Words That Become Flesh

Words are important. Without them our actions lose meaning. And without meaning we cannot live. Words can offer perspective, insight, understanding, and vision. Words can bring consolation, comfort, encouragement and hope. Words can take away fear, isolation, shame, and guilt. Words can reconcile, unite, forgive, and heal. Words can bring peace and joy, inner freedom and deep gratitude. Words, in short, can carry love on their wings. A word of love can be the greatest act of love. That is because when our words become flesh in our own lives and the lives of others, we can change the world.
Jesus is the word made flesh. In him speaking and acting were one.

- Henri Nouwen

On The Journey Towards Intimacy

The journey toward intimacy is perhaps the longest, most difficult journey we take as human beings. While the dictionary defines intimacy as "close familiarity or association and nearness in friendship," intimacy also requires us to stand naked in front of another human being with all of our warts and flaws. We are the too large belly hiding a waistline that used to measure eighteen inches around, declaring, "This is me. This is who I am. I am worried about you rejecting me. I am worried I have shown you too much of me. This is me. This is who I am."
Even further, intimacy is the ability to share our heart and soul with another; it is truly taking down our defenses just as we "take off our clothes." Intimacy is a tremendous risk for some, less so for others, but never inconsequential. It is intertwined with trust, though sometimes we trust the wrong people, who hand our trust back to us battered and broken. Nevertheless, intimacy is definitely resilient, and we stay on the journey, looking for intimacy in our soul mates, our families and our dearest friends. This journey requires us to look deeply and examine our thoughts and feelings from the inside out. This is the toughest part, but the results can lead us to accept and be our best friends and to love and embrace our families. It is on this journey that God tells us to stay, hard as it is, and listen to our heart and those of others. God speaks. Hearts speak. Our journey toward intimacy helps us to hear them clearly.

- Shirley K. Lewis

Liberty Worth Having

How watchful we must be to keep the crystal well that we were made, clear! - that it not be made turbid by our contact with the world, so that it will not reflect objects. What other liberty is there worth having, if we have not freedom and peace in our minds - if our inmost and most private man is but a sour and turbid pool? If you would avoid uncleanness and all the sins, work earnestly, though it be at cleaning a stable.

- Henry David Thoreau

The Unique Role Of The Church

The world can do almost anything as well or better than the church. You need not be a Christian to build houses, feed the hungry, or heal the sick. There is only one thing the world cannot do. It cannot offer grace.

- Gordon MacDonald

Growing into the Truth We Speak

Can we only speak when we are fully living what we are saying? If all our words had to cover all our actions, we would be doomed to permanent silence! Sometimes we are called to proclaim God's love even when we are not yet fully able to live it. Does that mean we are hypocrites? Only when our own words no longer call us to conversion. Nobody completely lives up to his or her own ideals and visions. But by proclaiming our ideals and visions with great conviction and great humility, we may gradually grow into the truth we speak. As long as we know that our lives always will speak louder than our words, we can trust that our words will remain humble.

- Henri Nouwen

The Cause of Unhappiness

If you look carefully you will see that there is one thing and only one thing that causes unhappiness. The name of that thing is attachment. What is an attachment? An emotional state of clinging caused by the belief that without some particular thing or some person you cannot be happy.

- Anthony de Mello

Encounter With Christ

As we shared together our feelings about the study groups, we realized that we were not meeting together each week for an intellectual exercise: something very real and significant was taking place. We were coming to know that the Christian faith is not primarily an ethic; it is not the struggle to do good or be good, but an encounter with Christ, of which morality and ethical living are by-products.

- Harold R. Fray, Jr. in "The Spirit Making New"

Right Living and Right Speaking

To be a witness for God is to be a living sign of God's presence in the world. What we live is more important than what we say, because the right way of living always leads to the right way of speaking. When we forgive our neighbours from our hearts, our hearts will speak forgiving words. When we are grateful, we will speak grateful words, and when we are hopeful and joyful, we will speak hopeful and joyful words.
When our words come too soon and we are not yet living what we are saying, we easily give double messages. Giving double messages - one with our words and another with our actions - makes us hypocrites. May our lives give us the right words and may our words lead us to the right life.

- Henri Nouwen

For the Longest Day

Love the earth and the sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God.

- Walt Whitman

The Fruit of the Spirit

How does the Spirit of God manifest itself through us? Often we think that to witness means to speak up in defense of God. This idea can make us very self-conscious. We wonder where and how we can make God the topic of our conversations and how to convince our families, friends, neighbors, and colleagues of God's presence in their lives. But this explicit missionary endeavour often comes from an insecure heart and, therefore, easily creates divisions.
The way God's Spirit manifests itself most convincingly is through its fruits: "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control" (Galatians 5:22). These fruits speak for themselves. It is therefore always better to raise the question "How can I grow in the Spirit?" than the question "How can I make others believe in the Spirit?"

