Last week, I had an epiphany, the kind that quietly sits in the corner of your mind for years, waiting for you to finally notice it.

We are often told that we are all blessed. To wake up breathing, to share a simple meal, to have work that sustains us, or to live beside kind neighbors, these are blessings in their purest form. Yet sometimes, we forget that blessings are not meant to be kept idle. They are meant to be used, multiplied and shared.

I recently met a woman who reminded me of this truth. Her name is Chonalyn Morrillo, a sari-sari store owner in her mid-forties, who runs her small shop with the kind of diligence that only a mother’s love can fuel. Seventeen years ago, she and her husband started their business with a meager capital, just enough to buy basic goods for the community. Her dream was simple: to send her only son to school.

Through the years, that humble store helped them survive daily expenses, weather storms, and, more importantly, send their son through high school and college. Today, he is proudly almost finishing a degree in Criminology.

When we met, Chonalyn told me that she had been praying to be chosen for our Hakhak Grocery Challenge, a small project that gives additional capital to deserving micro-entrepreneurs. When her name was called, she burst into tears. She hugged me, saying she couldn’t believe her luck. “Ma’am, this is my dream, pangarap ko ito.”

In that moment, I realized again that blessings bloom fully only when they meet hard work. Without perseverance, even the biggest gift can fade away. But with dedication, even a small seed can grow into a fruitful tree.

It reminded me of the parable of the talents in the Bible, where a master entrusts money to his servants, and only those who used their share wisely were rewarded. As written in Proverbs 14:23: “All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.”

Chonalyn’s story is proof of this. Her gratitude was not born from chance, but from years of faith and persistence. She taught me that to be blessed is not just to receive, it is to recognize that blessings come with a call to action.

We all have something in our hands, a skill, an opportunity, or even a small act of kindness, that can change another person’s life. The question is not whether we are blessed, but what we choose to do with those blessings.

Because when hard work meets grace, blessings do not just multiply, they ripple.