God's Laws For Living

There are times when it can be so tempting to 'bend' the rules in certain cases, especially if we don't think we'll get caught. But when we resist the temptation and follow God's laws for living, we'll invariably see that God has just spared us from needless grief.

- Matt Donnelly

Heart As Wide As the World

The awareness of being part of the communion of saints makes our hearts as wide as the world. The love with which we love is not just our love; it is the love of Jesus and his saints living in us. When the Spirit of Jesus lives in our hearts, all who have lived their lives in that Spirit live there too. Our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents; our teachers and their teachers; our pastors and their pastors; our spiritual guides and theirs - all the holy men and women who form that long line of love through history - are part of our hearts, where the Spirit of Jesus chooses to dwell.
The communion of saints is not just a network of connections between people. It is first and foremost the community of our hearts.

- Henri Nouwen

Are You Afraid?

When things look dark and hopeless, that is the time to find out who your friends and neighbours really are. Or do you think you are the only one who is afraid? Look with new eyes at the people you meet daily, and you will quickly realize that everyone is frightened, at least at some level. But every time we share a burden like fear with another person, that burden is cut in half, and is replaced by love. Suddenly we will realize that we are not as alone as we thought we were.

- Johann Christoph Arnold

For the Coming School Year

Many things can wait.
Children cannot.
Today their bones are being formed,
their blood is being made,
their senses are being developed.
To them we cannot say “tomorrow.”
Their name is today.

- Gabriela Mistral

Clasping God's Hand

I hear people praying everywhere for more faith, but when I listen to them carefully, and get to the real heart of their prayer, very often it is not more faith at all that they are wanting, but a change from faith to sight. Faith does not say, "I see that it is good for me, so God must have sent it," but, "God sent it, and so it must be good for me." A person of faith, walking in the dark with God, only prays for Him to clasp their hand more closely.

- adapted from Phillips Brooks (1835-1893)

Saints, People Like Us

Through baptism we become part of a family much larger than our biological family. It is a family of people "set apart" by God to be light in the darkness. These set-apart people are called saints. Although we tend to think about saints as holy and pious, and picture them with halos above their heads and ecstatic gazes, true saints are much more accessible. They are men and women like us, who live ordinary lives and struggle with ordinary problems. What makes them saints is their clear and unwavering focus on God and God's people. Some of their lives may look quite different, but most of their lives are remarkably similar to our own.
The saints are our brothers and sisters, calling us to become like them.

- Henri Nouwen

A Prerequisite for Belief

Are you worried because you find it so hard to believe? Don't be surprised at the difficulty of faith, if there is some part of your life where you are consciously resisting or disobeying the commandment of Jesus. Is there some part of your life which you are refusing to surrender at His behest, some sinful passion, maybe, or some animosity, some hope, perhaps your ambition or your reason? If so, you must not be surprised that you have not received the Holy Spirit, that prayer is difficult, or that your request for faith remains unanswered … The person who disobeys cannot believe. Only if you obey can you believe.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Saints Who Live Short Lives

As we see so many people die at a young age, through wars, starvation, AIDS, street violence, and physical and emotional neglect, we often wonder what the value of their short lives is. It seems that their journeys have been cut off before they could reach any of their goals, realise any of their dreams, or accomplish any of their tasks. But, short as their lives may have been, they belong to that immense communion of saints, from all times and all places, who stand around the throne of the Lamb dressed in white robes proclaiming the victory of the crucified Christ (see Revelation 7:9).
The story of the innocent children murdered by King Herod in his attempt to destroy Jesus (see Matthew 2:13-18), reminds us that saintliness is not just for those who lived long and hardworking lives. These children, and many who died young, are as much witnesses to Jesus as those who accomplished heroic deeds.

