House (Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker)

Rating:
One game. Seven players. Three rules. Game ends at dawn.

The only way out is in.

House is the first novel written by two of the best Christian suspense fiction writers: Frank Peretti (author of This Present Darkness, Piercing the Darkness, The Oath) and Ted Dekker (author of Thr3e, Blink, Black, White, Red). This is really interesting for me because I love Peretti, and I’ve started liking Dekker already, and I was eager to read something written by them.

WARNING: Post may contain spoilers.

House starts with a couple named Jack and Stephanie Singleton, on their way to a counseling session for a marriage headed for divorce. Jack is a writer while Stephanie is a country singer, and apparently, they couldn’t stand each other anymore. While driving, a police officer chased them because Jack’s brake light is out, and then it turns out they were lost. The police officer points them to an alternate route, but someone sabotaged their tires and they end up at Wayside Inn, this little house by the side of the dusty road. There they met Leslie Taylor, a psychologist, and Randy Massarue, a know-it-all businessman, who also got into the same accident as well. They start to settle into the Inn, and then found a table set for four in the dining room, as if the owners of the house were expecting them.

(More…)

Hapon Birthday

The first time I really met you was during the second day of the LPEP, when you arrived with Louie. We didn’t really hang out until 2nd term frosh year, when we happened to be seatmates because our names come after each other. At first I thought you were too quiet for me, and I was wrong, because once I got to know you better, madaldal ka rin pala. :P

We grew closer come second year, and I remember you laptop because you’re nice like that. You were also there during the time I was oh-so in like (haha) with a close friend of yours, and you even did me a big favor by dropping him a big hint. ;) Haha, remember that? You were also the one who witnessed me crying in front of your laptop while debugging your MP back in AKIC. Mems, mehn!

I say this to almost everyone, but I really mean it: college would not have been the same without you. You listened to me without judgments, and you accepted me for who I am, faults and all. I’m happy that you finally found a place to call your own in this world, even after much failures. And I’m glad that even if we don’t see each other anymore, we’re still friends. :)

I know that your birthday usually brings you bad luck (how many cellphones have been stolen from you on your past birthdays?), and seeing your Y!M status just now…it seems like it’s another one of those birthdays again. *hugs* BUT, I hope that this birthday would still turn out differently and I hope that I made a difference with this simple greeting. If not, there’s the other birthdays to come, which I wish you as well. :) I miss you dude. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JHOSAREEN/LOVE/HAPON! You’re one of the reasons I am who I am today. :) Yesssh. Waboo! :)

P.S. I wanted to post this at exactly 12 midnight, but I was too slow in making the graphic. Ooops. :P

From Mere Christianity

I’ve been meaning to read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis for the longest time now but I’ve just read the first two chapters and stopped. I was feeling kind of low for the past days and I decided to pick this up and read a random chapter. Here’s what I read:

We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastity — like perfect charity — will not be attained by any merely human efforts. You can ask for God’s help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need is being given. Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, we need not despair even in our worst for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.
- Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis, p. 101-102 (emphasis mine)

Forgive me, Father, for relying too much on myself. I’m sorry for breaking your heart too many times. I’ve said this so many times but I still go back to where I started. I’m sorry dear Lord for taking back so many junk in my life. Please forgive me, and help me believe that You have made me clean. I ask for the strength to run away from temptation and not leave a forwarding address, and for the strength to stand up again when I have fallen. Help me to depend on nothing but You, not on my own strength but only in You. I want to love You better than this, Lord.

Junk

Before I started staying at a dorm near school back in third year college, I used to clean my room three times a year: one every after term. I know most people hate cleaning their rooms, and while I don’t particularly love it, I do it because it’s either I do it or my mom does it. I don’t like that because when that happens I can’t find anything in my room, plus there are a lot of things inside my room (i.e. my journal, among other things) that are a bit too personal for other people’s consumption. So I take the time every term to clean my room — who wants to sleep in a mess anyway?

