The Benefit of the Doubt is a Greater Benefit to Give
I was going through piles of news items the other day about the financial crisis besetting the world. The picture being painted was growing dismally depressing with each news item when comic relief injected itself through the following item I read:
“The financial crisis has reached unprecedented proportions. In spite of continuous clamor from employees for more benefits, companies across the country are saying that the only benefit they can guarantee to give at this point is the benefit of the doubt.”
It distracted me from my train of thought but as I pondered on this nugget of humor, I realized that the “benefit of the doubt” is something that we might summarily dismiss in the course of daily human interaction but which in fact can be an important aspect of Christian personal relationships.
Q: Why do physical therapists not treat themselves?
A: They don’t want to indulge in self-PT
This joke came to my mind last Thursday while waiting for news about my wife, Queenie’s visit to a physical therapy clinic. I realized later that I was just trying to amuse myself because in reality I was worried about her and anxious to find out how her consultation turned out. Ever since the preceding Sunday, she has not been able to raise her right arm or move it without causing her serious pain on her shoulder joints. Even when she was not moving her arm, painful spasms would shoot down from her shoulder down her arm and was causing her much discomfort.
In the olden days, there was a town called Lernuscus who one day found itself under the threat of being attacked by the faraway town of Hidarabad. But since it would take the Hidarabanians still 30 days to reach them, they decided to prepare themselves for the impending war.
They started to arm themselves and stock on supplies and discuss among themselves how to best ward off the enemy's attack. On the second day however, some people noticed that there was a group of people who they perceived were not contributing as much to the effort as they were expecting so the former met among themselves to address their perceived problem.
"This group will not be able to help us any in our fight against the Hidarabanians. I suggest we kill them all before they become our liability."
So they gathered the latter group and lined them up against the wall and started shooting them until they all fell down.
Today I'd like to greet everyone here a Happy New Year! In 2007, I wrote "A New Year Message of Love" on my blog but this time I created a short flash presentation about it that I'd like to share with all of you as my way of greeting one and all. You may view the presentation here:
Whenever we hear Mass and get to the part of singing the Agnus Dei or Lamb of God, have we ever paused to reflect on the words that we use and ponder whether there is something amiss in the way that we are singing it? Singing it in English does not seem to have a problem at all because I have yet to hear of a version of the song that deviates from the original words of the liturgical part from which it was taken. But I think it is in the Tagalog version where we start getting it muddled a bit.