We Are the Glory of God

Living a spiritual life is living a life in which our spirits and the Spirit of God bear a joint witness that we belong to God as God's beloved children, (see Romans 8:16). This witness involves every aspect of our lives. Paul says: "Whatever you eat, then, or drink, and whatever else you do, do it all for the glory of God" (Romans 10:31). And we are the glory of God when we give full visibility to the freedom of the children of God.
When we live in communion with God's Spirit, we can only be witnesses, because wherever we go and whomever we meet, God's Spirit will manifest itself through us.

- Henri Nouwen

Witnesses of Love

How do we know that we are infinitely loved by God when our immediate surroundings keep telling us that we'd better prove our right to exist?
The knowledge of being loved in an unconditional way, before the world presents us with its conditions, cannot come from books, lectures, television programs, or workshops. This spiritual knowledge comes from people who witness to God's love for us through their words and deeds. These people can be close to us but they can also live far away or may even have lived long ago. Their witness announces the truth of God's love and calls us to act in accordance with it.

- Henri Nouwen

A Dream Deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

- Langston Hughes

Men And Their Families

Men, it is past time that our families knew their place in our lives. It is time to take action, even extreme action if necessary. Our families don't want our wealth, our gifts, our prestige, or our applause. They want US. They want to know that, other than God, they are the most important thing in our lives.

- Ronnie W. Floyd in "The Meaning of a Man"

Focused On God

When our lives are focused on God, awe and wonder lead us to worship God, filling our inner being with a fullness we would never have thought possible. Awe prepares the way in us for the power of God to transform us and this transformation of our inner attitudes can only take place when awe leads us in turn to wonder, admiration, reverence, surrender, and obedience toward God.

- James Houston in "The Transforming Power of Prayer"

Doing Love

Often we speak about love as if it is a feeling. But if we wait for a feeling of love before loving, we may never learn to love well. The feeling of love is beautiful and life-giving, but our loving cannot be based in that feeling. To love is to think, speak, and act according to the spiritual knowledge that we are infinitely loved by God and called to make that love visible in this world.
Mostly we know what the loving thing to do is. When we "do" love, even if others are not able to respond with love, we will discover that our feelings catch up with our acts.

- Henri Nouwen

Morphing Time

"It's morphing time."... This little word "morph" has a long history. It actually comes from one of the richest Greek words in the New Testament... "Morphoo" means "the inward and real formation of the essential nature of a person." It was the term used to describe the formation and growth of an embryo in a mother's body.
Paul used this word in his letter to the Galatians: "... until Christ is formed in you." (Galatians 4:19) He agonized until Christ should be born in those people, until they should express His character and goodness in their whole being. Paul said they -- like us -- are in a kind of spiritual gestation process. We are pregnant with possibilities of spiritual growth and moral beauty so great that they cannot be adequately described as anything less than the formation of Christ in our very lives.

- John Ortberg in "The Life You've Always Wanted"

Jesus is Poor

Jesus, the Blessed One, is poor. The poverty of Jesus is much more than an economic or social poverty. Jesus is poor because he freely chose powerlessness over power, vulnerability over defensiveness, dependency over self-sufficiency. As the great "Song of Christ" so beautifully expresses: "He ... did not count equality with God something to be grasped. But he emptied himself, ... becoming as human beings are" (Philippians 2:6-7). This is the poverty of spirit that Jesus chose to live.
Jesus calls us who are blessed as he is to live our lives with that same poverty.

- Henri Nouwen

They will know one another...

The humble, meek, merciful, and just are everywhere of one religion; and when death has taken off the mask they will know one another, though the diverse liveries they wear here make them strangers.

- William Penn

On The Journey Towards Intimacy

I am a father, and my life has been richly blessed by my three sons, David (24), Kevin (22) and Patrick (19).
Recently Patrick cut a "Family Circus" comic out of the paper for me. In it P.J. (a young boy) says to his grandmother, "You're a better story reader than Daddy. He skips pages." This brought a big smile to my face as I remembered the countless nights I read to Patrick as part of his bedtime routine. I can recall the exact night the proverbial lightbulb went on and he figured out that I was indeed skipping pages. I also remember the night he decided that I didn't need to tuck him into bed anymore. This was for me a sad and necessary night as he entered the long tunnel of adolescence, when fathers are not as obviously appreciated.
Another of my favorite memories is my three teenage sons' advice when I was about to preach my first weeklong retreat. David said, "I just hope you're leaving the van at home." Kevin's response was, "I can't believe people would pay $400 to listen to you for a whole week. For that kind of money, I would do it myself. I've heard it all before." Then Patrick spoke up: "Dad, try not to be yourself."
Today's reality is different again, with my sons all young adults who continue to ask me to change and grow. In the end they will discover what I did, especially after my own dad died-that fathers are in their sons in ways that can take a lifetime to know, claim and appreciate.

