Friends and Their Limitations

We need friends. Friends guide us, care for us, confront us in love, console us in times of pain. Although we speak of "making friends," friends cannot be made. Friends are free gifts from God. But God gives us the friends we need when we need them if we fully trust in God's love.
Friends cannot replace God. They have limitations and weaknesses like we have. Their love is never faultless, never complete. But in their limitations they can be signposts on our journey towards the unlimited and unconditional love of God. Let's enjoy the friends whom God has sent on our way.

- Henri Nouwen

A Sunday school teacher once had two new boys in class. When she asked their ages and birth dates for registration, the blond boy said, "We're both seven. My birthday is April 8, 1976, and my brother's is April 20,1976." "That's impossible!" blurted the confused woman. The dark-haired boy piped in, "No, it's not,. One of us is adopted." Before she could stop herself, the teacher asked, "Which one?" The boys looked at each other and said, "We asked Dad a long time ago, but he just said he loved us both and couldn't remember which one was adopted."
God has only one begotten Son - the rest of us have been adopted. Your heavenly Father has not only adopted you but also completely accepted you in the Beloved. Your all-powerful, all-knowing heavenly Father has chosen to forget your past. He sees you just as He does His only begotten Son. You have become a coheir with Christ. You can now call the almighty God your Father. "You should behave instead like God's very own children adopted into His family - calling Him "Father, dear Father'" (Romans 8:15 NLT).

- Lenya Heitzig & Penny Pierce Rose; "Pathway to God's Treasure: Ephesians"

Losing and Gaining Our Lives

The great paradox of life is that those who lose their lives will gain them. This paradox becomes visible in very ordinary situations. If we cling to our friends, we may lose them, but when we are nonpossessive in our relationships, we will make many friends. When fame is what we seek and desire, it often vanishes as soon as we acquire it, but when we have no need to be known, we might be remembered long after our deaths. When we want to be in the center, we easily end up on the margins, but when we are free enough to be wherever we must be, we find ourselves often in the center.
Giving away our lives for others is the greatest of all human arts. This will gain us our lives

- Henri Nouwen

Making Our Lives Available to Others

One of the arguments we often use for not writing is this: "I have nothing original to say. Whatever I might say, someone else has already said it, and better than I will ever be able to." This, however, is not a good argument for not writing. Each human person is unique and original, and nobody has lived what we have lived. Furthermore, what we have lived, we have lived not just for ourselves but for others as well. Writing can be a very creative and invigorating way to make our lives available to ourselves and to others.
We have to trust that our stories deserve to be told. We may discover that the better we tell our stories the better we will want to live them.

- Henri Nouwen

The Joys Of Heaven

As we face death we should find comfort in the declaration that God, by His grace, forgives and delivers us from all that would bar us from the joys of heaven. He not only undoes the consequences of the evil that has marked our lives, but God also forgets that we ever sinned in the first place (Isaiah 43:25). Because of God's work in our lives, on that great day when we are presented to the Father, we will be introduced as faultless. The Book of Jude affirms this truth: "Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy" (Jude 24). I can just imagine Jesus saying, "Father! I want you to meet my friend Tony ... the perfect one!" And that is just what God will do for everyone who trusts in God on the other side of the great divide.

- Tony Campolo in "Following Jesus Without Embarrassing God"

Writing, Opening a Deep Well

Writing is not just jotting down ideas. Often we say: "I don't know what to write. I have no thoughts worth writing down." But much good writing emerges from the process of writing itself. As we simply sit down in front of a sheet of paper and start to express in words what is on our minds or in our hearts, new ideas emerge, ideas that can surprise us and lead us to inner places we hardly knew were there.
One of the most satisfying aspects of writing is that it can open in us deep wells of hidden treasures that are beautiful for us as well as for others to see.

