By Jade Angelo Gascon
Executive Assistant, On Eagle’s Wings Foundation

Whether you prefer goodbye, farewell, paalam or a quiet embrace, the grip of sadness is never really easy to slacken. Words and gestures don’t bring much comfort. Because the soul is designed to cling. Cling to relationships it deems precious.

“Promise me you'll never forget me because if I thought you would I'd never leave.” --Winnie the Pooh (And I'm quoting him here, haha)

I’m not sure if everyone in our youth church has already completely recovered from the farewell of Ate (Filipino for “older sister”) Lennie Laña, who left for Norway less than a year ago. She was one of our youth directors. Sweet and never aloof, her leadership and friendship are things I’m sure many of us still remember when we either daydream or get caught in moments of nothingness. She left an unforgettable legacy to our church. To our lives.

Last week, another one said goodbye. Ate Lhen Mabilangan, our longest-serving youth director, left for the US. She would sure make many of us miss her fearless resolve to confront what needs to be confronted, tempered by her kakulitan, which always crops up at the right time.

She’s the type who looks after individuals. If you’re a rookie in church hospitality, just watch how she approaches people, engages them in genuine conversations, shares a laugh with them and offers to pray for them. Congratulations. You can now be hospitable, too.

Her ministry experience is marked by 20 years of action-packed faithfulness. Aside from helping people get planted into the church family, Ate Lhen has also been a church planter. She was one of the missionaries who helped establish our church chapter in Albay. I can recall how she vibrantly recounted to me her carpentering tasks which she gamely accomplished there. Today, the Albay church has flourished into a network of church chapters that continue to grow. It must have been sad for them when she left.

Our sadness now, though, is overwhelmed by the knowledge of what she left us for: Ate Len is getting married!

There goes the bride-to-be

Whenever Ate Lhen is asked about how she feels about leaving, the sparkle in her eyes never fail to betray her bliss. I can see that she’s nervous but excitedly raring. Clueless but secure, nostalgic but in love. I can also tell that she draws strength from the confidence that she has done her job well by God’s grace alone.

Time to let go. Some people really have to say goodbye. This very well reminds me of Acts 20:13-28. As Paul said his goodbyes to the Ephesians, he was confident that part of him shall stay with them: the courage he displayed, the selflessness he showed, the definitive life example he set.

In one way or another we will also turn out to be the ones leaving. Leaving our classmates, friends, co-employees, families or a boss. As we say goodbye, farewell or paalam, may it also mean I’m leaving something behind—a fond memory we shared, a joke they first heard from us or perhaps a legacy that is uniquely ours.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

By Jade Angelo Gascon
Executive Assistant, On Eagle’s Wings Foundation

Because of the internet, we can now chat, laugh, get angry and attracted (among others) with people we haven’t even physically met.

In my case, I felt a containable amount of dislike to a member of our youth church in Australia. It started when Word War I erupted between us. On an online forum maintained by our youth church, we publicly argued about some church systems we couldn’t find common ground on.

We handled the Word War like true gentlemen in their early 20s—idealistic and I’m never wrong, get out of my way. He was eloquent, I was correct. He was disputatious, I was indisputable. Some of our church leaders felt that the issue we couldn’t agree on was too sensitive to be brought up on a public online forum. So in the end, neither he nor I won—the forum discussion thread got deleted.

From that moment on, I’ve never bothered to communicate with Mr. Wise Guy again though I didn’t really loathe him supremely. He just struck me as too rabid and sporadically imprudent.

But then he bothered. He sent me friendly email messages that initially made me feel uneasy. Raw human instinct made me want to consult Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” first before responding to him. Why is my “mortal enemy” sending me these friendly messages?

Because he was reaching out. Sincerely reaching out.

I replied to his messages, somehow embarrassed that I wasn’t the one who reached out first. And without me personally meeting him yet, I discovered through our exchange that Mr. Wise Guy was, after all, Mr. Nice Guy. If we were samurais, I should have deserved death by harakiri because of my shamefully towering pride. My indifference to what I thought was a petty sort of hate toward a brother in Christ led me to be careless with the emotions I harbored. An unpleasant mixture of pride and apathy silently poisoned me.

I’m glad to say we’re now good online buddies. His humility led me to humility as well. It hit me hard in the face. It was too genuine to be ignored, too hard to do to be feigned. I must admit that I thought there was nothing wrong about me until his display of kindness dismantled my lofty perception of myself.

By Jade Angelo Gascon
Executive Assistant, On Eagle’s Wings Foundation

It’s easy to burn out. That may be one of the truest statements that can be made about being a church volunteer. And I realized lately that, aside from being true, it’s also experiential.

These past days have been deadly toxic. I’ve been so busy doing a lot for my youth church you’d think I’m aspiring for canonization in the distant future. After organizing a youth service, I had to write news articles, design a number of posters, coordinate my teams and do counseling. Pulling off a stunt like this would often compel me to stay for long hours in the church office. Add to that the occasional reprimands and some petty squabbles we all run into once in a while as a result of miscommunication, stress, or sheer entanglement in a sticky web of criss-crossed responsibilities. With hefty tasks piling up one after another, who wouldn’t burn out?

I’ve been quickly burning out.

But I guess that’s really what happens when the quality of what we do for the Lord becomes something less than what should be done for the Lord. It’s not mediocrity. Rather, it’s hypocrisy.

We become hypocrites when our hands “serve” God, but our hearts are far away from Him; when we are energetic slaves of the kingdom but couldn’t care less to spend some quiet time as servants of the King. Sincere service to God here becomes fraught with doubt and discredit. Am I really serving God or have I just been a servant of my responsibilities?

Neither meeting deadlines nor fulfilling responsibilities should replace God’s glory as our motivation to serve Him. Tasks don’t make good masters. If they become the gods to which our service pays homage, they will drain our vigor to the point of exhaustion—burning us out without mercy.

“Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord,” Romans 12:11 encourages us. It’s easy to burn out if your heart isn’t ablaze for the right purpose and consumed by Holy Fire. Correct and humble attitude in Christian service is founded on prayer and Bible meditation that produces strong bond with God. That is the one true passion we should burn with.