{"id":20218,"date":"2023-03-17T14:55:17","date_gmt":"2023-03-17T06:55:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tfscc.org\/?p=20218"},"modified":"2023-03-24T10:13:27","modified_gmt":"2023-03-24T02:13:27","slug":"caught","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tfscc.org\/en\/resources\/caught\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Lent\u2019 week 3 reflection \u2013 Who is catching up with us?"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p><strong>&#8220;Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.&#8221; &#8211; Psalm 23:6 (Revised Chinese Union Version)<\/strong><\/p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n<p>In &#8220;A Way Other Than Our Own,&#8221; author Walter Brueggemann reminds believers that the season of Lent is a time for being caught and embraced by love. God does not want our lives to be burdened with endless anxiety, but rather to be accepted, embraced, and caught by God&#8217;s love. He quotes Psalm 23:6, &#8220;I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever,&#8221; reflecting a mature life where each person in a community of justice returns to their human position: &#8220;The true joy and purpose of life is to love the Lord and be loved by the Lord, not just by ourselves, but in union with the community.&#8221;<\/p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n<p>The author describes &#8220;following&#8221; as a powerful and active verb. God&#8217;s great love pursues us, but we fear and escape, because we are afraid that everything will no longer be in our control. We cannot believe in such a generous love, because we will be overwhelmed by God&#8217;s mercy. Lent is a time for us to realize our blindness and regain our sight.<\/p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n<p>Through meditating on Scripture, God invites us during this time to look with a different perspective beyond our anxiety, greed, fear, and control, to see ourselves as a sheep of the Good Shepherd, a traveler passing through the village of God, and a citizen of the house of the Lord. When we see clearly in this way, we will become free, joyful, generous, and grateful. We only need to hope for one thing: God&#8217;s presence. We will no longer be hindered by false, insignificant desires.<\/p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n<p>Lord, please pursue us and catch us! Please embrace us with your mercy and grace. Amen.<\/p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n<p>++++++++++++<\/p>\r\n<p><em>Written by Cheui Yi (At Will)<\/em><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20287,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories-for-the-soul"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tfscc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tfscc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tfscc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tfscc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tfscc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20218"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.tfscc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20312,"href":"https:\/\/www.tfscc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20218\/revisions\/20312"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tfscc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tfscc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tfscc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tfscc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}