Just recently, ex-police Rolando Mendoza had taken a bus full of tourists as hostages. It lasted for 10 straight hours and ended with three people killed including the hostage-taker and 17 survivors. By this event our country was put to shame in front of the world. It is a big wound to us Filipinos and I pray for its healing.
While watching the news it made me wonder how such people like him do such thing. What had been going on inside of him that made him decide to do this crime? If we were in his shoes, what would've happened? And then something dawned on me, a certain feeling of mercy and love as if God was trying to show a moral lesson to me that we should all learn from the incident:
'If only there is a Christian who made him change his mind on becoming a hostage-taker.. if only in his life and in his brokenness someone cared. It would've been a different story. It could've been very easy to prevent. No need for guns and bullets. No need for brute force and violence to settle the disputes.. Just love, that's the answer. It was the only thing each of us needed, more important than physical needs, and in his case no one cared.. and it robbed away his hope making him decide to do the hostage taking.
“Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for one second without hope.”
He died the moment he realized he has no more hope.'
Let us be reminded always about the lesson behind the many hostage dramas that have happened in history through this prayer:
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things
I cannot change, the courage to change the things
I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
-The Serenity Prayer of Alcoholics by Anonymous
