The fourth morning of the Acamps Summer Festival began with the joy of singing, dancing and much praise. Followed by a formation by Gabriela Dias on the topic of Jesus is Lord, teaching us how to correspond to the immense love of God, the love that we have heard so much about during the previous days. She highlighted that due to the sins in our lives and the lives of others, we experience numerous rollercoasters, with many ups and downs but we have the strongest and most trustworthy seatbelt keeping us safe in this ride, Our Lord Jesus Christ. Just like when we step on a real rollercoaster we put all our trust in those seatbelts to keep us fastened to our seats, we must do the same in our lives and completely compromise our lives to Christ forever, and how do we do that? By being entirely of God – “I belong to the Lord Jesus Christ” because He gave up His life for me and so I will give the rights to my life. God gives us the gift of life and we can gift the Lord with the manner in which we live our lives.
She went on to explain we can give our lives to got entirely, which was broken down into three parts:
Relationship with God
As children of light, we desire all that God has to offer and all that He wants to give to us. Those who are infatuated and in love want to spend time with each other, to be close to each other, and this is achieved by the gift of prayer and adoration. To spend time alone, on your knees with the Lord, because to truly be children of Light we must give ourselves entirely to the Lord.
Relationship with Others
‘Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone’ Rm 12:17
You were made to do what is right by others, even though life may tell you to put yourself first, but Jesus tells us to put our brothers and sisters first and ourselves last.
Pope Francis tells us that, “when we worry and care about the lives of others our own lives becomes wonderfully complicated” because we are serving the Lord by caring for our brothers.
Relationship with Things
This section can be resumed in a single phrase: Life is not measured by what I have but by who I am.
We are living in a time where our lives, values and beauty are measured by how many likes we have on instagram and facebook or how many retweets we get, our beauty is measure on whether we fit a specific image or parallel, and so they become enslaved by likes.
Gabriela reminded us that our bodies do not belong to us, but it is rather an instrument of ours to serve God and to serve others. As creatures of God who loves us just as we are, so should we love ourselves as creatures of the almighty Creator.
“Honour God with your bodies” 1 Cor 6:20
She concluded by highlighting that the outstanding mark of any saints life is the joy that they felt, not matter the highs or lows that they underwent because the joy that we receive from Christ is everlasting through the cross and the resurrection. God will never disappoint.
The morning proceeded with adoration, and with our hearts filled with joy and hope to give ourselves entirely to the Lord, and with that the Lord did wonders in the lives of many present today, with the missionaries praying upon us, the Lord manifested Himself and curing many broken hearts. It was undeniably a morning of wonderful graces.