- Henri Nouwen

On The Journey Towards Caring for Others

I live at L'Arche Daybreak, the community where Henri Nouwen made his home for the last ten years of his life. During that time he received many invitations to speak. Eventually Henri found it easier to make these trips when a couple of people from our community could accompany him and give the talks with him.
One time I traveled with Henri to Texas, where we visited a nursing home to which we had been invited to address the caregivers. As we planned the talk, we reflected on our own community life and developed three themes: the bath, the table, and the bed. In our community an enormous amount of each day revolves around these very human experiences of bathing, eating, and sleeping.
In busy North American culture, we tend to place little value on these mundane experiences of life: we take quick showers, we eat fast food, and we "burn the candle at both ends," often cutting our sleep short. Yet for people who are very frail or disabled, the bath, the table, and the bed form the framework of each day. These rituals take on a new importance, even demand a new discipline - the discipline of gratitude. Recognising the sacred in the everyday is central to living a spiritual life. The bath, the table, and the bed can become holy places in caring for others - and in caring for ourselves - when we practice the discipline of gratitude.

by Carl MacMillan

A Long Way from Revolt?

Even the blind can see that economic progress entails the oppression and murder of thousands – that big business rules by sheer power and deceit... A capitalistic society can be maintained only by lies. But we are a long way from revolt. Most pious and even many working people think, “Rich and poor have to be.” They ignore the fact that it is impossible to amass any kind of fortune without cheating, without depriving and hurting others and destroying their lives. They fail to realize that, concentrated in a few hands, big business can steer hundreds of thousands toward certain ruin through unemployment. Why do these facts remain hidden from us? Only because we ourselves are also under the rule of the god who blinds us, which is mammon.

- Eberhard Arnold

The Communion of Saints

We often limit the Church to the organisation of people who identify themselves clearly as its members. But the Church as all people belonging to Christ, as that body of witnesses who reveal the living Christ, reaches far beyond the boundaries of any human institution. As Jesus himself said: The Spirit "blows where it pleases" (John 3:8). The Spirit of Jesus can touch hearts wherever it wants; it is not restrained by any human limits.
There is a communion of saints witnessing to the risen Christ that reaches to the far ends of the world and even farther. It embraces people from long ago and far away. It is that immense community of men and women who through words and deeds have proclaimed and are proclaiming the Lordship of Jesus.

- Henri Nouwen

Telling the Story of Jesus

The Church is called to announce the Good News of Jesus to all people and all nations. Besides the many works of mercy by which the Church must make Jesus' love visible, it must also joyfully announce the great mystery of God's salvation through the life, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The story of Jesus is to be proclaimed and celebrated. Some will hear and rejoice, some will remain indifferent, some will become hostile. The story of Jesus will not always be accepted, but it must be told.
We who know the story and try to live it out, have the joyful task of telling it to others. When our words rise from hearts full of love and gratitude, they will bear fruit, whether we can see this or not.

- Henri Nouwen

Plunge In

Discipleship is not limited to what you can understand - it must transcend all comprehension. Plunge into the deep waters beyond your own understanding, and I will help you to comprehend.
Bewilderment is the true comprehension. Not to know where you are going is the true knowledge. In this way Abraham went forth from his father, not knowing where he was going. That is the way of the cross. You cannot find it in yourself, so you must let me lead you as though you were a blind man.
Not the work which you choose, not the suffering you devise, but the road which is contrary to all that you choose or contrive or desire - that is the road you must take. It is to this path that I call you, and in this sense that you must be my disciple.

- Martin Luther (1483-1546)

A Ministry of Healing and Reconciliation

How does the Church witness to Christ in the world? First and foremost by giving visibility to Jesus' love for the poor and the weak. In a world so hungry for healing, forgiveness, reconciliation, and most of all unconditional love, the Church must alleviate that hunger through its ministry. Wherever we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the lonely, listen to those who are rejected, and bring unity and peace to those who are divided, we proclaim the living Christ, whether we speak about him or not.
It is important that whatever we do and wherever we go, we remain in the Name of Jesus, who sent us. Outside his Name our ministry will lose its divine energy.

- Henri Nouwen

The Mission of the Church

There are more people on this planet outside the Church than inside it. Millions have been baptised, millions have not. Millions participate in the celebration of the Lord's Supper, but millions do not.
The Church as the body of Christ, as Christ living in the world, has a larger task than to support, nurture, and guide its own members. It is also called to be a witness for the love of God made visible in Jesus. Before his death Jesus prayed for his followers, "As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world" (John 17:18). Part of the essence of being the Church is being a living witness for Christ in the world.

