The Talk and The Deed

"It is better to do without talking, than talk without doing."

This weekend, I chose my way back to God by going to Church and participating in Focolare gathering. My life has been very unsettling these last few weeks and I feel that I have to go back and start over. So there I was, sitting in the Word of Life meeting in Pandeyan, Yogyakarta. Word of Life, or in Bahasa "Sabda Kehidupan", is a monthly gatherings held by Focolare movement to support each other in living truthfully according to the Law of God. What we do in these gatherings is we took a phrase from the Bible, and we try to apply those phrase in our daily life during that month.

For those of you who don't know, Focolare is a youth movement all over the world founded by Chiara Lubich in 1943. Its main purpose is to create a united world of people from all age, vocation, religion, conviction, and culture by respecting and valuing diversity. For more information, visit Focolare web page in http://www.focolare.org/usa/en/.

The phrase we took in September is from the first chapter of The Gospel of John, as written in the picture. We were told to 'love thy neighbour', to love without intention, and more importantly, to love in truth and action. A while back, I was strolling through 9gag, and found a post about how we all have this annoying friend who would post Bible passage in social media, while we know that this particular friend lives far away from the Law of God. This sad truth is the proof that not all of us able to love unintentionally, unconditionally, and that most of us choose to love in words, rather than in action.

When we love in words, we show what we do to other people, and we are praised for that. But when we love in actions, most people will not notice what we do, we will not be praised, but the person that receive our love will remember us for the rest of their life. For me, this brings more than enough relief than any praises I might get if I love only in words.

I remembered one of my friend thanked me, out of the blue, for some good deeds that I did two or three years before that. And as I recall, I didn't even do much back then. I teared up, because I was so happy that she still remembered it, and still feel thankful, hopefully, to this day. Because then, I have become God's instrument to bring happiness to others. And to me as a Catholic, being God's instrument is the highest honor a child can get from her Father.