The song “You raise me up” goes
“When am down and, oh my soul, so weary,
When troubles come and my heart burdened be,
Then I am still and wait here in the silence,
Until you come and sit awhile with me.”
IT IS with deep sadness, seeing footages and reading news of the devastation at the onslaught of Typhoon Mangkhut/Ompong in the Philippines and Southeast Asia as well as the hurricane Florence in the East Coast. Many deaths in Benguet specially Itogon and the millions of properties that were washed out by the flood or covered by landslide, the cost is beyond imagination. Many are down and weary in the soul and the heart is burdened. It is when many become hopeless, especially the victims and the volunteers who are face to face with the reality of the magnitude of the cause of pain and frustration. It is beyond compare and yet we can empathize by comparing it to similar situations and occurrences in our lives.
When we were kids, I remember that everytime it rains my father would go out with his shovel and direct the water from the mountains away from our house. I would remember that during the dry season he will call some of our relatives to do riprap on our property to protect us from the expected overflow of Balili River. We have seen people swept down the river when the Adiwang boarding house was swept away, a few meters from our house. For many years our family has been doing just that, protecting life and property from the slide and the water floods.
But the effect of typhoon Ompong is beyond compare to water volume the city has received and experienced in swollen rivers, flooded roads and waterways and the strong surge causing landslides.
Tons of tears are shed by children in Baguio, Dantay, in Itogon and elsewhere who saw how their family members were buried in the slide and all they can do was run from the torrential rain and mudslides. The father who is paining, sits and wait for his two miner sons to be retrieved. Orphaned children, grieving parents and siblings may be with hopelessness. And not only them, the police, the miners, the barangay leaders digging through the rubble with hope that they find the buried and the missing. The strength that is needed when rescue has turned into retrieval and when retrieval is taking too slow.
But the occurrence also awakened the spirit of volunteerism and generosity of our people. The compassionate heart overflows even the hardened and cynical hearts. People just appealed to stop negativism and lift a finger for the victims and the volunteers in the search and retrieval areas specially Itogon, Balacbac, Santo Tomas, Lucnab and other areas where confirmed incidents of landslide have occurred. This is the right attitude at this moment, it is the response that God would expect from his people- to care enough. Even the millenials have bonded themselves and led the collection and flow of donations from the city to the evacuation areas and ground zero.
And the groups have been formed informally or in coordination with one another towards a cause - Bangon Baguio, Bangon Benguet,Hawak Kamay Norte, Typhoon Response together with other organized teams of DSWD, LGUs, NGOs and church groups. This is hope, this is what we have after hopeless situations, the hope in Godís grace overflows to people who share compassionately to those in need and in suffering. I am so teary eyed reading the exchanges in social media updating people of the needs, the situation and what people are doing in response to the aftermath of Typhoon Mangkhut/Ompong. The PNP helicopters and mountaineers volunteering as hikers, bringing supply to isolated villages, all towards a goal of providing for the needy and suffering. It is indeed the presence of God in the situations of hopelessness and yet the cynical will say, “where was God in the storm” and the faithful may respond the storm may have crossed our paths because we were saving more of those on the other side who can not cope more than we can do. We will never know and it may continue to be an unceasing debate, yet deep in our faith we believe that God was also in the eye of the storm for it may have been worse than what we have experienced. And because of that we know he is also with us at this time. Youth who never thought they can do something have moved up as volunteers, being able to do something they never thought they can do.
And the song continues “you raise me up, so I can stand on mountains
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas
I am strong, when I am on your shoulders
You raise me up, to more than I can be.”