- Henri Nouwen

Into The Heart Of God

The ancient desert dwellers of our early Christian communities tell us that the surest way into the heart of God is to be still. In being still we learn to be attentive to the vast and hidden stillness that permeates all things.
So I invite you to begin by becoming attentive to that stillness as well. Seek it first in your own home. Go at night into the darkened room of your sleeping child and breathe with the moist, quick risings of a child's breath. Rise in the thin light of a new day. Do not turn on the lamp or the television or the coffee maker, but stand by an east window and let the dawn's fingers creep up over the fingers of your own hand.
Listen next for stillness as you venture out of doors. Hear it in the splintering of fall leaves as you cross a grassy knoll between paths in the park. Find it in the first cape of snow draped over the eaves of your house.
Turn finally to your own heart. The same stillness is there as well. At the core, buried beneath the turbulence of emotions rubbed raw by life's labor, is the same stillness discovered in the slow-moving sap of an autumn tree. In that primordial stillness beats the heart of God.
There is correspondence between our hearts and God's. They have imprinted on them the same unimaginable hope, sealed with a promise. The hope is for fullness, for completion, for being one with each other. What that will look like is hidden from us. The end and fullness of all things is known only to God. But we have glimpses of it.

- Wendy M. Wright The Vigil: Keeping Watch in the Season of Christ's Coming

The Poverty of Our Leaders

There is a tendency to think about poverty, suffering, and pain as realities that happen primarily or even exclusively at the bottom of our Church. We seldom think of our leaders as poor. Still, there is great poverty, deep loneliness, painful isolation, real depression, and much emotional suffering at the top of our Church.
We need the courage to acknowledge the suffering of the leaders of our Church - its ministers, priests, bishops, and popes - and include them in this fellowship of the weak. When we are not distracted by the power, wealth, and success of those who offer leadership, we will soon discover their powerlessness, poverty, and failures and feel free to reach out to them with the same compassion we want to give to those at the bottom. In God's eyes there is no distance between bottom and top. There shouldn't be in our eyes either.

- Henri Nouwen

People Will Marvel

Everywhere in these days people have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort. But this terrible state of affairs must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another. It will be the spirit of the time, and people will marvel that they have sat so long in darkness without seeing the light... But, until then, we must keep the banner flying. Sometimes even if he has to do it alone, and his conduct seems to be crazy, a man must set an example, and so draw other souls out of their solitude, and spur them to some act of brotherly love, that the great idea may not die.

- Fyodor Dostoevsky, "The Brothers Karamazov"

The Love Of The Spirit

A person can, indeed, shut the wind out. One can hide behind walls of willfulness until, in time, the Spirit's breath can no longer be felt. Not because the Spirit is unable to break down our walls of resistance, but because the Spirit won't. No one in heaven or on earth is so respectful of the integrity of human personality as is the Spirit of God. God's Spirit will plead but will not demand. The Spirit is not a bully, but a Lover; and while that love pursues passionately, it will not intrude where it is not wanted; after all, if it did, it would cease to be love.

- J. Ellsworth Kalas in "New Testament Stories from the Back Side"

Becoming the Church of the Poor

When we claim our own poverty and connect our poverty with the poverty of our brothers and sisters, we become the Church of the poor, which is the Church of Jesus. Solidarity is essential for the Church of the poor . Both pain and joy must be shared. As one body we will experience deeply one another's agonies as well as one another's ecstasies. As Paul says: "If one part is hurt, all the parts share its pain. And if one part is honoured, all the parts share its joy" (1 Corinthians 12:26).
Often we might prefer not to be part of the body because it makes us feel the pain of others so intensely. Every time we love others deeply we feel their pain deeply. However, joy is hidden in the pain. When we share the pain we also will share the joy.

- Henri Nouwen

Wisdom of a Sadhu

Both water and oil come from the earth. And though they are similar in many ways, they are opposites in their nature and their purpose. One extinguishes fire, the other gives fuel to the fire. Similarly, the world and its treasures are creations of God along with the soul and its thirst for spiritual truth. But if we try to quench the thirst of our soul with the wealth and pride and honours of this world, then it is like trying to extinguish fire with oil. The soul will only find peace and contentment in the One who created it along with its longing. When we turn to the living Master, we receive water that satisfies our soul. This water is a well of spiritual life that springs up deep within us.

