Contemplation

Dolphins can live in the deepest water without danger because they regularly come to the surface and take in the air that sustains them. We, too, must rise in prayer into the spiritual realm. To pray is to breathe in God's life-giving spirit that gives life and peace, even in this world.
The new-born child needs no instruction in drinking, but instinctively turns to its mother's breast for nourishment. For her part, the mother withholds no good gift from her child, but still the child cannot receive the mother's milk without effort. In the same way, we are carried at God's breast, but we must turn to God in prayer for the spiritual milk that sustains our souls.
The root tips of trees are so sensitive and responsive that they instinctively turn away from places where there is no nourishment and spread themselves instead in places where they can drink in moisture and life.
I have seen green and fruitful trees standing in the middle of a dry and barren desert. These trees survive and flourish because their roots have driven down and discovered hidden streams of flowing water.
Some people live in the midst of evil and misery but still radiate joy and lead fruitful lives. Through prayer, the hidden roots of their faith have reached down to the source of living water. They draw from it energy and life to bear spiritual fruit. If we lead active lives of prayer, we will also gain the spiritual discernment to turn away from illusion and evil and to find the truth we need for life.

- Sadhu Sundar Singh

The Divine Presence (Darshana)

The story is told of a poor grass cutter who found a beautiful stone in the jungle. He had often heard of people finding valuable diamonds and thought this must be one. He took it to a jeweler and showed it to him with delight. Being a kind and sympathetic man, the jeweler knew that if he bluntly told the grass cutter that his stone was worthless glass, the man would either refuse to believe it or else fall into a state of depression. So instead, the jeweler offered the grass cutter some work in his shop so that he might become better acquainted with precious stones and their value.
Meanwhile, the man kept his stone safely locked away in a strongbox. Several weeks later, the jeweler encouraged the man to bring out his own stone and examine it. As soon as he took it out of the chest and looked at it more closely, he immediately saw that it was worthless. His disappointment was great, but he went to the jeweler and said: "I thank you that you did not destroy my hope but aided me instead to see my mistake on my own. If you will have me, I will stay with you and faithfully serve you, as you are a good and kind master."
In the same way, God leads back to truth those who have wandered into error. When they recognize the truth for themselves, they gladly and joyfully give themselves in obedient service.

- Sadhu Sundar Singh

Eternity (Amrita)

The fitness of our hearts and thoughts to receive God's spirit is like that of violin strings. If they are properly tuned, in harmony with one another, then the touch of the bow produces beautiful music. If not, then there is only discord. Whenever our hearts are truly ready to receive God's spirit, they will produce heavenly airs and joyous harmonies - both in this life and in the spiritual world.
Once a poor beggar sat for twenty-one years on top of a buried treasure without knowing it. He burned so hotly with desire for money that he even hoarded the pennies he received. Yet, he finally died in utter poverty. Because the greedy man sat so long in that one spot, a rumor arose that he had hidden something valuable there. So the governor had the place excavated and the hidden treasure chest was found, filled with precious gems. The greedy beggar died in ignorance of the wealth that lay a few inches under him, and in the end the riches went instead into the royal treasury. God's promise of bliss is very near to us - in our mouths and in our hearts.

- Sadhu Sundar Singh

Devotion

Once, as I traveled through the Himalayas, there was a great forest fire. Everyone was frantically trying to fight the fire, but I noticed a group of men standing and looking up into a tree that was about to go up in flames. When I asked them what they were looking at, they pointed up at a nest full of young birds. Above it, the mother bird was circling wildly in the air and calling out warnings to her young ones. There was nothing she or we could do, and soon the flames started climbing up the branches.
As the nest caught fire, we were all amazed to see how the mother bird reacted. Instead of flying away from the flames, she flew down and settled on the nest, covering her little ones with her wings. The next moment, she and her nestlings were burned to ashes. None of us could believe our eyes. I turned to those standing by and said: "We have witnessed a truly marvelous thing. God created that bird with such love and devotion, that she gave her life trying to protect her young. If her small heart was so full of love, how unfathomable must be the love of her Creator. That is the love that brought him down from heaven to become man. That is the love that made him suffer a painful death for our sake."

