This testimony was written by Berta, a member of the Youth Ministry Service Team.
“Don’t judge a book by its cover!” This must be the first idiom I had learnt back at school. In 2012, when I first went to Youth Fellowship, I did believe that God must be a Creator. However for me He was like the moon – there but distant – and nothing else.
I must have picked up and reinforced this image from what I experienced and observed in my family, the media and my own life. It turned out that this image and impression proved to be a huge obstacle in the idea of believing in a God who is closer to me than I am to myself.
Perspective Shift
The Seven Course and particularly the weekend away changed all that. I discovered and experienced that God is our perfect Father, perfect in every way. Too wise to be mistaken and too good to be unjust. I remember opening the bible and the verse that caught my eye and spoke to my heart was
Taste and see that the Lord is good.’
(Psalm 34:8).
Until the day I read this, I had only tasted the baggage of a failed relationship, the anxiety, countless hospital visits, the fear of losing my loved ones to illness and so on.
Vision Correction
But somehow I trusted the Word of God. To be fair I had nothing to lose at that point. My life could only get better but not worse. At that moment I accepted God’s invitation to taste and see that He is good! And He never failed! I learnt that God is always good. I allowed Him to whisper the truth in my heart, the truth which I had been longing to hear my whole life, even if I wasn’t aware of it.
The truth that I am wanted and beautiful to Him, that I am loved and desired, that I am relevant and important, that I am lovable and likable. I discovered His mercy and grace, and the truth of these words which I continue to live by
We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures; we are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of his Son.
(Pope John Paul II)