Summer Heat

Do you feel the intense summer heat in the Philippines?

I do.

Every. Single. Waking. Hour. Of. Everyday.

It just gets hotter and hotter everyday. I hate you, climate change. ☹ The hotter summer brought by climate change makes me more environmentally concerned. It makes me hate plastic, illegal mining, CFCs etc...... Oh well, I cannot help it. It's just hard to endure the heat this summer.

Photo grabbed here

The Philippine heat has a strong influence on our culture.

Dr. Jose Rizal admitted in his essay, "The Indolence of the Filipinos", that Filipinos are lazy. He wrote what could have made the Filipinos this lazy. He gave strong and witty reasons, which seem valid to me.

The first root of the Pinoy's laziness he mentioned?

THE HOT CLIMATE.

Oo nga naman. Why not? Heat does lots of things to people.

And I know you know what I'm talking about...

Heat sucks all our energy.

Handkerchiefs are ignored nowadays. Because we all know that handkerchiefs are too pacute to absorb all the amount of perspiration a Pinoy could lose in a few hours. Bimpo, twalya, whatever you'd like to call it. That will do. Or maybe you need more than one of those thingies.. The heat is insane! It sucks all of our body water like a really thirsty cow! Less body water, less strength. Less strength, less enthusiasm to do stuff. Less enthusiasm to do stuff, less productivity.

In other cases, heat makes Pinoys its slave.

Heat would show us what it can do and we respond trying to avoid the heat.

We try to calm ourselves down and do minimal work - less work, less body heat.

We try to fix ourselves in the cooler places - like right in front of the electric fan.

Literally trying to do nothing and trying to stay in one place cooler is the story of our summer days.

If you think about it, this response to heat is the same as throwing your whole summer in the garbage can.

For young Christians, summer is a great time to do things we cannot do because of school.

It is a great time to be more active in ministries more than ever, to participate in more church activities, and most importantly, to have a looooot more time for our personal devotions and Bible study.

You don't have requirements to worry about, or deadlines to meet.

Summer break is quite a gift.

Why waste it by being lazy?

You certainly won't have a blast this summer if all you could remember were the movies you watched while trying all the different positions on your sofa (with a few out-of-towns and swimming.. ya know, vacay stuff).

Your ministries this summer wouldn't have so much impact if you go there and hardly do your best in serving people as you serve God. Laziness could easily urge you to just stand there, observe, rest "a little"... And boom! You forget to actually "serve". An opportunity to encounter God in serving others would pass by you unnoticed.

Actually doing something does not necessarily mean you're not a lazy Christian. A lazy Christian may still do some stuff - the thing is that he could be too lazy to live every minute for God. He might stand up, go out of their house and do something, but he could still be too lazy to offer every minute of his summer to God.

Summertime, "more" time to do non-academic stuff, that time you were waiting for all semester to be revived, would go wasted if you succumbed to your laziness. The big chance to let God rekindle the fire through your personal meet-ups with Him would not be maximized if you let laziness reign over your summer.

We all want to hear in the end, "Well done, good and faithful servant!"
But if our Master would look at you today, would He say this instead?
"You wicked, lazy servant!"
(Matthew 25:26)

Do not let the summer heat eat you up.

Instead, let the heat of your burning desire to serve God be hotter than the heat of the sun!

It's not yet too late. How do you want to change the course of your 2013 summer to make it God-centered?☺