- Sadhu Sundar Singh

The Power of the Spirit

In and through Jesus we come to know God as a powerless God, who becomes dependent on us. But it is precisely in this powerlessness that God's power reveals itself. This is not the power that controls, dictates, and commands. It is the power that heals, reconciles, and unites. It is the power of the Spirit. When Jesus appeared people wanted to be close to him and touch him because "power came out of him" (Luke 6:19).
It is this power of the divine Spirit that Jesus wants to give us. The Spirit indeed empowers us and allows us to be healing presences. When we are filled with that Spirit, we cannot be other than healers.

- Henri Nouwen

Jesus' Compassion

Jesus is called Emmanuel which means "God-with-us" (see Matthew 1: 22-23). The great paradox of Jesus' life is that he, whose words and actions are in no way influenced by human blame or praise but are completely dependent on God's will, is more "with" us than any other human being.
Jesus' compassion, his deep feeling-with us, is possible because his life is guided not by human respect but only by the love of his heavenly Father. Indeed, Jesus is free to love us because he is not dependent on our love.

- Henri Nouwen

Wonder

When the wonder has gone out of a man he is dead. When all comes to all, the most precious element in life is wonder. Love is a great emotion and power is power. But both love and power are based on wonder. Plant consciousness, all are related by one permanent element, which we may call the religious element in all life, even in a flea: the sense of wonder. That is our sixth sense. And it is the natural religious sense.

- D. H. Lawrence

God's Powerlessness

Jesus is God-with-us, Emmanuel. The great mystery of God becoming human is God's desire to be loved by us. By becoming a vulnerable child, completely dependent on human care, God wants to take away all distance between the human and the divine.
Who can be afraid of a little child that needs to be fed, to be cared for, to be taught, to be guided? We usually talk about God as the all-powerful, almighty God on whom we depend completely. But God wanted to become the all-powerless, all-vulnerable God who completely depends on us. How can we be afraid of a God who wants to be "God-with-us" and needs us to become "Us-with-God"?

by Henri Nouwen

God's Embodied Love

The Magi come asking, "Where is the One born to be the Saviour?" (AP). People all around us are asking that question. Day in and day out, whether they or we realize it, people express in countless ways the yearning to know and be known by God. We have the privilege of helping them to come to know that God is real, that evil will not have the last word, that even a world where innocents are killed can be transformed if we will allow ourselves to be transformed.
The wonder of God's coming is this: God doesn't want to be our business partner, to relate to us as a favoured relative, to live near us or even with us. God wants to live in us and through us. As Matthew 5:14 tells us, we are the light of the world. We are meant to be God's embodied love. When we obey the claims of Christ, we are God's continuing incarnation. Embracing one person at a time, we help those we meet to believe that they matter and that they are embraced by God.

- Mary Lou Redding in "WHILE WE WAIT: Living the Questions of Advent" (Nashville, Tenn.: Upper Room Books, 2002)

Trusting Him

So here we are again, a few billion miles farther along our mysterious path among the immensities. What a comfort it is to know the Man in charge of it all. Without Him, it would be easy to think that the whole of time and space, and life itself, are without reason, purpose, or meaning - as H. G. Wells said, that it is "a bad joke beyond our understanding, a flare of vulgarity, an empty laugh braying across the mysteries." With Jesus forever between God and us, we can understand a few things, and trust Him for the rest. After all, He is one of us: a baby once, as we all were...

- Robert MacColl Adams

The Angel's Message

"Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong..." (1 Corinthians 1:26-27 NRSV)
It is not coincidental that the angels' announcement of Jesus' birth - "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men" - was made first to shepherds. For people with money, education, and culture, Christ's message often seems too opposed to human wisdom to accept. (In fact, it flies in the face of everything the world teaches about power and glory, about 'making it,' about wealth and success and prestige.) Nor was it by chance that Jesus chose simple fishermen and not scribes to accompany Him as He traveled and taught in Judea

- Johann Christoph Arnold

Christ Sets Us Free!