- Joe Egan

Small Steps of Love

How can we choose love when we have experienced so little of it? We choose love by taking small steps of love every time there is an opportunity. A smile, a handshake, a word of encouragement, a phone call, a card, an embrace, a kind greeting, a gesture of support, a moment of attention, a helping hand, a present, a financial contribution, a visit ... all these are little steps toward love.
Each step is like a candle burning in the night. It does not take the darkness away, but it guides us through the darkness. When we look back after many small steps of love, we will discover that we have made a long and beautiful journey.

- Henri Nouwen

Choosing Love

How can someone ever trust in the existence of an unconditional divine love when most, if not all, of what he or she has experienced is the opposite of love - fear, hatred, violence, and abuse?
They are not condemned to be victims! There remains within them, hidden as it may seem, the possibility to choose love. Many people who have suffered the most horrendous rejections and been subject to the most cruel torture are able to choose love. By choosing love they become witnesses not only to enormous human resiliency but also to the divine love that transcends all human loves. Those who choose, even on a small scale, to love in the midst of hatred and fear are the people who offer true hope to our world.

- Henri Nouwen

The Only True Lamp

Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all things look ghastly. Tomorrow, in the natural sun, the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp - all others but liars!

- Herman Melville

The Spirit's Power

The work of the Lord is done not primarily by human effort or ingenuity - although God uses these - but by the power of His Spirit. Those who wish to rise above the status of the Lord's assistants by establishing their own empires and demanding allegiance to themselves will not accomplish the Lord's work. Those who endeavour to succeed without the resources of the Spirit will be doomed to fail. But those who humbly, joyfully, and willingly make themselves available to the Lord for all that He has in mind and who keep their lives open to the full flow of His Spirit's power will assist the Lord's work to its glorious consummation.

- Stuart Briscoe in "Daily Study Bible for Men"

Sometimes

Sometimes a thunderbolt will shoot from a clear sky; and sometimes, into the midst of a peaceful family – without warning of gathered storm above or slightest tremble of earthquake beneath – will fall a terrible fact, and from that moment everything is changed. The air is thick with cloud, and cannot weep itself clear. There may come a gorgeous sunset, though.

- George Macdonald

The Source of All Love

Without the love of our parents, sisters, brothers, spouses, lovers, and friends, we cannot live. Without love we die. Still, for many people this love comes in a very broken and limited way. It can be tainted by power plays, jealousy, resentment, vindictiveness, and even abuse. No human love is the perfect love our hearts desire, and sometimes human love is so imperfect that we can hardly recognise it as love.
In order not to be destroyed by the wounds inflicted by that imperfect human love, we must trust that the source of all love is God's unlimited, unconditional, perfect love, and that this love is not far away from us but is the gift of God's Spirit dwelling within us.

- Henri Nouwen

Empowered to Receive Love

The Spirit reveals to us not only that God is "Abba, Father" but also that we belong to God as his beloved children. The Spirit thus restores in us the relationship from which all other relationships derive their meaning.
Abba is a very intimate word. The best translation for it is: "Daddy." The word Abba expresses trust, safety, confidence, belonging, and most of all intimacy. It does not have the connotation of authority, power, and control, that the word Father often evokes. On the contrary, Abba implies an embracing and nurturing love. This love includes and infinitely transcends all the love that comes to us from our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, spouses, and lovers. It is the gift of the Spirit.

- Henri Nouwen

Empowered to Call God "Abba"

Calling God "Abba, Father" is different from giving God a familiar name. Calling God "Abba" is entering into the same intimate, fearless, trusting, and empowering relationship with God that Jesus had. That relationship is called Spirit, and that Spirit is given to us by Jesus and enables us to cry out with him, "Abba, Father."
Calling God "Abba, Father" (see Roman 8:15; Galatians 4:6) is a cry of the heart, a prayer welling up from our innermost beings. It has nothing do with naming God but everything to do with claiming God as the source of who we are. This claim does not come from any sudden insight or acquired conviction; it is the claim that the Spirit of Jesus makes in communion with our spirits. It is the claim of love.

- Henri Nouwen

The World Is Our Parish

I want to suggest that the cutting edge of mission in our time, especially for churches in the West, is to reclaim John Wesley's vision that "the world is our parish." Wesley came by it naturally, because Christianity is a world-embracing religion.
+ It is a faith founded on the presuppositions that God created the whole world and pronounced it good.
+ It is a movement whose call is understood in terms of the call of Abraham and Sarah to be a blessing to all the nations.
+ It is a community of moral discourse centered in the prophets who reminded the Israelites and who remind us that justice and righteousness are at the heart of what God calls us to be about.
+ It is a faith centered in John's announcement that God so loved the world that He sent His only Son (John 3:16).
+ It is a witnessing fellowship centered in Jesus Christ who gave us the Great Commission to go into all the world and to make disciples of all nations (Matt 28:16-20).
+ It is a church, born at Pentecost, only when people are gathered together from every language and tongue and nation.
+ It is a faith community that sent the disciples out to turn the world upside down for the Gospel (Acts 17:6).

