Blessed Be Your Name

I first heard Casting Crown’s “Blessed Be Your Name” from the film Soul Surfer. It made me think of Job, though my literary mind was churning in analysis of the song and the film. In the early part, surfer Bethany Hamilton sang along: Blessed be the name of the Lord/ Blessed be Your name. You give and take away/ And I will choose to say/ Blessed be Your name. Bethany soon loses her left arm to a shark, and her world turns upside down. Slowly, she rebuilds her life and rekindles her passion for surfing.

The movie left me thinking of Job and of reality. Job lost everything: riches, friends, health. He suffered the cruelest fate a parent could have when all his children got killed. All these in one day. And then he said, the Lord gave and the Lord took away. The Lord be praised. To parents, kids are everything. Here’s one guy who loses his kids in one blow and he says “Praise the Lord.” I have to admit, that took guts. If one person would lose all today, would he say the same, and mean it at that?

Job and Soul Surfer are stories that teach us about faith, period. Never did I dream of having a personal experience.

***

Friday began as a normal day. I locked my room and went to the library for a book. After a little chat with the librarian, I went back home. Everything looked ordinary. The padlock looked normal—until I inserted my key. It was jammed. I realized the padlock was destroyed and the doorknob was too.

My bed was unmade—and I made it as soon as I woke up. My closet door was open and my clothes were jumbled. The bottom drawer was half-open. My gadgets, cash and books were gone. My room was broken into. I touched nothing else and went to work.

I told the store owner, down at the first floor, of my situation and requested her to call the building administrator. His phone was unattended. So I said I’d be going to the mall—this was the only place with a decent coin-operated payphone.

 I called the cops (sigh); and my parents. As the cops moved along with questions and theories that made my brows rise, I thought, “Oh great. My own Job experience.” I told them about the possibility of an inside job and expressed my doubt on their theory: that only a law student or a criminology student would break in, take my gadgets and my books. Couldn’t the culprit be just a person who knows the value of things? Why is the suspect list narrowed down to students of law and criminology only?

He wrote down the items that were taken, including the titles of my books. My book in Criminal Procedure (Crim Pro for short) was labeled as Cream Pro. I had to bite my tongue and correct him, while thinking, “Thank You Lord, for providing a funny moment at this dark hour.”

By Friday afternoon, other tenants knew something was going on. Three cops had jolted their curiosity. Nobody saw anyone break in nor had they heard the noise of a padlock being destroyed. Other than a sorry statement from an old lady two doors down—she heard banging but dismissed it as a carpentry work—the trail was cold. No suspects, no leads.

  

I answered questions, bit back retorts and suggested interviewing fellow tenants (“Let’s leave that to the investigator. He knows what to do”). I watched the investigator take fingerprints all over my closet door and frown. He did not take mine. I wondered how they’ll proceed. “We’ll take these prints to the lab, see if we find a match.”

Okay. Then what? The trail is cold, you didn’t talk to the tenants or take my fingerprint. What will you do with a truckload of fingerprints?   

At some point, one of the cops started asking questions not related to the crime. What do you think about the RH Law? Don’t you think it’s pro-abortion? Why are cops perceived as anti-human rights? Why is the law pro-accused and very technical?

After what seemed like a fruitless millennium, the cops had left, leaving me with two cousins and a lot of questions. As I packed a bag for a sleepover, my mind was asking me: Can you say Blessed be Your name at this instance?

I categorically say yes. I could say Blessed be Your name despite losing my gadgets and files and books. On the bad side, they cost a fortune. I incurred an absence from school. On the good side, I was not home at the time of the theft, though the blotter officer said it was “rubbery with force entry”.  When he wrote that on his notebook, I thought, “Laugh trip part two.”

Could have been worse. At least I was not caught in the middle of the gunfire. So yes. I could still say Blessed be Your Name, despite losing everything.