- Sundar Singh (1889-1929)

In God's Family

God has called us to join the family gathering and enjoy the benefits of that relationship. There are things God does in, for, and through His family that He does nowhere else! We, therefore, are not living life alone. Just as biological families must interact and spend significant time together, so our spiritual family must walk together in love. In God's family we will receive strength, encouragement, and much-needed fellowship. We will grow in wisdom and maturity as we benefit from those who have walked with God for many years. We will find security in the family's watch care over our life and respond to its comfort and accountability.
More than anything else, God our Father manifests His presence in special ways when two or three are gathered together (Matt. 18:20). When the family gathers, the Father is always present and active. He speaks to the family. He gives gifts in the family. He gives direction to the family. He gives His power to the family. Apart from God's family a Christian will never be pleasing to the Father. When Christians are joined with the family, the Father is free to pour out His blessing into our lives, even as He continually does to all that are related to Him.

- Henry Blackaby and Melvin D. Blackaby in "Experiencing God Together: God's Plan to Touch Your World"

Who Are the Poor?

The poor are the centre of the Church. But who are the poor? At first we might think of people who are not like us: people who live in slums, people who go to soup kitchens, people who sleep on the streets, people in prisons, mental hospitals, and nursing homes. But the poor can be very close. They can be in our own families, churches or workplaces. Even closer, the poor can be ourselves, who feel unloved, rejected, ignored, or abused.
It is precisely when we see and experience poverty - whether far away, close by, or in our own hearts - that we need to become the Church; that is hold hands as brothers and sisters, confess our own brokenness and need, forgive one another, heal one another's wounds, and gather around the table of Jesus for the breaking of the bread. Thus, as the poor we recognise Jesus, who became poor for us.

- Henri Nouwen

On The Journey Towards Caring for Others

"Love is a harsh and dreadful thing" (Dorothy Day).

It sure is, I think to myself as I hear the sounds of four-year-old footsteps in the hallway, again. It is past 10 p.m. and I need this day to end. He, apparently, does not. He is calling me to dig deep for reserves of patience and generosity, which, right now, feel inaccessible to me.
For several weeks this past summer, something was bothering our 4-year-old son. While much of the day was fine, the bedtime routine became a point of struggle. During those moments, the words of Jean Vanier came to mind. Vanier describes how, through our relationships, our darker sides are revealed to us. How, in caring for others more vulnerable, paradoxically, our inner violence and anger are exposed. This truth resonated with me as I tried repeatedly to help my son to bed. I would be lying if I did not admit to the occasional desire to simply push him into bed and be done with it. At one extreme moment of frustration, I exclaimed: "I don't know what to do with you! I don't know what to do!"
I see now that my response was not as hopeless as it then seemed. To admit I had lost my bearings gave us a starting point: it opened me, and hopefully him, to try something new, to try again to understand what was underneath all this behaviour.
In caring for others, the temptation towards violence exists. So too, does the call to resist that path, to let go of the agenda held by the one more powerful, and to begin all over again.

by Madeline Burghardt

The Weakest in the Centre

The most honoured parts of the body are not the head or the hands, which lead and control. The most important parts are the least presentable parts. That's the mystery of the Church. As a people called out of oppression to freedom, we must recognize that it is the weakest among us - the elderly, the small children, the handicapped, the mentally ill, the hungry and sick - who form the real centre. Paul says, "It is the parts of the body which we consider least dignified, that we surround with the greatest dignity" (1 Corinthians 12:23).
The Church as the people of God can truly embody of the living Christ among us only when the poor remain its most treasured part. Care for the poor, therefore, is much more than Christian charity. It is the essence of being the body of Christ.

- Henri Nouwen

What Counts

It is not love in the abstract that counts. Men have loved a cause as they have loved a woman. They have loved the brotherhood, the workers, the poor, the oppressed - but they have not loved man; they have not loved the least of these. They have not loved “personally.” It is hard to love. It is the hardest thing in the world, naturally speaking. Have you ever read Tolstoy’s Resurrection? He tells of political prisoners in a long prison train, enduring chains and persecution for the love of their brothers, ignoring those same brothers on the long trek to Siberia. It is never the brothers right next to us, but the brothers in the abstract that are easy to love.