And as with every cleaning binge, I find myself faced with so many things after cleaning: junk. All kinds of junk — from old test papers to notes to empty bottles of perfume to old worn out scrunchies to old and empty pens to almost anything that can accumulate in a span of three to four months. Some of them end up under my bed, behind my desk, inside my drawers and sometimes even behind my shoes. It’s funny and frustrating how so much junk could get stored up in such a short amount of time; to think I’m almost always out in school most of the time and the most time I spend in my room is when I sleep.

If that much junk could get inside a room for a span of three months, think of how many junk we get to accumulate in our lives in a span of…say, one day? I know that’s not long — in fact, comparing that to eternity, a day is probably just a grain of sand. But do you know how much junk we can store in our souls in a day? Do you have any idea?

I’d like to think of every day as a blank slate; a day where I can start over again and sort of forget my mistakes the day before. But sometimes, halfway during the day, I feel tired and frustrated about all the wrong things I have been doing or have been happening. Like, say, today, I didn’t get to go to school again because of the rain — that’s frustrating. Or say your sibling said something that annoyed you all of a sudden and you ended up fighting with him/her. A shouting match — and it’s only 10:00 am. What a day it must be huh? Or what about going through a day where you think you were actually good — and then falling into sin at night because your eyes landed on some magazine or you happen to chance upon a TV channel that is showing some “steamy” scenes?

Junk. Our lives are full of junk. Some big, some small, but junk nonetheless. You might say that you have a cleaner life than I do and I might insist that I am far more junk-free than that guy over there, but in the end, it’s still what it is: junk. If cleaning my room from junk every four months is frustrating, try cleaning out your life every day from junk. That would be even more frustrating. It’s hard enough deciding if a thing should be thrown away or not, why do I have to go through it every day?

Let me end this post with two quotes to think about.

“And remember this…the junk in your life and the junk in [his] life aren’t really all that different when you compare them to the holiness of the One who forgives them both. They’re both just pretty much junk.”
- Jake Phillips to his daughter Savannah, Savannah by the Sea, p. 256

“I love you the way you are, but I refuse to leave you that way.” (God)
- Kuya Philip, Talk 4, SFC CLP, May 20, 2006

Have a blessed rainy day everyone. :) Keep safe. :)

Sick leaves

I’m not working yet and I’ve made myself take sick leaves. Haha. I’m not really sick anymore, but I took the day off again to rest just so I can be ready for tomorrow. Plus it’s raining so hard here right now, so I can’t really go out. Tomorrow, I shall go to school for the Job Expo and then go home after a while so I won’t stress myself out too much. I need to be aware of my health, especially because I’m on the job hunt and being sick is not an option. :P

Ever since Sunday, I’ve been downing so much water and ginger tea so I would get better. Too bad for me because I know that there’s still a pack of Hershey’s plain chocolate in the freezer and I’ve been wanting to eat some since yesterday but I can’t. Boo. Too bad. Just a few more days. Just a few more days.

Anyway, I just thought I’d update. There’s nothing happening here, really. It’s just raining and raining. I’ve been out of it lately, and I’m in need for some serious spiritual exercise again. See what I mean by taking it one day at a time? I find myself in the need of His grace and mercy everyday because I’ve been realizing how much of a sinner I am and how I keep on hurting Him. :( But I’m still amazed because He forgives me the moment I truly ask for it, even if He knows I will fall all over again. Hay. I don’t know how I deserve such mercy because I know I don’t…but thanks to His Son, I receive it. Haaaay. I love You. :)

The rain’s getting harder. No lightning please? I don’t like lightning. I’m afraid of power outages because they zap out the fun. :/ And I hope it doesn’t rain as much tomorrow because I’m going to school for the Job Expo. I did say that already, right? Wohoo. I better finish my tea and take a shower, then I’ll be back for some novel writing. :D