I read an unusual Christmas sermon about a group who tied the baby Jesus into a manger. The Christmas pageant was being presented in a public area. They would set the stage, go to change into their costumes; then discovered someone had taken the baby doll from the manger before the pageant began. Their solution was to strap the baby doll into the manger. The preacher reflected on how throughout Jesus' life people had attempted to tie or strap Jesus down.
People tried to tie Jesus down by demanding He ignore pain and suffering until after the Sabbath. They tried to tie Jesus down by demanding He follow Jewish practices. They tried to tie Jesus down when He reached across racial and gender lines to bring hope and healing. They tried to tie Jesus to a cross when He refused to do things their way. However, all of their efforts were futile. Jesus couldn't be tied down, not even by death.
The good news of Christmas is that Jesus not only refused to be tied down; He also frees us from the things that tie us down. Depression, failure, divorce, addiction, and bankruptcy cannot tie us down. Hatred, jealousy, poverty, wealth, education, and illness lose their power over us. Jesus Christ sets us free. That Baby -- born in a stable -- is God with us. Jesus breaks the forces that place us in bondage and condemn us to death.
No wonder the angels were singing! The shepherds felt compelled to go and see for themselves. They could not remain on the hillside keeping watch over their flocks. The whole order of the universe was changed that evening. The world could never be the same again. God became a human being, and we were set free.
- U. M. Bishop D. Max Whitfield

Beauty of Unity

The late columnist Mike Royko writes about a conversation he had with Slats Grobnik, a man who sold Christmas trees. Slats remembered one couple on the hunt for a Christmas tree. The guy was skinny with a big Adam's apple and small chin, and she was kind of pretty. But both wore clothes from the bottom of the bin of the Salvation Army store.
After finding only trees that were too expensive, they found a Scotch pine that was okay on one side, but pretty bare on the other. Then they picked up another tree that was not much better—full on one side, scraggly on the other. She whispered something, and he asked if $3 would be okay. Slats figured both trees would not be sold, so he agreed.
A few days later Slats was walking down the street and saw a beautiful tree in the couple's apartment. It was thick and well rounded. He knocked on their door and they told him how they worked the two trees close together where the branches were thin. Then they tied the trunks together. The branches overlapped and formed a tree so thick you couldn't see the wire. Slats described it as "a tiny forest of its own."
"So that's the secret," Slats asserts. "You take two trees that aren't perfect, that have flaws, that might even be homely, that maybe nobody else would want. If you put them together just right, you can come up with something really beautiful."

Mike Royko, One More Time (University of Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 85-87

The Most Precious Insights

You yourself are the child you must learn to know, rear, and above all enlighten. To demand that others should provide you with textbook answers is like asking a strange woman to give birth to your baby. There are insights that can be born only of your own pain, and they are the most precious. Seek in your child the undiscovered part of yourself.

- Janusz Korczak

Genuine Forgiveness

Instead of genuine forgiveness, our generation has been taught the vague notion of "tolerance." This is, at best, a low-grade parody of forgiveness. At worst, it's a way of sweeping the real issues in human life under the carpet.... Jesus' message [of forgiveness of sins] offers the genuine article and insists that we should accept no man-made substitutes.

- N. T. Wright in "The Lord and His Prayer"

Joint Heirs with Christ

We continue to put ourselves down as less than Christ. Thus, we avoid the full honour as well as the full pain of the Christian life. But the Spirit that guided Jesus guides us. Paul says: "The Spirit himself joins with our spirit to bear witness that we are children of God. And if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ" (Romans 8:16-17).
When we start living according to this truth, our lives will be radically transformed. We will not only come to know the full freedom of the children of God but also the full rejection of the world. It is understandable that we hesitate to claim the honor so as to avoid the pain. But, provided we are willing to share in Christ's suffering, we also will share in his glory (see Romans 8:17).