- Henri Nouwen

Writing to Save the Day

Writing can be a true spiritual discipline. Writing can help us to concentrate, to get in touch with the deeper stirrings of our hearts, to clarify our minds, to process confusing emotions, to reflect on our experiences, to give artistic expression to what we are living, and to store significant events in our memories. Writing can also be good for others who might read what we write.
Quite often a difficult, painful, or frustrating day can be "redeemed" by writing about it. By writing we can claim what we have lived and thus integrate it more fully into our journeys. Then writing can become lifesaving for us and sometimes for others too.

- Henri Nouwen

On The Journey Toward Claiming my Vocation

I am always a bit shocked when I hear people say that they knew for certain they were going to be priests or doctors or flight attendants from age seven or so. At that age I was totally wrapped up in getting a new bike or building another snow fort. I remember when I graduated from university and my parents asked me what I was going to do with my life now that I was grown and educated, I had nothing to say except "I think I would like to travel for a year and see where I end up." This was not what my parents wanted to hear! Eventually I stumbled into a L'Arche community and have been here for the past thirty years, which I suppose qualifies as a vocation.
Vocation is more than our work or profession. The word vocation comes from Latin words meaning "summons" or "call." It seems to me that whether we knew our call from a young age or simply found it by living along day to day, we will finally be able to recognize and claim our vocation only when our life is over and we look back on what we have lived. We might be surprised by both what our vocation finally is and how we lived it.
When people ask me what I do, I tell them I am a member of a L'Arche community and my role is to announce to society the values we are living out. But I don't think that is my vocation. My call is first to be a child of God, second to be my parents' son, third to be my wife's husband, fourth to be my children's father, fifth to be a faithful member of my community and then to do my job as a spokesperson for my community. It is important for me not to confuse that order!

by Joe Vorstermans

The Journey Of Life

Some might say that happiness is their ultimate goal in life. But happiness is not a destination. It's a chosen mode of transportation. It makes the journey of life a joy, despite the potholes.

- Rev. David T. Wilkinson

Thus Says The Lord

In most parts of the Bible, everything is implicitly or explicitly introduced with "Thus says the Lord". It is... not merely a sacred book but a book so remorselessly and continuously sacred that it does not invite - it excludes or repels - the merely aesthetic approach. You can read it as literature only by a tour de force... It demands incessantly to be taken on its own terms: it will not continue to give literary delight very long, except to those who go to it for something quite different.

- C. S. Lewis in "They Asked for a Paper"

Question from Above

What are spiritual questions? They are questions from above. Most questions people ask of Jesus are questions from below, such as the question about which of a woman's seven husbands she will be married to in the resurrection. Jesus does not answer this question because it comes from a legalistic mind-set. It is a question from below.
Often Jesus responds by changing this question. In the case of the woman with seven husbands he says, "At the resurrection men and women do not marry - have you never read what God himself said to you: 'I am God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob?' He is God not of the dead but of the living" (Matthew 22:23-30).
We have to keep looking for the spiritual question if we want spiritual answers.

- Henri Nouwen

The Answer to Our Questions

We spend a lot of time and energy raising questions. Is it worth it? It is always good to ask ourselves why we raise a question. Do we want to get useful information? Do we want to show that someone else is wrong? Do we want to conquer knowledge? Do we want to grow in wisdom? Do we want to find a way to sanctity?
When we ponder these questions before asking our questions, we may discover that we need less time and energy for our questions. Perhaps we already have the information. Perhaps we don't need to show that someone is wrong. For many questions we may learn that we already have the answers, at least if we listen carefully to our own hearts.

- Henri Nouwen

Fulfilling a Mission

When we live our lives as missions, we become aware that there is a home from where we are sent and to where we have to return. We start thinking about ourselves as people who are in a faraway country to bring a message or work on a project, but only for a certain amount of time. When the message has been delivered and the project is finished, we want to return home to give an account of our mission and to rest from our labours.
One of the most important spiritual disciplines is to develop the knowledge that the years of our lives are years "on a mission."

