do come and visit my blog again in the days to come. Hopefully, I will find enough time to share some of this wonderful Holy Week experience...during which Jesus revealed Himself to me in a fresh new way!