- Dorothy Day

Going to the Margins of the Church

Those who are marginal in the world are central in the Church, and that is how it is supposed to be! Thus we are called as members of the Church to keep going to the margins of our society. The homeless, the starving, parentless children, people with AIDS, our emotionally disturbed brothers and sisters - they require our first attention.
We can trust that when we reach out with all our energy to the margins of our society we will discover that petty disagreements, fruitless debates, and paralysing rivalries will recede and gradually vanish. The Church will always be renewed when our attention shifts from ourselves to those who need our care. The blessing of Jesus always comes to us through the poor. The most remarkable experience of those who work with the poor is that, in the end, the poor give more than they receive. They give food to us.

- Henri Nouwen

Accountable Discipleship

At the earlier Methodist class meetings, members were expected every week to answer some extremely personal questions, such as the following: Have you experienced any particular temptations during the past week? How did you react or respond to those temptations? Is there anything you are trying to keep secret, and, if so, what? At this point, the modern Christian swallows hard! We are often coated with a thick layer of reserve and modesty which covers "a multitude of sins" - usually our own. Significantly, James 5:16-20, the original context of that phrase, is the passage which urges, "Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed."

- Michael Griffiths in "Cinderella with Amnesia"

Right Living

"All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It straightens us out and teaches us to do what is right. It is God's way of preparing us in every way, full equipped for every good thing God wants us to do."
(2 Timothy 3:16,17 NLT)

Fallacies about Christianity must always be faced as deterrents to right living, and not merely as mistakes in the mind, for it is the effect they have on our actions which matters most. So soon as we abstract them from our lives and think of them only as faults in our mental machinery, we tend to embrace the greatest fallacy of all - which is to think of Christianity as a way of looking at life instead of a way of changing it.

- Donald O. Soper in "Popular Fallacies"

Talking about Stars

Private Inman and his companion, an unnamed boy-soldier from Tennessee, are sitting out the night in a frozen Civil War battlefield “littered with bodies, and churned up by artillery.” It is long past midnight, and the eeriness of the carnage is still keeping them from sleep. Suddenly Inman spies Orion and, finding comfort in its familiar shape, is able to relax. The constellation stands there on the eastern horizon “like a sign in the sky…sure of himself as a man can be.” Pointing it out, Inman tells his comrade that the name of Orion’s brightest star is Rigel:
The boy peered up and said, “How do you know its name?”
“I read it in a book,” Inman said.
“Then that’s just a name we give it,” the boy said. “It ain’t God’s name.”
Inman had thought on the issue a minute and then said, “How would you ever come to know God’s name for that star?”
“You wouldn’t, He holds it close, the boy said. It’s a thing you’ll never know. It’s a lesson that sometimes we’re meant to settle for ignorance. Right there’s what mostly comes of knowledge, the boy said, tipping his chin out at the broken land…”
At the time, Inman had thought the boy a fool and had remained content to know our name for Orion’s principal star and to let God keep His a dark secret. But he now wondered if the boy might have had a point about knowledge, or at least some varieties of it.

- Charles Frazier, "Cold Mountain"

How Do You Live Your Dash?

I read of a man who stood to speak
At the funeral of a friend.
He referred to the dates on her tombstone
From the beginning...to the end.

He noted that first came her date of birth
And spoke the following date with tears,
But he said what mattered most of all
Was the dash between those years. (1934 -2008)

For that dash represents all the time
That she spent alive on earth...
And now only those who loved her
Know what that little line is worth.

For it matters not, how much we own;
The cars...the house...the cash,
What matters is how we live and love
And how we live our dash.

So think about this long and hard...
Are there things you'd like to change?
For you never know how much time is left,
That can still be rearranged.

If we could just slow down enough
To consider what's true and real,
And always try to understand
The way other people feel.

And be less quick to anger,
And show appreciation more
And love the people in our lives
Like we've never loved before.

If we treat each other with respect,
And more often wear a smile...
Remembering that this special dash
Might only last a little while.

So, when your eulogy's being read
With your life's actions to rehash...
Would you be proud of the things they say
About how you lived your dash?

- Author Unknown