Dagmar Corales
Argentina
July 2, 2008

There’s hardly a news-message, that has moved us so much in recent times, than the release of Ingrid Betancourt and the 14 other hostages, Columbians and Americans alike.
Imagine: you’ve been presidential candidate for your country (the complicated drug-and-terrorist stricken Columbia), and—right there in the middle of campaigning—you’ve been taken hostage. That happened in 2002.
Now, six years later, you’ve been rescued from the jungle by a Columbian Government rescue operation that could put a James Bond movie to shame. In Ingrid’s own words: “It was a miracle!”

She was received right on the steps of the airplane by her mother and the whole world could see some very tender moments of a mother and daughter, who both looked exceptionally well, considering the circumstances.
What are your first words? How do you react? What are your feelings?
In the case of Ingrid Betancourt she was thanking God and the Virgin. She only had gratitude and her face radiated the kind of internal beauty that comes from a life well lived by the Grace of God.
You see if you walk under the Grace of God and you move with the Power of True Love, you might even be a hostage of evil, callous, life-despising, goodness-hating humans, who laugh about your suffering—it doesn’t matter.
It simply doesn’t matter. Either you are—or you aren’t.
Ingrid Betancourt IS.

She’s authentic. She will not turn into a resentful, crippled, disappointed and disenfranchised human being, justifying internal rage with external injustice.
Either you are or you aren’t.
And now, being re-united with her children, who came from France to Columbia, the same scene is repeated again.
There’s nothing more powerful and convincing on this earth than a human being motivated by the Power of True Love. It can melt the ice of hatred, malice, greed, lust, justification of evil and resentment away.
A person like that will not bow down to nothing, cannot be bribed by nothing, cannot be bought or enticed with nothing. A person like that keeps their internal compass intact and always—always—will find their original faith again. An authentic person is the absolute nightmare to the forces of evil, because there’s just no way to get a grip on a man or a woman, who have found their peace in the Divine. A person like that is also able to see both sides, can see the world from “up” and from “down”. A person like that turns into a true mediator between all parties involved.
And that is the substantial hope for all of us.

The Divine—God Himself, the Living God—can be seen a felt in an authentic person, even over the distance of a TV screen.
Freeing the world from substantial evil—that’s a peace of cake, once we’ve dug out our original Divine Nature, that, what makes each and every one of us into a true son and a true daughter of a Living God.