Archive article 42

“The most beautiful story of my life”

As told by Dalide on Sunday, 10th April 2011

For a long while I wondered if my acceptance of Christ was an authentic experience or just something which I was inventing in my mind – something made more attractive than other experiences because I had strayed a long way from God for many years.

I first sought God with my mind, but then I tried to deny him. I even fought Him because I felt he was absent, distant, even an enemy – although deep down I was aware that by all this mental activity I was implicitly recognising His existence. I even searched for him in the shadows of the nave and silent aisles of the church which I had attended in my youth – always with a longing for some kind of sign . . . a sign which never arrived.

But the Lord, who always gives us so much more than we ask, revealed Himself to me with words which had laid dormant in my memory: “It’s not you who have sought me, but I have sought you!”. In that moment I understood that His grace surrounds us ever before we seek Him and even when we give up looking. I understood that Jesus, from His throne on the cross receives everyone with infinite mercy, and that the most beautiful declaration of love anyone can receive is His unconditional love which demands a response. His coming calls us to make a choice – to choose ‘now’ because now is the time of judgment. Eternal life begins here and now for those who in this world decide for Christ.  

God often uses human mediation to bring us to belief in Himself. That in actual fact happened to me. But the heart of the call is really His voice and our response. I like to think that just as it happened to Nathanael who was still doubting when Jesus said: “I saw you while you were under the fig-tree before Phillip called you,” so He saw me struggling between doubt and the desire to believe.

God is the God of the covenant, of an alliance between free subjects. It’s the opposite of an imposition or obligation. And He has invited me to freely sign this covenant – this I do with joy.

Just as the Samaritan woman left her water jar, so I leave mine and accept the living water which Jesus has offered me. It’s a water which takes away men’s thirst. Just like her I have met Christ and He has offered me an inexhaustible spring which gives me a sense of purpose to my life and a source which doesn’t run out.

Faith is an experience given by the Holy Spirit and this compels me to give the same testimony that John the Baptist gave: “ I have seen and I testify”. I pray that faith will illumine my mind and my heart and will accompany me every day in the practice of Christian love, in a new life, and in a total acceptance of His call, being made strong by the gift of the Holy Spirit which enriches me with moral courage and spiritual joy.

I want to be guided by the “taste of God” who doesn’t look at appearances but at the heart, a daughter of the light because as Jesus said to us: “I am the light of the world”

I take this to be one of my duties, my new, and not small responsibility.

Dalide (translated  by Pastor Paul)