In our reflection yesterday, we realized that our deepest yearning comes from God. It is the yearning for a mutual relationship between God and humans. This yearning is like a seed that, when carefully nurtured by us, God will ensure a hundredfold harvest for us. However, the envious devil does not want to see that we have an intimate relationship with our Heavenly Father. Therefore, it secretly sows countless weeds in our hearts, intending to kill the seed that God initially planted, that is, the seed of His desire to have the most intimate relationship with us. Thus, the devil employs schemes to sow endless desires in our lives, causing us to be distracted and too busy to attend to and cultivate the wheat that God has sown, thereby destroying our relationship with God.
Our enemy has two main tactics. The first is to make us believe that God is not good enough and will not give us the best.
The devil will try to make us feel that what God provides for us is not enough, so we must look elsewhere for everything we need and, as a result, gradually move away from God and His ways. In this way, the devil successfully suffocates and kills the wheat that God has sown in our hearts.
The second common tactic that our enemy employs is to make us believe that we are not good enough and are not worthy of God’s love.
The devil will try to make us despair in our weakness, brokenness, worthlessness, and sinfulness, and make us believe that God’s love is conditional and that we are not “qualified” to ask for God’s love. Through these tactics, the devil will try to convince us that we cannot receive God’s love and that we cannot establish an intimate relationship with God.
Is this true? Is this really the God we know? The Gospel of the Second Sunday of Lent reminds us that each of us has such mountaintop experiences when we have encountered God and have received God’s graces in our lives. But in our busyness, we often forget these graces, and when we encounter difficulties and challenges in life, we are easily tempted by the devil and fall into its traps, believing in its lies.
Therefore, we must remind ourselves to constantly revisit these experiences of witnessing the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor and to firmly remember the words of the Father to each of us: “You are my beloved child, with whom I am well pleased!”
With this declaration of the Father’s love for us, our identity is affirmed! Is this not the most important treasure in our lives? What else do we need to ask for or search for? The God who created us knows our needs best and has already given us the best things in our lives. These past experiences are not fake, but they are our personal experiences. These graces are worth counting and being grateful for, and we must use this “evidence of love” to defeat the devil’s schemes and its hidden temptations.
We must remember that our faithful God is eternal and unchanging, including His love for us.
We cannot make Him love us more with our actions, nor will our shortcomings make Him love us less. This is the true nature of our merciful Father!
Today, let everyone of us make God the object of our love. Allow yourself to be lost in the experience of His loving affirmation as His beloved child.
Today’s Prayer
My dear Abba Father, thank You for reminding me in this reflection that I should keep revisiting our encounters and count the many blessings You have granted me in my life. Please grant me a steadfast heart for You, just as Your love for me never wavers. Teach me to learn and understand more as I constantly reflect on the evidence of Your love in my life, I would be able to recognize more of Your true image, and how merciful You are! Father, I love You!
The Collection of The “5L2F moment” Acts of Love
Fountain of Love and Life intends to collect the acts of love from the Farmers of Hearts all over the world and offer them as spiritual bouquets to our Lord Jesus Christ who died for us on the Cross.
We encourage you to respond to our invitation and share with us the fruits of your “5L2F Moments” acts of love. We will offer all the fruits of the charitable acts collected in this Lent to our Heavenly Father in the solemn mass of Easter, in return for the grace of our Lord Jesus who sacrificed His life to redeem us! Please visit lent.fll.cc/action and share with us your “5L2F Moments” acts of love.
On every Sunday during this Lent, we will post on our social media selected sharing from those who consented to have them published, so that these testimonies of how God touches us will continue to inspire and encourage others and multiply the impact of these “Five-Loaves-And-Two-Fishes Moments”. Thanks again for your sharing! God bless!
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