- Henri Nouwen

Being Sent Into the World

Each of us has a mission in life. Jesus prays to his Father for his followers, saying: "As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world" (John 17:18).
We seldom realise fully that we are sent to fulfill God-given tasks. We act as if we have to choose how, where, and with whom to live. We act as if we were simply plopped down in creation and have to decide how to entertain ourselves until we die. But we were sent into the world by God, just as Jesus was. Once we start living our lives with that conviction, we will soon know what we were sent to do.

- Henri Nouwen

Going Beyond Our Wants

Sometimes we behave like children in a toy shop. We want this, and that, and then something else. The many options confuse us and create an enormous restlessness in us. When someone says, "Well, what do you want? You can have one thing. Make up your mind," we do not know what to choose.
As long as our hearts keep vacillating among these many wants, we cannot move forward in life with inner peace and joy. That is why we need inner and outer disciplines, to go beyond these wants and discover our mission in life.

- Henri Nouwen

He Knows It All

When the Bible teaches that God is omniscient - that He has complete knowledge - it is not saying that God is bright. It is not saying that He is sharp. It is not even saying that He is a genius. These are the finite expressions of a people severely limited by space and time.
What the Bible is really getting at is that God knows everything. No question can confound Him. No dilemma can confuse Him. No event can surprise Him. He has eternal, intrinsic, comprehensive, and absolutely perfect knowledge.
Nothing is news to God.

- Bill Hybels in "The God You're Looking For"

Ordering Our Desires

Desire is often talked about as something we ought to overcome. Still, being is desiring: our bodies, our minds, our hearts, and our souls are full of desires. Some are unruly, turbulent, and very distracting; some make us think deep thoughts and see great visions; some teach us how to love; and some keep us searching for God. Our desire for God is the desire that should guide all other desires. Otherwise our bodies, minds, hearts, and souls become one another's enemies and our inner lives become chaotic, leading us to despair and self-destruction.
Spiritual disciplines are not ways to eradicate all our desires but ways to order them so that they can serve one another and together serve God.

- Henri Nouwen

Hot And Cold

When the hot Word of God is poured over a cold, cold world, things break, and it is into that brokenness that we are called, into whatever big or small piece we find in front of us, with fire in our bones, to show a frightened world that it is not the heat of the fire that we fear, but the chill that lies ahead if the fire goes out.

- Barbara Brown Taylor

On The Journey Toward Claiming my Vocation

When I was in my teens, I spent a lot of time sailing with my dad on Lake Ontario. One trip we set out in some rough weather and expected a challenge, but we were met with more than we thought we could handle. The winds became quite heavy, and the waves began to roll high.
Eventually we decided that it was so rough we needed to reduce the sail by putting a reef in. Usually I did the scurrying on deck, but this time my dad decided that he would go up on deck and I would take the tiller. To take the tiller meant to start the motor and head up straight into the wind. This takes the pressure off the sail so that it can be lowered, but it makes the going very rough because instead of riding the waves you crest them.
I immediately regretted letting my dad do the scurrying. When he knelt down to cleet the sheet, the deck would fall away and then come crashing up into his knees with every wave. I was so intent on watching him that I forgot about keeping the boat into the wind, and the sail filled again, which leaned the boat over and almost put my dad in the water. I clearly remember the look on his face. Through the wind and the water, he made eye contact with me and said firmly, "Sheilagh, you need to do what is yours to do - that's it."
I put the boat back up into the wind with my confidence regained. He finished putting in the reef. Then we turned around and brought the boat home.
I often remember that feeling of powerlessness and vulnerability when I look out at the immense need for the Gospel in the world. There are moments when I think, "Surely I ought to drop what I am doing and accomplish something else more effective." What brings me back to security in the value of my vocation is the echo of that moment with my dad, essentially saying, "Stay focused and live your vocation well, then you will be able to trust."

by The Rev. Sheilagh Ashworth

Healing Contradictions

The many contradictions in our lives - such as being home while feeling homeless, being busy while feeling bored, being popular while feeling lonely, being believers while feeling many doubts - can frustrate, irritate, and even discourage us. They make us feel that we are never fully present. Every door that opens for us makes us see how many more doors are closed.
But there is another response. These same contradictions can bring us into touch with a deeper longing, for the fulfillment of a desire that lives beneath all desires and that only God can satisfy. Contradictions, thus understood, create the friction that can help us move toward God.