- Clifton Kirkpatrick in "Perspectives", February 2005

Empowered to Be

Who are we? Are we what we do? Are we what others say about us? Are we the power we have? It often seems that way in our society. But the Spirit of Jesus given to us reveals our true spiritual identities. The Spirit reveals that we belong not to a world of success, fame, or power but to God. The world enslaves us with fear; the Spirit frees us from that slavery and restores us to the true relationship. That is what Paul means when he says: "All who are guided by the Spirit of God are sons [daughters] of God, for what you received was not the spirit of slavery to bring you back into fear; you received the spirit of adoption, enabling us to cry out, 'Abba, Father!'" (Romans 8:15).
Who are we? We are God's beloved sons and daughters!

- Henri Nouwen

The Opportunity of Suffering

The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity - even under the most difficult circumstances - to add a deeper meaning to his life. He may remain brave, dignified, and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.

- Viktor Frankl

Empowered to Pray

Prayer is the gift of the Spirit. Often we wonder how to pray, when to pray, and what to pray. We can become very concerned about methods and techniques of prayer. But finally it is not we who pray but the Spirit who prays in us.
Paul says: "The Spirit ... comes to help us in our weakness, for, when we do not know how to pray properly, then the Spirit personally makes our petitions for us in groans that cannot be put into words; and he who can see into all hearts knows what the Spirit means because the prayers that the Spirit makes for God's holy people are always in accordance with the mind of God" (Romans 8:26-27). These words explain why the Spirit is called "the Consoler."

- Henri Nouwen

The Road Home

It was a warm Saturday afternoon. A Carolina breeze was steadily moving through the long grass and the proud, full branches. I was driving home, back to the little corner of the world where I grew up. I was en route to a modest house on a corner lot bordered by pine trees, vegetable gardens, and neighbours who still bake casseroles for each other.
I was thinking that when I arrive, my dad (most likely atop his newly painted tractor) will head across the freshly mowed lawn. He'll hug me long and hard until the back door slams. My mom will reach for me, smiling, and announce, "I've a fresh pitcher of iced tea. Who's ready for a glass?"...
What really matters is home. This is the stuff I am made of. This is what is important to me.
We are all on a homeward journey. God patiently plans our routes and polices our perils. He watches us manoeuvre through detours and treacherous places. He even sees us make an occasional wrong turn then keep going anyway.
But always He waits. Long ago He paved the way and marked the direction for us to come to Him. He prepared a place of rest that is beyond the reaches of our imaginations - a welcome centre built by His own hand.

- Janet Pachal in "The Good Road"

Like a Butterfly

It dawns on me more and more how trivial and short our lifespan is. It is like smoke; like a butterfly - it passes so quickly, flying away. Nobody, no one can bring back wasted years. One wishes that one would have always lived with eternity in mind.

- Emmy Arnold

Empowered to Speak

The Spirit that Jesus gives us empowers us to speak. Often when we are expected to speak in front of people who intimidate us, we are nervous and self-conscious. But if we live in the Spirit, we don't have to worry about what to say. We will find ourselves ready to speak when the need is there. "When they take you before ... authorities, do not worry about how to defend yourselves or what to say, because when the time comes, the Holy Spirit will teach you what you should say" (Luke 12:11-12).
We waste much of our time in anxious preparation. Let's claim the truth that the Spirit that Jesus gave us will speak in us and speak convincingly.

- Henri M Nouwen

On The Journey Towards Intimacy

It's taken more than half my life to understand the meaning of true intimacy. For years I understood intimacy only in sexual terms. As I have matured spiritually (an ongoing journey), I have come to understand intimacy in a more comprehensive, life- sustaining way. I count among my most precious gifts the gift of intimacy that I share and receive among soul friends and confidants. This intimacy is the freedom to speak, from the core of my being, my joys and sorrows, my accomplishments and failures. I recognize this as a monumental gift from God.
Once while doing outreach with the homeless in Los Angeles, I learned that a single loving action shared with a stranger can be as intimate and transforming as that received from a trusted friend. The depth of our intimacy with those around us is a reflection of the depth of our relationship with God. Intimacy with another human being on any level, be it a brief encounter with a homeless person or a lifelong relationship, is an encounter with the divine presence inherent in each human being.
Mother Teresa taught that the greatest poverty in the world today is the poverty of despair and loneliness, the poverty of not being loved, of not having intimate, loving relationships with others. When I reflect on the richness of my life in terms of the love and affirmation I receive and give, I know I live a privileged life.

