It’s my first time to attend the ILC this year. But no, I didn’t have a ticket, didn’t flew to Aklan. But thank God for still bringing me there, not physically, but spiritually and emotionally.
I was an online delegate.
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The video stream showed thousands of YFC gathering up for the afternoon mass in their first day of stay there. As I was waiting for the mass to start, the numbers of online delegates increased. The chatbox was flooded with YFCs introducing themselves from where they were, greeting simple good afternoons, and of course..
..YFCs regretting why they hadn’t come, wishing they were there at that moment.
Definitely we all love to be there. Definitely we all love to feel God’s presence arm-to-arm with our fellow brothers and sisters. But whatever the reason maybe why I — together with the other online delegates — hadn’t given the chance to come, we later realized that this is part of His plan, and we should be grateful for what he had provided us (e.g. livestreaming) to be with the 6000 delegates in Aklan.
With that thought, our thoughts have shifted to being thankful, enough to erase those of regrets why we hadn’t bought a ticket and went to Aklan.
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I never knew that for the second time, I would cry again in front of the monitor.
The first one, there could be nothing more heartbreaking than it, happened January last year. My dear friend, our sister, Hanna, was in lingering pain and sickness. She has been diagnosed with leukemia somewhere in the second quarter of our fourth year in high school. But Lord, she was a strong girl indeed. Her battle with leukemia hadn’t weaken her faith, rather, it made it stronger. She was the first one in our batch who became a YFC. While we were still juniors, each section would go on a camp every other week. Hanna underwent camp when we were still sophomores. Going back, God has been providing her more strength each and every day. She even attended in our class and yearbook picture taking, as well as our Christmas party. That’s why we were complacent that she’ll be back in full health again somewhere in 2011.
But we were wrong.
So there I was on the afternoon of January 23, 2011, shocked, but most of all heartbroken, in front of the monitor, crying after finding out my friend has passed away.
I don’t know if I should thank Facebook for telling me the news, but where else could I’ve found out about it on time?
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God is truly unexpected, isn’t He? Never in my imagination that for the second time, there I was, crying in front of the monitor.
It wasn’t the words of the worship leader, no. It wasn’t the song being sung by the band, no.
It was God, talking to me through them, as instruments of his message.
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It wasn’t my first time to attend a conference. I had attended sectorcon and metrocon (both my first time too!) just last year. I experienced being there, the way I described it a while ago, arm-in-arm with my fellow brothers and sisters. But being in such a crowd doesn’t give you an assurance that you’ll be 100% connected with the Lord.
The devil still lurks, even when hundreds or thousands of believers are around him.
He was the one telling you how boring the sessions are, and then if you are lured, he will then whisper to you to talk to your friends, to text, go online (yes, through phone, it’s possible), and do other stuff that would shift your attention to what God wants to tell you.
We, online delegates, wasn’t an exception to this. More that we were prone to this, actually. We have all the access to whatever we want to do — the bed beside us, we could have rather slept than watched, our phones, the net (of course), and all other distractions you could think of.
It was really a hard task to focus our attention to what was happening in Aklan. Aside from distractions, there were internet connection failures, unexpected ads from Ustream, and a lot more. The thing that distracted us the most, in my perception, is the chatbox. They comment on everything that was happening, even when the mass, worship, and even when the benediction was going on! I think the messages sent while the session was going on is okay, because those are important quotable points from the speaker that is worth remembering.
It is really hard to give your 100% attention to God, especially when there are so many distractions around you. But we must do our best to avoid them at all cost. Why not put the video fullscreen to remove the things — like chatbox, other other browser tabs on Facebook, Twitter, or other sites — that draws our attention away from God?
Remember, the devil tries his very best to stay always beside you. But you have two choices: stay with him or walk away.
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It has been a rewarding experience for me to feel ILC in front of me (literally) through God’s providence. I have learned so much, not only from the masses, sessions (though I haven’t encapsulated their messages here), worship gatherings, but also from the people who were with me — my fellow online delegates and my past experiences. Me, living in Manila, with no money to spend on my ticket, absorbed a lot through ILC livestreaming. But to think that with all the things I’ve learnedonline, what more could I learn if I was physically there? But thank God for yet another amazing surpirse — the International Leaders’ Conference next year will be flying back to the place where it started — Manila.
Since the beginning, God told me to stay, so I stayed. Now I know the reason why: “I’ll be coming there, my child.”
But for now, I would just like give gratitude to the Lord for His everlasting love and divine providence that I had seen and felt Him in me; props to technology.