- Henri Nouwen

Against Hesitating

Thanks to your "success," you now have something to lose. Because of this - as if suddenly aware of the risks - you ask whether you, or anyone, can "succeed." If you go on in this way, thoughtlessly mirroring yourself in an obituary, you will soon be writing your epitaph - in two senses.
Do what you can - and the task will rest lightly in your hand, so lightly that you will be able to look forward to the more difficult tests, which may be awaiting you.
When the morning's freshness has been replaced by the weariness of midday, when the leg muscles quiver under the strain, the climb seems endless, and, suddenly, nothing will go quite as you wish - it is then that you must not hesitate.

- Dag Hammarskjöld

God's Breath Given to Us

Being the living Christ today means being filled with the same Spirit that filled Jesus. Jesus and his Father are breathing the same breath, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the intimate communion that makes Jesus and his Father one. Jesus says: "I am in the Father and the Father is in me" (John 14:10) and "The Father and I are one" (John 10:30). It is this unity that Jesus wants to give us. That is the gift of his Holy Spirit.
Living a spiritual life, therefore, means living in the same communion with the Father as Jesus did, and thus making God present in the world.

- Henri Nouwen

Being Clothed in Christ

Being a believer means being clothed in Christ. Paul says: "Every one of you that has been baptised has been clothed in Christ" (Galatians 3:26) and "Let your armour be the Lord Jesus Christ" (Romans 13:14). This being "clothed in Christ" is much more than wearing a cloak that covers our misery. It refers to a total transformation that allows us to say with Paul: "I have been crucified with Christ and yet I am alive; yet it is no longer I, but Christ living in me" (Galatians 2:20).
Thus, we are the living Christ in the world. Jesus, who is God-made-flesh, continues to reveal himself in our own flesh. Indeed, true salvation is becoming Christ.

- Henri Nouwen

Claiming the Identity of Jesus

When we think about Jesus as that exceptional, unusual person who lived long ago and whose life and words continue to inspire us, we might avoid the realisation that Jesus wants us to be like him. Jesus himself keeps saying in many ways that he, the Beloved Child of God, came to reveal to us that we too are God's beloved children, loved with the same unconditional divine love.
John writes to his people: "You must see what great love the Father has lavished on us by letting us be called God's children - which is what we are." (1 John 3:1). This is the great challenge of the spiritual life: to claim the identity of Jesus for ourselves and to say: "We are the living Christ today!"

- Henri Nouwen

Why The Church Exists

In God's benevolent economy, the church... provides a place of solace, a hotbed of godly values, a stage for spirited worship, an organism of relationships, and all the bountiful benefits Christians enjoy. But the church isn't the church so that we Christians can experience those perks. The church is the church so that other people can meet Jesus Christ and be captured by the Spirit and be incorporated into the Kingdom for eternity. A church exists, like Jesus, "to seek out and to save the lost." The church is not in the business of coddling the cozy but rather of finding the fallen, and will inconvenience itself in order to reach out. The church exists to do what Jesus valued - and did, Himself.

- James D. Berkley, First Presbyterian Church in Bellevue, Washington

Dealing With The Tough Times

I needed the strength of a relationship with Christ, the strength it gives to deal with all the things that are important in life. Things that are overpowering, with the disappointments. Having that relationship has made it a lot more manageable - the tough times, the hard times, the times you don't understand, and the times when you don't know what to do.

- Mark Martin, NASCAR driver, in Sports Spectrum

Only Connect

It is not physical solitude that actually separates one from others; not physical isolation, but spiritual isolation. It is not the desert island nor the stony wilderness that cuts you from the people you love. It is the wilderness in the mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which one wanders lost and a stranger. When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others. How often in a large city, shaking hands with my friends, I have felt the wilderness stretching between us. Both of us were wandering in arid wastes, having lost the springs that nourished us - or having found them dry. Only when one is connected to one's own core is one connected to others, I am beginning to discover. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be refound through solitude.

- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Transformation, Not Just Information

Having our small group members become 'students of the Bible' is a noble goal, however we can focus so much on Bible knowledge that our small group becomes scholastic and academic rather than life changing. We become transmitters of information rather than helping transform lives. Knowledge is important, but knowledge without obedience does not deepen our relationship with Christ.

- Dan Lentz

Slow Miracles

We take for granted the slow miracle whereby water in the irrigation of a vineyard becomes wine. It is only when Christ turns water into wine, in a quick motion, as it were, that we stand amazed.