- Victoria S. Schmidt

Tapas - Suffering

If a newborn child does not cry out and scream, then it must be slapped until it does. No one has joy in slapping a child - only the longing that it makes full use of its lungs and draws in life-giving air. So in perfect love, God may strike us with blows and stings of pain so that the breath of prayer flows freely through the lungs of our souls. This is the only way we can become strong and fit for eternal life.
Look at the pearl. A pearl is a product of pain and suffering. Tormented by some foreign matter against its soft flesh, the oyster responds by embracing the irritant and transforming it into an object of great beauty. The creation of the pearl not only provides relief to the oyster but is also a source of wonder and pleasure to many others. But beware! The unique lustre of the pearl can be easily destroyed. Ink or oils can contaminate and destroy its beauty. Pearls laid in ancient tombs often decay with the corpse of their owners; the dust of the pearls is then mingled with the dust of the dead.
Spiritual life - like the pearl - grows out of pain and suffering. And even when the pain has been transformed into a thing of beauty, the lustre of our spiritual lives can easily become contaminated and decay.
Thousands of years of heat and pressure come to bear on black carbon before it is transformed into a precious diamond. Even then, diamonds do not dazzle unless they have first been cut. When cut and polished, then the rays of the sun make them shine with wonderful colors. Scientists may manufacture artificial diamonds in laboratories, but careful examination exposes their inferiority. Likewise, we cannot attain spiritual perfection without passing through pain and suffering.

- Sadhu Sundar Singh

Seva - Service

There are many people who waste precious chances to serve God and their fellow human beings. They should rouse themselves and make full use of the time that is given to them. Once a hunter picked up some pretty stones by a river in the jungle. He used them to shoot at birds with his slingshot, and so one by one they disappeared into the water and were lost.
Some time later, he was in a city and wandered through the market absent-mindedly tossing and catching the one stone he still had left. A jeweller caught sight of it, marvelled at such a precious gem and offered to buy it for several thousand rupees. When the hunter recognized the value of his stone, he cried out: "Woe is me! I have been carelessly shooting gems into the river. I could have been a millionaire. But thank God I have saved at least this one."
Every day of our lives is like a precious diamond. We may have wasted countless days already in idle and selfish pursuits, so that they are now lost in the depths of the past.
But let us at least awake now, see the value of the days that remain and use them to acquire spiritual wealth. If we use them in selfless service to God and if we use them to warn others who are still frivolously throwing away their days in pursuit of fleeting pleasures, then we will gain the boundless treasure of heavenly bliss.

- Sadhu Sundar Singh

Karma – Bondage

People may not even be aware of their mortal danger. They are like the hunter who caught sight of a honeycomb on the branch of a tree overhanging a river. Catching sight of the honey, he forgot everything else and quickly climbed up. The honey was sweet and he was so enchanted by its flavour that he did not notice the alligators waiting in the stream below. Nor did he see that around the foot of the tree, wolves had gathered. Worst of all, he didn't notice that the tree itself was infested with termites and was not strong enough to bear his weight.
While he was still enjoying the honey, the tree fell and the hunter fell prey to the alligators. So too, the human spirit enjoys for a time the pleasant but fleeting delights of the senses, forgetting that the world is like a jungle fraught with dangers of every kind. Sin gnaws at the very foundation of our lives, threatening to fling us to our spiritual deaths.
The evil of this world lures us with clever words and beguiling enticements like certain snakes that fascinate small birds with their glittering eyes until they can devour them.
Or think of the moth that gives no thought to the burning, destructive power of the fire. Fascinated by the flashing brilliance of the flame, it rushes to its own death. Likewise we often see only the allurements of the material world, seeking quick gratification of our own urges, and so rush headlong into spiritual death.
Once in the depth of winter, a bird of prey was busy feasting on a corpse that was floating toward a waterfall. When the bird came near the falls he wanted to leave the corpse and escape. But his claws were frozen to it and he could not fly away. He fell into the roaring waters and died a miserable death. Likewise, if we allow sin to numb our consciences, we become powerless to escape death and danger ahead, no matter how we struggle to escape.
- Sadhu Sundar Singh

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

Jesus Is a Peacemaker

Jesus, the Blessed Child of the Father, is a peacemaker. His peace doesn't mean only absence of war. It is not simply harmony or equilibrium. His peace is the fullness of well-being, gratuitously given by God. Jesus says, "Peace I leave to you, my own peace I give you, a peace which the world cannot give, this is my gift to you" (John 14:27).
Peace is Shalom - well-being of mind, heart, and body, individually and communally. It can exist in the midst of a war-torn world, even in the midst of unresolved problems and increasing human conflicts. Jesus made that peace by giving his life for his brothers and sisters. This is no easy peace, but it is everlasting and it comes from God. Are we willing to give our lives in the service of peace?

- Henri Nouwen

Jesus Is Pure of Heart

Jesus, the Beloved of God, has a pure heart. Having a pure heart means willing one thing. Jesus wanted only to do the will of his heavenly Father. Whatever Jesus did or said, he did and said it as the obedient Son of God: "What I say is what the Father has taught me; he who sent me is with me, and has not left me to myself, for I always do what pleases him" (John 8:28-29). There are no divisions in Jesus' heart, no double motives or secret intentions. In Jesus there is complete inner unity because of his complete unity with God.
Becoming like Jesus is growing into purity of heart. That purity is what gave Jesus and will give us true spiritual vision.

