by: Asmina U. Sulaiman, RN
UVPN Cotabato
What's so intriguing about UVPN?
As you try to do a 360-degree turn-around, you will be able to see the physique of the world. You are to probe the top and bottom part where you can see what's trending and what's ready to trash out,;who's in the go and who left behind. Yet, I bet you are to see more. When you look around, what you are seeing are people being busy on their own lives, maybe struggling to earn few pesos for their hungry family at home; maybe one is just aiming for fame, power and money. Only a few are yelling around the streets for their grievances to be heard. Maybe some are just not yet contented so they keep on searching. Most are just people who act like normal, surviving everyday of their life. Other words, everyone has its own call.
Well, let me tell you. It is just a sneak-a-peek. You missed something. You might be forgetting the internal area where the roots grew horribly that raises the question "Why these things are happening?". Most especially, you missed the area where you stand at. It may be just a piece of place fitted for your feet alone, yet could elevate or shrink you at a time. Around you is nothing but a huge package of natural-human dilemma and temptations. So worldly that it might blind you from your true mission.
I started my UVPN life earlier when I was in high school. Back then, it was the former Voice of the Youth for Peace Organization which was later named as Voice of the Youth for Peace and Orderliness until it got to be today's United Voice for Peace Network. As a starting organization, we encountered different things. We do activities, plan them, materialize them, gather operational budgets and it never be that easy. We admit we have difficulties doing those. Those difficulties were rooted from several things like financial matters, behavioral problems, scarce resources and time constraints stretching us into a critical thinker "geeks". So we sort it out by bending our resources and exhausting our options. It is not only about handling problems. There is more in UVPN that obligates us to wake up ourselves.
As you try to do a 360-degree turn-around, you will be able to see the physique of the world. You are to probe the top and bottom part where you can see what's trending and what's ready to trash out,;who's in the go and who left behind. Yet, I bet you are to see more. When you look around, what you are seeing are people being busy on their own lives, maybe struggling to earn few pesos for their hungry family at home; maybe one is just aiming for fame, power and money. Only a few are yelling around the streets for their grievances to be heard. Maybe some are just not yet contented so they keep on searching. Most are just people who act like normal, surviving everyday of their life. Other words, everyone has its own call.
Well, let me tell you. It is just a sneak-a-peek. You missed something. You might be forgetting the internal area where the roots grew horribly that raises the question "Why these things are happening?". Most especially, you missed the area where you stand at. It may be just a piece of place fitted for your feet alone, yet could elevate or shrink you at a time. Around you is nothing but a huge package of natural-human dilemma and temptations. So worldly that it might blind you from your true mission.
I started my UVPN life earlier when I was in high school. Back then, it was the former Voice of the Youth for Peace Organization which was later named as Voice of the Youth for Peace and Orderliness until it got to be today's United Voice for Peace Network. As a starting organization, we encountered different things. We do activities, plan them, materialize them, gather operational budgets and it never be that easy. We admit we have difficulties doing those. Those difficulties were rooted from several things like financial matters, behavioral problems, scarce resources and time constraints stretching us into a critical thinker "geeks". So we sort it out by bending our resources and exhausting our options. It is not only about handling problems. There is more in UVPN that obligates us to wake up ourselves.
The call for peace is what always comes to the
surface. It nurtures us to be peace-loving individuals, which is the very
behavior of being a Muslim. Me and the people on this group learn so many ways
on how to struggle with it so as not to take it for granted not because we have
ourselves and other people to accommodate. But we know, deep in our hearts,
that above all our sufferings we have Allah SWT who watches us, gives us the
things we ought to learn, what we ought to let go and what we must continue to
look forward to. With these, I know I have my shields not to be blinded with
the sparkling yet blazing fire of secularism and make myself free from the
deceiving call of the world that will makes everyone shrunken and fallen into
Hellfire.
Why the world distracts us so much from what we are supposed to be doing? The answers are found within us. Life, in the general perspectives, has the most things a man ever wanted: love ones, material values, memories, faith, name it all. But as humans, we are not just travelers. We have the privilege to choose. No matter how you are being trapped in a situation, you still have a choice. You always have. To be saved, be it by yourself or by others, will always be your choice.
Life is a marathon. And the finish line is our own death. As you run for your life, best is to run it with purpose. You are running because the true essence of life is learned when you pass through the finish line. And how will you know if it’s worth it or not? Simple: it is when, along the way, you feel that satisfaction within you; just because you haven't aimed much yet Allah SWT gives you more than what you have asked for. You just run for a purpose and that purpose is to please Him with our complete submission. We must come to realize that we are just into temporary things here. Nothing will give us the special treatment when the Day of Reckoning comes. We are so dignified being the highest creation of Him which of course, must worship and love him in return.
UVPN taught me these -- intriguing the world, running in the name of Allah SWT and responding to the true call: The call of Islam.
Why the world distracts us so much from what we are supposed to be doing? The answers are found within us. Life, in the general perspectives, has the most things a man ever wanted: love ones, material values, memories, faith, name it all. But as humans, we are not just travelers. We have the privilege to choose. No matter how you are being trapped in a situation, you still have a choice. You always have. To be saved, be it by yourself or by others, will always be your choice.
Life is a marathon. And the finish line is our own death. As you run for your life, best is to run it with purpose. You are running because the true essence of life is learned when you pass through the finish line. And how will you know if it’s worth it or not? Simple: it is when, along the way, you feel that satisfaction within you; just because you haven't aimed much yet Allah SWT gives you more than what you have asked for. You just run for a purpose and that purpose is to please Him with our complete submission. We must come to realize that we are just into temporary things here. Nothing will give us the special treatment when the Day of Reckoning comes. We are so dignified being the highest creation of Him which of course, must worship and love him in return.
UVPN taught me these -- intriguing the world, running in the name of Allah SWT and responding to the true call: The call of Islam.
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Asminah Sulaiman is a Maguindanaon and graduate of BS. Nursing from Notre Dame University (NDU) Cotabato City. She is now a Registered Nurse (Alhamdulillah) and is staying in Cotabato City. She is one of the first UVPN Young Muslima leaders in Cotabato City and Maguinadanao who is aspiring to help the Muslim Communities in their area, Inshaa Allah.
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