BECAUSE OF LOVE

In the mall, our eyes met, I could sense that both our brains instantly worked like a scanner:  analyzing each other’s face—or what remained of it—and whatever memories we guessed we may have had formed together.  She already had my attention from afar and crabwise I slowly drew near her, and soon we were like total strangers in Mang Inasal or Kenny Roger’s forced to share a table but seemingly having no interest in one another.

My mind was desperate and I was pressured to remember a name quick.  Ah, “my dull brain was wrought with things forgotten, as said Macbeth.  Several names scrolled down my mind, I had to greet her before it was too late.  Suddenly, a bulb in my head lighted, not for a specific name but for one that’s safe:  “Sis!” 

Yeah, she was my “Sis,” as in Sister, not biological but fraternal, excuse me.  We both belonged to the same fraternity and to the same favored university.

I considered her once as one of the disadvantages of being in a well-established club because the internal rules said a male member should never fall for a Sister, to insist was like committing “incest” with her.  Boy, she used to be pretty, the sight of her then was enough to heat any young man’s blood that would subsequently give him immeasurable fever, and right at first sight, I knew I’d never consider her a Sister.

When I joined the fraternity I suffered and survived some sort of flogging unimaginable that was almost like Calvary.  And I promised myself that once I became a full-fledged member I would take revenge on the next applicant surely.  However, when I subsequently met “Sis,” I found out my heart was much bigger than my rage.  I frequented her department to meet her always, at the disguise of being sent by our chapter’s liege.

I took her under my watch that she wouldn’t suffer much during her entire “initiation period” in the first semester.  She was supposed to be the one to serve me and to do my bidding, but it turned out later she became my “master.” 

If my Brothers and other Sisters would know, I was ready to leave the frat, and its lifetime privilege—my main reason in joining—because of ‘love.’ “Just one moment in time,” I pleaded her then, but I didn’t get my answer as I quit school in the second sem, so I only remained as her mere “Brod.”

That was exactly what did Christ when He cared about every sinner, this I realized some years later.  He left His glory up there to serve the lowly and to minister unto, rather than becoming a master.

He could have thrown His weight around like did other lesser gods and do everything He would please.  Yet “he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Philippians 2:7 NIV).

Because of love.