- Henri Nouwen

Jesus Is Merciful

Jesus, the Blessed Child of God, is merciful. Showing mercy is different from having pity. Pity connotes distance, even looking down upon. When a beggar asks for money and you give him something out of pity, you are not showing mercy. Mercy comes from a compassionate heart; it comes from a desire to be an equal. Jesus didn't want to look down on us. He wanted to become one of us and feel deeply with us.
When Jesus called the only son of the widow of Nain to life, he did so because he felt the deep sorrow of the grieving mother in his own heart (see Luke 7:11-17). Let us look at Jesus when we want to know how to show mercy to our brothers and sisters.

- Henri Nouwen

Spiritual Power

"You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be My witnesses..." (Jesus in Acts 1:8)

Can social transformation really ever occur without an accompanying spiritual transformation? Or can the impulse of reform last for very long without the motivation, sustenance and hope that faith can bring? Does social reform without spiritual power just become political correctness?

- Rev. Jim Wallis, editor of "Sojourners"

Jesus Hungers and Thirsts for Uprightness

Jesus, the Blessed Son of God, hungers and thirsts for uprightness. He abhors injustice. He resists those who try to gather wealth and influence by oppression and exploitation. His whole being yearns for people to treat one another as brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of the same God.
With fervor he proclaims that the way to the Kingdom is not saying many prayers or offering many sacrifices but in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting the sick and the prisoners (see Matthew 25:31-46). He longs for a just world. He wants us to live with the same hunger and thirst.

- Henri Nouwen

A Noted Clergyman

Some keep the Sabbath going to church;
I keep it staying at home,
With a bobolink for a chorister,
And an orchard for a dome.

Some keep the Sabbath in surplice;
I just wear my wings,
And instead of tolling the bell for church,
Our little sexton sings.

God preaches - a noted clergyman -
And the sermon is never long;
So instead of getting to heaven at last,
I'm going all along!

- "A Service of Song" by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

In the Face of Suffering

If I did not believe, if I did not make what is called an act of faith (and each act of faith increases our faith, and our capacity for faith), if I did not have faith that the works of mercy do lighten the sum total of suffering in the world, so that those who are suffering on both sides of this ghastly struggle somehow mysteriously find their pain lifted and some balm of consolation poured on their wounds, if I did not believe these things, the problem of evil would indeed be overwhelming.

- Dorothy Day

All Things New

And he who sat upon the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” - Revelation 21:5

A darkness has come over Christianity in regard to this matter of renewal. We are so easily contented, so quickly satisfied with a religiosity that makes us appear a little more decent. Yet this cannot be all there is to our faith: Everything—everything—must become new. Not just a little taste of something new, but all things new.

- C. F. Blumhardt

Jesus Mourns

Jesus, the Blessed One, mourns. Jesus mourns when his friend Lazarus dies (see John 11:33-36); he mourns when he overlooks the city of Jerusalem, soon to be destroyed (see Luke 19:41-44). Jesus mourns over all losses and devastations that fill the human heart with pain. He grieves with those who grieve and sheds tears with those who cry.
The violence, greed, lust, and so many other evils that have distorted the face of the earth and its people causes the Beloved Son of God to mourn. We too have to mourn if we hope to experience God's consolation.

- Henri Nouwen

Jesus is Gentle

Jesus, the Blessed One, is gentle. Even though he speaks with great fervour and biting criticism against all forms of hypocrisy and is not afraid to attack deception, vanity, manipulation and oppression, his heart is a gentle heart. He won't break the crushed reed or snuff the faltering wick (see Matthew 12:20). He responds to people's suffering, heals their wounds, and offers courage to the fainthearted.
Jesus came to bring good news to the poor, sight to the blind, and freedom to prisoners (see Luke 4:18-19) in all he says, and thus he reveals God's immense compassion. As his followers, we are called to that same gentleness.

- Henri Nouwen

On The Journey Toward Reclaiming my Identity

There is a crisis in North America and Europe. People are stealing each other's identities. It begins with stealing or changing personal and professional data: vital statistics, credit card and Social Security numbers, health and life insurance policies, and anything else that in 2005 will distinguish one individual from another. Identity theft virtually wipes away the existence of a person, at least as it is defined on the Internet.
But the big question remains. Aren't we more than our ID numbers? Don't our identities reflect our uniqueness, the vital nature (not the vital signs) that distinguishes us from others? I don't want anyone identifying me from a list of variables that may include height, weight, health, or food preferences. Perhaps I am saintly, or evil. I suspect that is a more apt identity. I think of individuals' essential identities - not what they do, what God they worship, or what colour they are - as defining who they are as human beings.
I doubt that God has the largest database of all, though if there is one that really matters, it is God's. But God doesn't care about statistics. God accepts us unconditionally. Each of us is unique and wonderful to God.
If you are searching for your identity, don't look for it in a database or in anyone else's definition of you. Rather, look for it in your relationships with God, yourself, and those who love you.

