Blessings

Remember the Christmas song that suggests what to do when you close your eyes but cannot sleep? It says that “if you can’t sleep count your blessings instead of sheep and you’ll fall asleep counting your blessings.” Sheep can’t make you sleep since it reminds you of the lamb chop you had for dinner but the repetitive counting lulls you to slumber. A guilty person cannot be lulled to sleep, though.

There are dire predictions for 2012, from the “end time” to the Great Flood and the destruction of the earth by fire. For a real Catholic who lives a life “pleasing in the sight” of God, as the priest would pray after he had offered the bread and wine at Mass, it does not really matter if the world ends tomorrow or a hundred years from now. He is prepared to meet his Creator and face judgment with a litany of supplications to God to “have mercy on us.”   

We had plenty of blessings in the past year despite conflicts and confusions that hogged the headlines and dominated the air waves. Even those that we viewed once as problems have turned into blessings. Indeed, oftentimes, hidden behind a problem is a blessing because a problem is an opportunity, a window to gaze towards something that needs fixing. As the ancients would say, everything is an opportunity, even the worst of situations.

Take for instance the maligned Bácolod City Government Center. Ex-congressman Monico Puentevella was so appalled by it that he used every available human and financial resources at his command to stop it, but Mayor Bing Leonardia and his group stood firm. Puentevella was so chagrined by the thought of this center that he promised never to enter it if he were elected mayor. Fortunately, he was not elected, otherwise the Center would have been an expensive ghost habitat.

Today, the BCGC is not just a wonderful structure we are all proud of, and home of the city government but the focus of activities. It was a blessing that Leonardia was stubborn in this one and did not waver and constructed it at a cost cheaper than what it would take to construct the same today.

The fly-over is, for instance, proportionately more expensive though constructed only two years later. It is just a short length of a bridge while the Center now houses practically all city agencies making official transactions easier, convenient and more comfortable both for the employees and the citizens.

Several people tried to prevent the fly-over but now it is a blessing to those who suffered the traffic jams of this area. So is the blessing of the north terminus after people got used to their facility and convenience.

The New Year’s countdown was superb. Of course it cannot match those of Sydney or Hong Kong Harbor, Moscow, Times Square in New York or London, but it was new and wonderful for Bacolod and the province, albeit polluting. The count-down can grow in years – money permitting.

The province has plenty of blessings, too, which will spill over to Bacolod. Ayala is opening its Center in Talisay City which will complement its call center and additional residential subdivision lots that will open this year. Of course, its biggest investment is in Bacolod. If not for the dog-in-the-manger acts of SM, the provincial project behind the Capitol would be in full swing by now, but information says the effort of SM is futile as the project will proceed this year, while SM earned the displeasure of the people of the city and the province. Bacolod will definitely benefit from this development while the province can earn from an idle land.

The Negros First Cyber Park will also start construction. A consortium of contractors headed by Dynamic Builders has already won the bid. This also shifts development southward of the city. We will also see soon the construction to convert the old and abandoned historic provincial jail into a commercial center.

Sir Benjamin Lopue Jr. opened Lopue’s Murcia, in effect going to the people instead of people going to Bacolod, thus insuring savings. We heard a new mall will also open in Silay City this year.

How blessed are we that the series of typhoons and floods that inundated towns and cities and killed and displaced thousands spared us! Sure we had a few floods, but not in the magnitude of disasters in property and lives.  Bacolod Bishop Vicente Navarra, Gov. Freddie Marañon and Mayor Bing Leonardia are right in asking us all to raise a prayer of thanksgiving to God for sparing us from these tragedies.

But Marañon and Leonardia also did their part. The governor was strict in forest conservation and Leonardia has started cleaning up the esteros. Much is to be done but we can now appreciate the blessings of their foresight. Prevention is better than relief.*

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