‘Community pantries require no state franchise, nor government permit, nor police clearance. The business of helping your neighbor, as God commanded, requires no business permit from man.’
ADVOCACY is the more essential concept than activism in community pantries but during this dark time they go together. Kindness, generosity and compassion in the wrong hands are red-tagged and yet this suspected propaganda move from the Left may yet be one of their most endearing. Malacanang was not about to welcome it after stinging rebukes on the government’s mishandling of the COVID response that led anew to joblessness and hunger.
The heart that counts in the midst of suffering and lack can overshadow the greed of others. It really seems possible for the multiplication of loaves and fishes to come to pass in the hands of those who have little but still willingly give out of their meagerness. And others like them continue to inspire those who have much to give more, which the greedy and the incompetent, from the FB post of former ABS-CBN News Channel (ANC) managing director Jing Magsaysay, cannot appreciate. An ice cream vendor who happens to be a Christian pastor was giving away his products for free in Pasig, saying poverty should not stop anyone from doing good.
Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto has unleashed a mouthful against a government that relishes seeing red than bread. “Let them bloom wherever they sprout, regardless of who planted them. Bureaucracy has no business throwing a shade over this pure expression of people power. Community pantries require no state franchise, nor government permit, nor police clearance. The business of helping your neighbor, as God commanded, requires no business permit from man. They have become self-policing projects by a disciplined populace. The police should, in fact, commend the organizers, instead of censuring them”
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Many Born-Again believers, Protestants and Catholics declare they love Jesus Christ but fail to mean it. We are familiar that Jesus said those “who truly love me follow my commands,” which include denial of self. This is a major condition in serving Christ with “all our heart, all our soul, all our mind and all our strength” which the vast majority of the only Christian country in the Far East have neglected. Denying yourself is, of course, giving up one’s material possessions or life’s comforts to serve God through His calling in various ministries.
The pandemic has presented both a challenge and an opportunity for so many to be counted during these trying times, but have been restrained by fear of sickness and death .The shining example of this exceptional sacrifice were the apostles who fully knew the “far greater rewards” that awaited them in the next life; they never feared their violent deaths, welcoming them as the ticket to eternal life that they embraced as “the eye has not seen nor the mind has conceived.” Above all, they were deeply enamored and greatly inspired by the suffering and death of the Savior for them and the rest of humanity.