- Henri Nouwen

The Traveler And The Tracker

Once a Traveler and a Tracker set out to explore the world together. As they wound their way through the wilderness, the Traveler was amazed at the Tracker's habit of pausing several times a day to pray.
"Why do you pray to something intangible?" the Traveler asked. "How do you know there is a God?"
Now the Tracker was very skilled in noticing things and, through the years, had gained much insight reading the smallest signs. And he answered the Traveler this way: "I know there is a God when I see the leaves turning yellow. I know there is a God when a trout jumps at a fly, and when grass waves in the dry wind. I know there is a God when clouds shade my head and the stars wink at night."
"So you see," said the Tracker, "I know there is a God, for I can see His footprints throughout the Universe."

Knowledge Leads To Worship

There is something fundamentally flawed about a purely academic interest in God. God is not an appropriate object of cool, critical, detached, scientific observation and evaluation. No, the true knowledge of God will always lead us to worship... Our place is on our faces before Him in adoration.

- John R.W. Stott in Romans: God's Great News for the World

Look-Alike Contest Fails to Recognize the Original

Charlie Chaplin was a huge movie star in the silent-picture era. One of the by-products of his popularity were the look-alike contests that sprung up around the country. Contestants attempted to imitate Chaplin dressed as the "tramp" character he made popular in his films. Even the young up-and-coming actor Bob Hope entered such a contest in Cleveland, Ohio, and won.
Legends have sprung up that Chaplin himself took part in one contest. Steve Chandler in his book 100 Ways To Motivate Yourself says Chaplin was on holiday in Monaco when he decided to enter a Chaplin look-alike contest. Others cite the incident as taking place in Switzerland.
Although the event has been embellished through the years, it did occur. Chaplin entered a look-alike contest in a San Francisco theatre. Amazingly, Chaplin failed to even make the finals.
In a similar way, sometimes we do not recognize the truth about God when it is staring us in the face.

Check verification at www.snopes.com

Ending Leadership Erosion

In the March 8th Christian Century, Kyle Childress has written a wonderful piece about the thought of philosopher/farmer Wendell Berry. He quotes Berry: "During the last 17 years ... I have been working at the restoration of a once exhausted hillside. Its scars are now healed over, though still visible, and this year it has provided abundant pasture, more than in any year since we have owned it. But to make it as good as it is now has taken 17 years. If I had been a millionaire or if my family had been starving, it would still have taken 17 years. It can be better than it is now, but that will take longer. For it to live fully in its own responsibility, as it did before bad use ran it down, may take hundreds of years."
You can find this quote in Berry's The Art of the Commonplace (Counterpoint Press, 2002), a book to which I have returned after reading Childress's comments. Berry is worth reading if you don't mind being knocked off balance a bit. He is not your blue-blooded evangelical, but he gets your attention.
Berry's hill reminds me of some churches and some people. Churches left exhausted, eroded, wasted by careless leadership (Diotrephes in III John comes to mind). People whose personal issues are heaped up to a point where there seems to be no solution (King Saul?).
Berry would be quick to tell you that there has been a whole genre of farmers over the years who have raped the land, draining its topsoil of nutrients and leaving it to the mercy of the winds and the rainy run-off. Then they abandoned it and went on to other places where the agricultural raping happened again. But Berry stayed, and it's taken him 17 years to marginally restore what the farmers before him so wantonly destroyed.
Seventeen years to restore a hill? So how long does it take to truly convert a person then? How long does it take to bring a church-community back from the wounds of disillusionment and distrust?
Berry's a patient man, it seems to me. I visualize him returning to that hill for 17 springtimes and doing a little more each year of whatever it took to bring the soil back to pasture-like standards. And I take note of his humility: "For (the hill) to live fully in its own responsibility, as it did before bad use ran it down, may take hundreds of years."
I'm not sure that most of us have that kind of patience. The God of the Bible does.

