Today is Valentine’s Day. For restaurateurs, it is the best day for business bar none! All seats are taken in the best restaurants that you can find; even the bad ones would be full. Of course the motels and hotels also enjoy a brisk business today to celebrate Love Day. Lest you have already forgotten, our first love should be to God, which is the 1st command of God given to Moses in the Decalogue or the Ten Commandments.
This was further strengthened by the words of our Lord Jesus Christ when he was asked “What is the greatest commandment” and the Lord replied, “Thou shall love the Lord their God with all your heart, all your mind and all your soul and the other to love thy neighbor as thyself.” So there you are, the greatest of God’s commandments is to love Him first and foremost. Then we can love the rest of our family, our wife and our children.
Remember what was written in scriptures, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you.” Give first to God His due and in turn He will bless you immensely. This should be our attitude today, to show God our love (this is called Agape) for Him and then we can express our human love (called Eros) to our family and friends. Happy Valentine’s Day.
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If you open your radio or watch TV the past two days, you will be bombarded with songs like “I will always love you” or“Saving all my love for you”by songstress Whitney Houston because she suddenly died last Sunday. As to what caused her death, it is still being speculated as of this writing. Because no one has yet come up with the reason for her death, people believe she must have died due to drug overdose… after all her drug addiction was very much a public knowledge.
People from all walks of life are saying that she was too young to die and she didn’t have to die so soon. Wait-a-minute! Haven’t we heard that remark before when two years ago, Pop Superstar Michael Jackson also unexpectedly died at the prime of his life? How many more celebrity deaths do we have to endure before the world really comes out in open indignation against illegal drugs?
Today, when a poor drug junkie dies on the street, people who get to know about this would merely shrug their shoulders and say “Oh that’s because he was a drug addict.”But since Whitney Houston was one of the greatest voices in our generation, those same people would say, “Sayang, she had to die so young!” Perhaps it was prophetic that she had to die on the eve of the Grammy Awards, because her death sent a pall of gloom in that otherwise glittering affair. Maybe it was the Lord’s way of telling Hollywood… get your acts together… and don’t glorify people who use illegal drugs.
Remember the bumper sticker that declared, “Jail the pusher, spare the user.” If you ask me, it’s messages like this that has perpetuated drug use and abuse, which is truly a menace of society. We all know that Satan is behind the evil that is drug abuse and it is the same devil that entices people to show mercy on the drug user, but not the pusher. Well, we know too well that many pushers, like those poor Filipino “drug mules,” were executed in China, while in Cebu that African woman tourist was just sentenced with life imprisonment.
For as long as Hollywood, and yes even our local media here continues to glorify drug-crazed celebrities and give them importance, we shall never see the end of famous people suddenly dying due to drug abuse. If the US Government and our own Philippine government change its tactics and also impose strict penalties to illegal drugs users, then perhaps the situation might change. Like it or not, it is the drug user that creates the demand for illegal drugs. Without that demand, it would mean the end of drug pushers.
Today, the United States of America has troops fighting in Afghanistan even if the world’s number one terrorist, Osama Bin Laden of Al Qaeda fame, has already been exterminated with extreme prejudice. But the reason why America still has troops fighting in Afghanistan and flying drones snuffing out the lives of Taliban fighters is because they have the control of the poppy fields of Afghanistan. They are fighting the war on illegal drugs.
If many cities in Mexico, like Juarez just across the US Border, are in the midst of a drug war, it is due to the fact that these areas are the jump-off point for illegal drugs. This drug war has now affected famous tourism destinations in Mexico like Cancun or Puerto Vallarta and has caused tourism numbers to drop. That’s because of the presence of well-armed drug lords who are pushing illegal drugs to the world’s number one drug market, the United States of America. Jail the user and the drug menace will vanish.
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Email: vsbobita@mozcom.com