- Saint Augustine

Out of the Pit

The greatest task of our time is to help our fellow human beings out of the pit. God will return to us when we are willing to let Him in—into our banks and factories, into our Congress and clubs, into our homes and theaters. For God is everywhere or nowhere, the father of all people or of none, concerned about everything or nothing. Only in His presence shall we learn that the glory of humankind is not in its will to power but in its power of compassion. We will reflect either the image of God's presence or that of a beast. There can be no neutrality.

- Abraham Joshua Heschel

On The Journey Towards Intimacy

We are created in the image of Trinitarian personalness and oneness, which spawns an insatiable capacity for intimacy deep within our being. Jesus' desire for intimacy is revealed in His incarnation, and His request of the Father at the end of his ministry to be one with those who believe (John 17). Intimacy is sacred!
However, our technologically saturated, accomplishment-oriented society is robbing us of the intimacy we naturally long for. Computers, answering machines, the Internet, virtual reality, created to enhance productivity and profits, have actually depersonalized and isolated. Rather than experiencing personal encounters, we find ourselves staring at mechanised screens and fingering keyboards. Intimacy is stolen.
The journey toward intimacy, a complex mix of longing and resistance, asks a great deal of us. Intimacy asks us to be vulnerable. We resist openness and honesty with each other out of fear. We are afraid of being rejected by others and of finding nothing when we look within ourselves to discover our authentic personalness. Instead of living out of our created uniqueness, we hide behind masks which create the false impression that we have it all together. Intimacy is blocked.
Intimacy also asks that we value others in their uniqueness rather than stand in judgement. Fully accepting others without asking them to change invites us to the deepest expression of love.
Jesus' desire for intimacy is realized in the presence of lived personalness, vulnerability and acceptance.

by Stephen Imbach

Being Like Jesus

Very often we distance ourselves from Jesus. We say, "What Jesus knew we cannot know, and what Jesus did we cannot do." But Jesus never puts any distance between himself and us. He says: "I call you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have learnt from my Father" (John 15:15) and "In all truth I tell you, whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself, and will perform even greater works" (John 14:12).
Indeed, we are called to know what Jesus knew and do what Jesus did. Do we really want that, or do we prefer to keep Jesus at arms' length?

- Henri Nouwen

Jesus Is in the World Not of It

The Beatitudes offer us a self-portrait of Jesus. At first it might seem to be a most unappealing portrait - who wants to be poor, mourning and persecuted? Who can be truly gentle, merciful, pure in heart, a peacemaker, and always concerned about justice? Where is the realism here? Don't we have to survive in this world and use the ways of the world to do so?
Jesus shows us the way to be in the world without being of it. When we model our lives on his, a new world will open up for us. The Kingdom of Heaven will be ours, and the earth will be our inheritance. We will be comforted and have our fill; mercy will be shown to us. Yes, we will be recognised as God's children and truly see God, not just in an afterlife, but here and now (see Matthew 5:3-10). That is the reward of modelling our lives on the life of Jesus!

- Henri Nouwen

Interruption Or Appointment?

Jesus wants us to see that the neighbour next door or the people sitting next to us on a plane or in a classroom are not interruptions to our schedule. They are there by divine appointment. Jesus wants us to see their needs, their loneliness, their longings, and He wants to give us the courage to reach out to them.

- Rebecca Manley Pippert

Jesus Is Persecuted

Jesus, the favorite Child of God, is persecuted. He who is poor, gentle, mourning; he who hungers and thirsts for uprightness; is merciful, pure of heart and a peacemaker is not welcome in this world. The Blessed One of God is a threat to the established order and a source of constant irritation to those who consider themselves the rulers of this world. Without his accusing anyone he is considered an accuser, without his condemning anyone he makes people feel guilty and ashamed, without his judging anyone those who see him feel judged. In their eyes, he cannot be tolerated and needs to be destroyed, because letting him be seems like a confession of guilt.
When we want to become like Jesus, we cannot expect always to be liked and admired. We have to be prepared to be rejected.

- Henri Nouwen