The Gardener

On my 8th day of Oprah & Deepak's 21-day Meditation Challenge, was asked to write an honest letter to myself as a reflection for the day and wanted to share here that same letter. 

As instructed in the exercises, we were asked to just write anything that came into mind fresh from the meditation and was so surprised by how inspiring and heartwarming the letter was. Believe it was the message that God has been trying to make me understand these past few weeks. And, once again, it is GRACE.

Dear Milli,

I just want you to know that it is not your fault, that you have made the perfect choice (because it is YOUR choice), that it is OK that you have not had a romantic relationship in almost a decade. You never closed yourself up to possibilities; you have always been open, understanding, loving, beautiful, passionate but it's just that the wrong men came your way and the right one has yet to find you. Do you know that God has been pruning you all this time? You were never dry or wasting away or withering. In fact, you have always been blooming but in the shade because The Gardener thought it best to take care of you, nurture you without showing you off first in the garden. You are one of those rare and delicate creatures that needed a different kind of watering, fertilizing and sheltering but you just wait and see. Your season is almost here and He would soon take you out in the garden, replant you in the rich earth and let your beauty bask in the warmth of the sun.  

You're almost ready, Milli. Hold on there and He will soon finish His work in you. And soon enough the Gardener will open the doors, invite Mr. Right into the garden to show and share with him His precious and beloved masterpiece that is you.

If you are on a journey to spiritual maturity or want to relieve stress, I encourage you to add meditation to your prayer time. It is through here that I learned to be quiet and still and listen to the Lord's voice. It is a marvelous experience to be caressed by the Love and Grace of the Lord and these moments often occur in our silence. 

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Supplied by The Source of All Good Things

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As requested by my friend Wendy from our Makati Feast community, I'm reposting here my write-up for the Feast Glorietta bulletin of January 20, 2013

Supplied by The Source of All Good Things

By Millicent Reyes

John Paul Getty, one of the richest American who ever lived, said this: “If you can count your money, then you don’t have a billion dollars”.

Well, in the last six months after I quit my high-paying job and my finances got almost depleted, my perspective on wealth has certainly changed a whole lot. I learned to count or value what is essential in my life and not what is impermanent. I thought that what I had lost was precious when in fact I had gained something that by God’s Grace has multiplied my abundance manifold: Humility. Humility has gained me more riches than ever: a better relationship with my Dad and his new family, more cordiality with my son’s father and his family, a career that lacked prestige but allowed me more time with my family and with more opportunities to serve in God’s Kingdom, and humility has even taught me to respect money by managing my finances to the very cent and living a simple life. Most of all, humility has taught me that all of my needs have been provided and will continue to be so by the Source of All Good Things who is the Heavenly Father.

Brother Randy Borromeo aptly began the first series of talks of the Makati Feast for this year entitled, Guaranteed: Three Things God Promises You; Talk 1: Supply with his favorite Bible verse from Philippians 4:19, “God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory.” Many times, particularly when we are at our lowest, we fail to see the Hand of God working in our lives, providing what we actually need. We pray for a better job then get depressed when we don’t get it when actually God is teaching us to be better employees. We pray for freedom from debt yet we despair when our bills continue to pile up when God is actually teaching us to use money more wisely. We pray for better relationships and become hopeless when things don’t work out when God is teaching us to be more forgiving and loving. In all these scenarios God had already answered our prayers “according to His riches in glory” yet we fail to see it.

Do you think God doesn't hear your prayers, your dreams? Of course He does; He is the Architect of all dreams, the seeds of which He had planted within us! But aside from our eyes and hearts sometimes not open to the Goodness of the Lord, our current resources also do not match our dreams, delaying their fulfillment. Brother Randy shared that we must choose to either “downgrade” our dreams to match our resources or “upgrade” our resources to match our dreams. Whichever we choose, it would be God’s Perfect Will for His Will is solely for our goodness and nothing else.

So always, always remember your blessings since the adage “Count your blessings” seems an impossible feat now because after all, God’s Grace outnumbers all the billions of this world.

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