by Gordon McDonald

Freedom Attracts

When you are interiorly free you call others to freedom, whether you know it or not. Freedom attracts wherever it appears. A free man or a free woman creates a space where others feel safe and want to dwell. Our world is so full of conditions, demands, requirements, and obligations that we often wonder what is expected of us. But when we meet a truly free person, there are no expectations, only an invitation to reach into ourselves and discover there our own freedom.
Where true inner freedom is, there is God. And where God is, there we want to be.

- Henri Nouwen

Continually Speaking

We are frequently advised to read the Bible with our own personal needs in mind, and to look for answers to our own private questions. That is good, as far as it goes... But better still is the advice to study the Bible objectively, ... without regard, first of all, to our own subjective needs. Let the great passages fix themselves in our memory. Let them stay there permanently, like bright beacons, launching their powerful shafts of light upon life's problems - our own and everyone's - as they illumine, now one, now another dark area of human life. Following such a method, we discover that the Bible does "speak to our condition" and meet our needs, not just occasionally or when some emergency arises, but continually.

- Frederick C. Grant

The Spirit Will Speak in Us

When we are spiritually free, we do not have to worry about what to say or do in unexpected, difficult circumstances. When we are not concerned about what others think of us or what we will get for what we do, the right words and actions will emerge from the center of our beings because the Spirit of God, who makes us children of God and sets us free, will speak and act through us.
Jesus says: "When you are handed over, do not worry about how to speak or what to say; what you are to say will be given to you when the time comes, because it is not you who will be speaking; the Spirit of your Father will be speaking in you" (Matthew 10:19-20).
Let's keep trusting the Spirit of God living within us, so that we can live freely in a world that keeps handing us over to judges and evaluators.

- Henri Nouwen

Growing Into Our True Freedom

True freedom is the freedom of the children of God. To reach that freedom requires a lifelong discipline since so much in our world militates against it. The political, economic, social, and even religious powers surrounding us all want to keep us in bondage so that we will obey their commands and be dependent on their rewards.
But the spiritual truth that leads to freedom is the truth that we belong not to the world but to God, whose beloved children we are. By living lives in which we keep returning to that truth in word and deed, we will gradually grow into our true freedom.

- Henri Nouwen

To Let the Word Become Flesh

Spiritual reading is food for our souls. As we slowly let the words of the Bible or any spiritual book enter into our minds and descend into our hearts, we become different people. The Word gradually becomes flesh in us and thus transforms our whole beings. Thus spiritual reading is a continuing incarnation of the divine Word within us. In and through Jesus, the Christ, God became flesh long ago. In and through our reading of God's Word and our reflection on it, God becomes flesh in us now and thus makes us into living Christs for today.
Let's keep reading God's Word with love and great reverence.

- Henri Nouwen

Reading Spiritually About Spiritual Things

Reading often means gathering information, acquiring new insight and knowledge, and mastering a new field. It can lead us to degrees, diplomas, and certificates. Spiritual reading, however, is different. It means not simply reading about spiritual things but also reading about spiritual things in a spiritual way. That requires a willingness not just to read but to be read, not just to master but to be mastered by words. As long as we read the Bible or a spiritual book simply to acquire knowledge, our reading does not help us in our spiritual lives. We can become very knowledgeable about spiritual matters without becoming truly spiritual people.
As we read spiritually about spiritual things, we open our hearts to God's voice. Sometimes we must be willing to put down the book we are reading and just listen to what God is saying to us through its words.

- Henri Nouwen