Meditations

The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.” Jeremiah 31:3

“It is not always easy to believe that we are unconditionally loved even when those who love us disagree with us or disapprove of us. But this is the love with which God loves us and wants us to love each other. It is a love that includes even those who treat us as enemies, who reject us or are angry with us. Because once we know in the depth of our hearts that we are forgiven children of God, we will always be able to forgive those who cannot respond to our love.

What are the implications of all of this for our daily life? Here are a few.

1. Keep in touch with your own belovedness. Prayer, good friends, and nature can help you a lot with this.
2. Never react impulsively to those who hurt you. Respond from the heart where you know that you are loved. Always take time and ask yourself, “What is the best and most honest response I can make?’
3. Do not compromise your own integrity. Simply trying to please the person who hurts you is a way of compromising yourself. Always stand straight!
4. Be consistent in your relationships. Sudden outbursts of anger or sudden gestures of intimacy make you lose solid ground and only make real healing and reconciliation more difficult.
5. Always be kind, open to listen, willing to talk and generous in forgiving, but never at the cost of losing your freedom as a child of God.
6. Be very patient. What seems impossible one year might be quite possible the next!
7. In everything keep a sense of humor and deep gratitude for the gifts of life and love.
8. Always trust, trust, and trust.”

Henri Nouwen in Love, Henri: Letters on the Spiritual Life (New York: Convergent, 2016) in his letter to Joan Kroc, the wife of the founder of the McDonald’s hamburger chain. She met regularly to discuss the spiritual life with Henri. In 1995, after one of their meetings, Henri wrote her this reflection on unconditional love.

Generous is God’s love for us. Unfathomably generous!

God put Henri in a place where he interacted with really influential people who wrestled with the implications of God’s unconditional love. We might be tempted to think that we don’t know the wife of the founder of McDonalds so we can’t have impact in the lives of influential people. But the reality is that everyone is special to God.

And we can impact those around us by living in light of His generous love.

Who do you know that you could help soak in the implications of God’s generous and unconditional love toward us? Who are you talking to this week that could benefit from these words? Sit with this list. Pick a point on it. Ponder it. Share how God speaks to you through it with someone you know. See what happens.

Pray also for me, that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should. Ephesians 6:19-20

“It means a lot to me that you keep in touch and that you are willing to support me with your prayers. If anything holds me up, it is the prayers of friends and I rely on them. What I am experiencing is a really deep spiritual crisis in which I realize that God wants all of my heart, not simply a part of it. It seems as if He wants to test my faithfulness and my commitment in a new way. He is really asking me to let go of everything that does not bring me closer to Him. He calls me to a more generous prayer life and to a more fearless ministry. This year is a kind of desert year to purify my heart. It is painful, but also full of grace.”

Henri Nouwen in Love, Henri: Letters on the Spiritual Life (New York: Convergent, 2016) in his letter dated 19 May 1988 to his friend Robert J. Wicks, a spiritual writer and professor of pastoral counseling at Loyola College in Maryland. Therein he shares his hope that he can return to Daybreak “before too long” and identifies his recent experience as a “deep spiritual crisis.”

I searched Henri’s use of the word “generous” in this collection of his letters and got a flood of occurrences. I plan to share them over the next few days. And since “share” is my word for the year, let me know if you want the PDF of this book, because I located a free copy for reading and sharing.

What struck me today was the parallel between Paul’s hard year in chains and Henri’s desert year to purify his heart. Henri felt God calling him “to a more generous prayer life and to a more fearless ministry.” It teaches me that God wants us to commune with him and that may push us out of our comfort zone.

He may take us to places like prison (in Paul’s case) where He knows some of our best work can happen. It’s counterintuitive. But that’s how the spiritual life works. We don’t lose, we gain when we give. And when we experience hard times, a more generous prayer life propels us to fearless ministry.

Think more deeply with me for a moment. Fear is what hinders us from generous service and holds us back. When we commune with God more generously, it launches us with new courage. When we pray for others, it impacts their lives too. Is God calling you to a more generous prayer life and fearless ministry? 

At daybreak, Jesus went out to a solitary place. The people were looking for him and when they came to where he was, they tried to keep him from leaving them. Luke 4:42

“You must decide for yourself to whom and when you give access to your interior life. For years you have permitted others to walk in and out of your life according to their needs and desires. Thus you were no longer master in your own house, and you felt increasingly used. So, too, you quickly became tired, irritated, angry, and resentful.

