OVERWHELMED? JUST GIVE YOUR BEST!

We have been preparing for at least a week now for the opening of classes in Colegio de San Juan de Letran, in Calamba. Our office, the Facilities Management Office of the colegio, has been receiving dozens of reports from the different department on broken fixtures and facilities that have to be repaired or replaced. However, due to limited time and resources, we cannot address them all. Until last weekend, our staff had responded to several job requests, one of which is the repainting of chairs in some classrooms. And so they did paint the said chairs this weekend. However, with the inclement weather, the fresh paints on the chairs have not yet dried. My worried staff informed yesterday morning about this situation. I too began to worry. Where would the freshmen college students sit come Monday? Certainly they cannot sit on chairs with fresh paint on them. And we prayed for a solution. Later that day, it was announced that classes were suspended. And we were relieved, we have at least one day to let the paint dry on the chairs and make the necessary transfer of unused chairs from other classrooms.

In life, we receive duties and responsibilities, be it in our offices or in our community. These responsibilities may sometimes overwhelm us due to their enormity placed side by side with our limitations, whether on knowledge or experience. Our limitations bother us. Worse is at times, we drive off responsibilities given to us because we anticipate our failure to deliver. We try to pass these loads to others fearing that we cannot carry them by ourselves.

Moses fretted as the Israelites rabble against the Lord for lack of variety in the food they had been taking in the desert (Numbers 11:4b-15). They longed for fish, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic. They were not satisfied with the manna that the Lord provided them. That displeased Moses, and so he begged the Lord to kill him instead of continuing to have the responsibility of leading the Israelites to the Promised Land. The disciples too thought of driving the crowd after a day of listening to the Lord, that they might go to villages and look for food themselves. But Jesus said: "Feed them yourselves." But how can that be, since they only had five loaves and two fish? How could they fulfill such responsibility of feeding thousands of men and women with their limited resources? Probably, the disciples were as worried as Moses when they faced such immense responsibility and maybe so are we when confronted by our limitations (of simply having five loaves and two fish of knowledge and experience, etc.).           

The Good News is, whatever shortcomings and limitation we may have, the Lord who gave us these responsibilities will make up for them. He is the Lord who fed the Israelites not only with manna but also with quail eggs and meat. He is the Lord who fed the thousands with five loaves and two fish. We do not have to carry the responsibilities given to us all by ourselves. The Lord who gave them to us will accompany us in carrying them out. The Lord is God, and we are His creatures. He can fulfill His will through our limited five loaves and two fish. Let us not worry and play His role. Let God be God in our lives.