by Shirley Kane Lewis

A Common Faith

Must we then have strange music... unlike the world's music, and a special language with an imagery that illuminates the minds only of the religious? Or dare we do what our Lord did, and see the Name hallowed in all life that is real and honest and good? Indeed, it was a scandal to the religious men of Jesus' day when they saw what He did with sacred things. With Jesus all life was sacred and nothing was profane until sin entered in. And so it was that the word "common," which used to mean profane and unclean, became the New Testament word for the Communion of Saints and for the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

- Howard Hewlett Clark

Freedom To Choose

"Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve,... But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD." (Joshua 24:15)
We have been given the freedom to choose what we see, what we pay attention to, what we rest our awareness on. There are zillions of things that can attract us, call us to themselves. Our task is to choose which ones we want to pay attention to, which ones we want to invest our energy in, for we cannot endure full consciousness of everything. We must focus on something more limited.

- Jane Marie Thibault in "A Deepening Love Affair"

The Final Step

It is amazing, the lengths God will go to get our attention. God will touch. He will tug. He will whisper and shout. He will take away our burdens. He'll even take away our blessings. If there are a thousand steps between us and Him, He will take all but one. But He will leave the final one for us. The choice is ours.

- Max Lucado in "A Gentle Thunder"

Solidarity

I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person and learns from the other. Most of us have a lot to learn from other people.

- Eduardo Galeano

Hope-Saturated Grief

"But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope" (1 Thess 4:13 NRSV).
When I was a young minister, a person informed me that Christians do not grieve. He said grief showed a lack of faith. He used this verse as his proof text, which he quoted this way: "But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve." It's amazing how we can make the Bible say what we want by stopping where we like. Paul acknowledged that Christians grieve the death of loved ones. However, Christian grief is hope-saturated. It is not the hopeless grief borne by those outside of Christ.

- Craig Loscalzo

Jesus' Self-Portrait

Jesus says: "Blessed are the poor, the gentle, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for uprightness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and those who are persecuted in the cause of uprightness" (Matthew 5:3-10). These words offer us a self-portrait of Jesus. Jesus is the Blessed One. And the face of the Blessed One shows poverty, gentleness, grief, hunger, and thirst for uprightness, mercy, purity of heart, a desire to make peace, and the signs of persecution.
The whole message of the Gospel is this: Become like Jesus. We have his self-portrait. When we keep that in front of our eyes, we will soon learn what it means to follow Jesus and become like him.

by Henri Nouwen

What God Expects of Us

It is amusing to see souls who, while they are at prayer, fancy they are willing to be despised and publicly insulted for the love of God, yet afterwards do all they can to hide their small defects. If anyone unjustly accuses them of a fault, God deliver us from their outcries! Prayer does not consist of such fancies. No, our Lord expects works from us. Beg our Lord to grant you perfect love for your neighbour. If someone else is well spoken of, be more pleased than if it were yourself; this is easy enough, for if you were really humble, it would vex you to be praised... Comply in all things with others’ wishes, though you lose your own rights. Forget your self-interests for theirs, however much nature may rebel.

- Teresa of Ávila

Responding To God

Those who have received God's great salvation and are now in the family of God must live their lives with an awesome [reverence for] God. After all God has done on our behalf, we must respond with complete submission to His will. We will, and must, always see as God sees. For God's salvation came at a high price; it cost Him the precious blood of His Son, Jesus Christ. Through the death and resurrection of Christ we now have faith and hope in God. Since we have received such love, we must now fervently love all people for whom Christ died. For a Christian consciously to refuse to love the children of God for whom Christ died is to dishonor His death and ridicule His love. But when we walk in a loving relationship with God's people, the testimony to the world is profound. John 13:35 says, "By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."

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

Jesus, the Blessed One

Jesus is the Blessed One. The word benediction, which is the Latin form for the word blessing, means "to say (dicere) good things (bene)." Jesus is the Blessed One because God has spoken good things of him. Most clearly we hear God's blessing after Jesus has been baptised in the river Jordan, when "suddenly there was a voice from heaven, 'This is my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on him'" (Matthew 3:16-17).
With this blessing Jesus starts his public ministry. And all of that ministry is to make known to us that this blessing is not only for Jesus but also for all who follow him.

- Henri Nouwen

Jesus' Freedom

Jesus was truly free. His freedom was rooted in his spiritual awareness that he was the Beloved Child of God. He knew in the depth of his being that he belonged to God before he was born, that he was sent into the world to proclaim God's love, and that he would return to God after his mission was fulfilled. This knowledge gave him the freedom to speak and act without having to please the world and the power to respond to people's pains with the healing love of God.
That's why the Gospels say: "Everyone in the crowd was trying to touch him because power came out of him that cured them all" (Luke 6:19)

- Henri Nouwen

Sole Custody Of Your Life

You walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree; there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul. People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is a cold comfort on a winter night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've gotten back the test results and they're not so good.

