On "Repentance and Faith"

My heart was touched with pity this morning when I heard my older brother, age 51, cried on the other end of the phone. He called me from a hospital. I wonder and worry because with my entire life it was the first time I heard this man cry.

This elder brother, a true brother in blood, was admitted to a local hospital last week There are a lot of complications, the doctor said, including arthritis, kidney, heart, and others. His arms and legs swelled and produce pain when touched. He can't stand and walk by himself. The sad thing is fter almost 25 years of immersing himself with vices, gambling and women, he ended up with nothing, no wife, no money, no home. except a God sent angel, a widow, who accepted him. This woman is a manifestation that God listened to my prayers as I kept asking Him in the past to give my brother somebody who could guide him and help him return to the path of righteousness. Despite this gift from God, my brother insisted to go on his worldly ways. Now God must have tried another way to let him realize bad things would not result to good things in the end. But my brother, I call him a liar as he kept making lies, big lies, he doesn't follow God. And I even worry that he doesn't believe in Him at all. So how can he appreciate the efforts of God.

But again, whether you are a believer of God or not there would come a time in your life when all the wrongs you have done in the past would result to bad consequences and sufferings. A time when you have to think back and ponder, "if you only have done the other way you could have ended better." Many would in fact accept the reality that all of the times "bad karma" always strikes last.

But for many, remorse is useless when all that had been done had consummated everything a person needs: relationships, materials, and life. They say, it is worthless at the moment when irreparable damages had been done. For me, I don't think so. In one single second of the life of a sinner when he "repents" by heart and return to his Maker, every irreparable damages in the eyes of man, whether relationships, materials, and life, could be restored. The magic word is "Faith."

This things that I kept telling him must have trickled down into his spirit that could have been touched him. I saw him this morning and I felt the sufferings. I have no treasures either to support his medications. The only thing I can contribute is my prayers and encouragement for him to give up his old ways, to repent and have faith in God.