Before you head of into this December weekend with one week left of shopping and before you turn off the Hallmark channel, here are three things that I’ve read and been thinking about this week. Enjoy this Henri Nouwen Friday! I hope they challenge and help you as much as they have me.
PS. I want to give you a heads up about a project that I’ll be doing next year. Beginning January 1, 2024 I will be writing a daily devotional ready to be delivered to your inbox each morning. It is part of the church’s 1/3/12/70 focus. If you would like to receive it please shoot me an email (todd@lextogether.org) and I’ll add you to the list. I won’t be publishing it here on the blog since that would be presumptuous of me to assume you’d like to get an email every day from me! One or two a week may be more than plenty!!
Have a great weekend!
#1
Spiritual formation requires a constant discipline of prayer to move from opaqueness to transparency, a discipline by which a world of darkness is transformed into one of transcendent light. Nature no longer is a property to control but a gift to be received and shared. Time no longer is a random series of events but a constant opportunity for a change of heart.
Spiritual Formation by Henri Nouwen
Not if, but when. Not how, but why. These are the key contrasts when thinking about prayer. Without prayer, we have no hope of being transformed. How I wish that didn’t sound so final and harsh. It’s not that God can’t transform us in any way that God desires. It is that God designed to transform us as we spend time in companionship with him through faith in Christ and the presence of the his Spirit.
Pray is about presence with rather than performing for. The gift I received a few years ago was a release from guilt about being a bad prayer. I found out that there is no such thing as a bad prayer. There are only prayers and non-prayers. If you are a prayer, God will take care of the rest as each moment becomes an opportunity, a gift, for your heart to be changed.
#2
The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self.
Spiritual Formation by Henri Nouwen
I wish I could say that Nouwen is wrong. That the Christian leader, and indeed all Christians, have more to offer than being irrelevant and vulnerable. How about our dad jokes? Or our understanding of theology? Or what about our leadership ability?
But I have seen over and again that our greatest ability is our availability. What I have also seen is that when the willingness to be irrelevant and vulnerable is offered, the other “gifts” become impactful because people are willing to hear. We will find ourselves in situations that relevant people do not have time for and invulnerable people are not invited.
#3
My growing suspicion is that our competitive, productive, skeptical, and sophisticated society inhibits our reading and being read by the Word of God.
Spiritual Formation by Henri Nouwen
The perspective we read Scripture is of course impacted by our culture and past experiences. To think that we are objective is to show our ignorance. To think we can get rid of our culture and past is foolish.
So, how do we read, and be read by, Scripture? Humility is a start. Acknowledging that we do not know what we do not know. Embracing the fact that we may be wrong even about a long-held deeply embedded belief. Give the Holy Spirit freedom to reign. Trusting the power of the Spirit is sufficient to break through whatever walls are in our life so that we may receive the Word of God.
todd nelson 