- Anna Quindlen in a commencement address at Villanova

The conquest of Happiness

When some misfortune threatens, consider seriously and deliberately what is the worst that could happen. Having looked this possible misfortune in the face, give yourself sound reasons for thinking that after all it would be no such terrible disaster. Such reasons always exist, since the worst nothing that happens to oneself has any cosmic importance. When you have looked for some time steadily at the worst possibility and have said to yourself with real conviction, Well, after all, that would not matter so very much, you will find that your worry diminishes to a quite extraordinary extent. It may be necessary to repeat the process a few times, but in the end, if you have shirked nothing in facing the worst possible issue, you will find that your worry disappears altogether and is replaced by a kind of exhilaration.

- Bertrand Russell

The Unfinished Business of Forgiveness

What makes us cling to life even when it is time to "move on"? Is it our unfinished business? Sometimes we cling to life because we have not yet been able to say: "I forgive you, and I ask for your forgiveness." When we have forgiven those who have hurt us and asked forgiveness from those we have hurt, a new freedom emerges. It is the freedom to move on.
When Jesus was dying he prayed for those who had nailed him to the cross: "Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34). That prayer set him free to say, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit" (Luke 23:46).

- Henri Nouwen

The Breath of God Within Us

When we speak about the Holy Spirit, we speak about the breath of God, breathing in us. The Greek word for "spirit" is pneuma, which means "breath." We are seldom aware of our breathing. It is so essential for life that we only think about it when something is wrong with it.
The Spirit of God is like our breath. God's spirit is more intimate to us than we are to ourselves. We might not often be aware of it, but without it we cannot live a "spiritual life." It is the Holy Spirit of God who prays in us, who offers us the gifts of love, forgiveness, kindness, goodness, gentleness, peace, and joy. It is the Holy Spirit who offers us the life that death cannot destroy. Let us always pray: "Come, Holy Spirit, come."

- Henri Nouwen

On The Journey Toward Reclaiming my Identity

Virginia Satir, the well-known psychotherapist, said, "Love brings up anything unlike itself for the purpose of healing." Through several years of counseling, this one sentence has helped in my recovery from sexual abuse. It is God's infinite love for me that continues calling me to the depths of my inner self, my true identity.
I know healing life's hurts helps me to become my true self. The struggles of life often create barriers to true love and understanding of self. Once we identify our struggles and make a conscious effort to heal, we begin to see clearly our true identity. Our real, God-centred identity is not the sum total of our experiences. Our God-centred identity is the inherent goodness that came with our creation. It begins whole and is powerful beyond measure. As we move through life, the wholeness gets chipped away and we have to consciously work towards healing.
What are the barriers that keep us from knowing our true, God-centred identity? What are the wounds that need healing? Why are we afraid to heal and to know our God-centred identity? Why are we so afraid to be whole? These are questions I ask myself often, and they continue to guide my own healing.
The love that brings up anything unlike itself to be healed is a love beyond our human grasp. It is the love that is given by the One who loves us infinitely more than we can ever fully understand.

by Victoria S. Schmidt

From Silence To Service

Here's a Quaker joke. A Friend takes a non-Quaker to Meeting for Worship. Everyone is sitting quietly with heads down and eyes closed. After five or ten minutes of continued silence the visitor becomes increasingly restless and puzzled. He nudges the Quaker and asks in a loud whisper, "When does the service begin?" The Quaker replies, "The service begins when the worship ends." Not exactly a knee-slapper, but then Quakers have never distinguished themselves as humorists.
The point of the story is that for Quakers there is a direct link between worship and service to others. The search for truth, which begins in contemplation, finds expression in action.

- Robert Lawrence Smith in A Quaker Book of Wisdom

A Home For Your Heart

When it comes to resting your soul, there is no place like the Great House of God. "I'm asking Yahweh for one thing," [David] wrote, "only one thing: to live with Him in His house my whole life long. I'll contemplate His beauty, I'll study at His feet. That's the only quiet secure place in a noisy world" (Ps. 27:4-5 MSG).
If you could ask God for one thing, what would you request? David tells us what he would ask. He longs to LIVE in the house of God. I emphasize the word live, because it deserves to be emphasized. David doesn't want to chat. He doesn't desire a cup of coffee on the back porch. He doesn't ask for a meal or to spend an evening in God's house. He wants to move in with Him...forever. He's asking for his own room... permanently. He doesn't want to be stationed in God's house, he longs to retire there. He doesn't seek a temporary assignment, but rather lifelong residence.

- Max Lucado in "Grace for the Moment"

You can be a fool...

Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit - Elbert Hubbard

Love Will Remain

Hope and faith will both come to an end when we die. But love will remain. Love is eternal. Love comes from God and returns to God. When we die, we will lose everything that life gave us except love. The love with which we lived our lives is the life of God within us. It is the divine, indestructible core of our being. This love not only will remain but will also bear fruit from generation to generation.
When we approach our deaths let us say to those we leave behind, "Don't let your heart be troubled. The love of God that dwells in my heart will come to you and offer you consolation and comfort."

- Henri Nouwen