by Rev. Dr. Mariano C. Apilado
Can 3:00 o’clock a.m. be a moment of hope? Dorothy Terris, an American songwriter, writes, “It’s three o’clock in the morning, We’ve danced all night thru. . . I could just keep right on dancing forever dear with you.”
How about you? Where were you, what were you doing at 3:00 o’clock this morning? Were you waltzing to the music of 3:00 o’clock?
Were you in deep slumber? Were you an insomniac who tossed and turned desperately trying to get a sound, restful sleep?
Or, are you perhaps a dreamer like the late Senator Raul Roco, who confessed at 3:00 o’clock on a morning sometime before he died — “When I was 20, I wanted to change the world; at 30, I wanted to change my country; I realized at 60. I wanted only to change myself.”
3:00 o’clock a.m. may be a time for tossing and turning among some, or for others, a time for up-to-no-good evildoers in the dark.
3:00 o’clock a.m. may be the time when the bruised and battered, the down and defeated, the grieving and the guilty find themselves lonely and alone.
The comforting letter not written, the fragrant flower not sent and the stone of distress not lifted to make safe and secure a brother’s way are the haunting ghosts that will not allow you to sleep in peace.
3:00 o’clock a.m. may be a time when seductive temptations are strong and moral guards are down. As Kris Kristofferson popularized, “I don’t care what’s right or wrong, I don’t try to understand, let the devil take tomorrow, lord, tonight I need a friend.”
I learned this week a new meaning of the word arroyo. The word was originally used in southwestern US of A and referred to a waterway, or deep ravine dried up because of long drought.
Many Filipino readers — Christians and Muslims alike — may be in a state of arroyo, meaning, spiritually and hopelessly dried up like a waterway or deep ravine for long droughts of spiritual feeding and neglect, and forgotten by family members and government services.
There can be a source of hope even in a world of arroyo.
A young Filipino girl went out to dinner with an American soldier after Manila was recaptured from the Japanese about the end of the Second World War.
After an evening of friendship, dancing and pure joy, transcending their gender and racial differences, drawn together only by human need for a friend, the young girl and the lonely soldier parted feeling very satisfied.
3:00 o’clock a.m. alone in her room, the girl wrote in her diary, “An hour of beauty and trust and friendliness in a world of disillusionment and ugliness and pain – surely it is worth keeping and remembering. . . Yours, faithfully.”
There is a divine power, Jesus by name, beyond human comprehension who, at 3:00 o’clock a.m., summons us in prayer, to observe an hour of the beauty of trust, to receive an eternity of hope, love and life.
In an arroyo world starved not only of physical food but of love, trust, friendship and hope, and dehydrated not only of water, but of truth, peace, love and justice, this spiritual power and presence offers the gift of rococo.
The elegance of refinement and charm of forgiveness and renewal of life, totally, tenderly and lovingly are offered at 3:00 o’clock a.m.. Such moment of hope is only a prayer away.