Think of a medieval castle surrounded by a moat. The drawbridge is the only access to the interior of the castle. The lord of the castle must have the power to decide when to draw the bridge and when to let it down. Without such power, he can become the victim of enemies, strangers, and wanderers. He will never feel at peace in his own castle.

It is important for you to control your own drawbridge. There must be times when you keep your bridge drawn and have the opportunity to be alone or only with those to whom you feel close. Never allow yourself to become public property, where anyone can walk in and out at will. You might think that you are being generous in giving access to anyone who wants to enter or leave, but you will soon find yourself losing your soul.

When you claim for yourself the power over your drawbridge, you will discover new joy and peace in your heart and find yourself able to share that joy and peace with others.”

Henri Nouwen in The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey through Anguish to Freedom (New York: Image, 1998) 84-85. I located this priceless piece in PDF form too. Reply if you want a copy.

Nouwen urges us to control our own drawbridge, which is carefully giving people access to our lives. We see this in Jesus. He seems to make Himself available to receptive people but not to everyone.

Hear this counsel. “You might think that you are being generous in giving access to anyone who wants to enter or leave, but you will soon find yourself losing your soul.” Jesus was strategic in sharing Himself.

It’s a good lesson for us today related to generosity. We must not lock the drawbridge closed or leave it open all the time. In the middle we focus on the Father and the people He wants us to serve.

God help us with this! Today I am closing my drawbridge. I am taking the day off work to enjoy time with my wife Jenni. It’s our 30th wedding anniversary.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Romans 12:21

“There you have it: the love of God is an unconditional love, and only that love can empower us to live together without violence. When we know that God loves us deeply and will always go on loving us, whoever we are and whatever we do, it becomes possible to expect no more of our fellow men and women than they are able to give, to forgive them generously when they have offended us, and to respond to their hostility with love. By doing so we make visible a new way of being human and a new way of responding to our world problems.”

Henri Nouwen in Letters to Marc about Jesus: Living a Spiritual Life in a Material World (New York: HarperCollins, 2007). This excerpt comes from Letter V. The book contains seven letters Henri wrote to Marc van Campen.

Today you get a bonus. It’s like a doubleheader in baseball, which is fitting as I got to spend special time with my baseball-loving friend, Dan Busby, yesterday. When I drove up, he was sitting on the porch.

I got out of the car and sat down with him, “How are you, Gary?” He asked. I replied (quoting Scripture), “The righteous man has many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all.” He echoed the value of that verse.

I added that if I am good it is because I try to remind myself daily to focus on God’s love. This helps me stay centered in a crazy world much like the thinking from Henri. Then I turned to hear from him. We enjoyed hours together.

This book is a gem. It’s like a porch conversation with a giant in the faith. It inspires and instructs. It moves you to grow. As a bonus, here’s his entire Letter VII. May it nurture your spiritual life and empower your generous response.

Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it. Luke 17:33

“Thursday, 18th September

My dear Marc,

It was more than seven months ago that I began writing these letters about the spiritual life. I sent you the first three from West Germany, the three later ones from France. That now seems far away and long ago.

In mid-August I went to Canada to live and work at Daybreak, the L’Arche community near Toronto. This morning I read through my letters to you once more, and I realized that I’d probably written them as much for myself as for you. My year in Europe was meant to be a period of searching for a new direction in my life. I had a vague notion that Jesus was calling me to leave the university and to go and live with mentally handicapped people. My meeting with Jean Vanier and my stay in the L’Arche community at Trosly awoke in me something new which I couldn’t continue to ignore. The burning question was, “How best am I to follow Jesus?”

In my letters I’ve tried to bring you closer to Jesus. But I now realize that I’ve also “used” these letters to get to know Jesus better myself and so become better able to hear the invitation to follow him. It’s good, I think, that these letters have a purpose for both of us, because it’s only with what touches my heart that I am able to touch yours.

In my first letter, I said that I could write to you only what I’ve lived through and experienced myself. In this final letter I can honestly say that everything I have written to you has sprung directly from my own search for God. I hope this will prove more of a help than a hindrance for you. My greatest desire was to awaken in you a deep love for Jesus. I’ve told you of the Jesus who liberates, of the suffering Jesus and his compassion; of the Jesus who in his humility chose the descending way, of the loving Jesus who challenges us to love even our enemies; and finally of the Jesus of Nazareth who reveals to us the mystery of God’s hiddenness. As you see, I’ve begun with the end of the gospel and ended with the beginning. In doing that I’ve tried to stay close to the church’s proclamation, which approaches the mysteries of God’s incarnation and redemption from the perspective of its faith in the risen Lord.

In the course of writing I’ve discovered for myself the great extent to which I’m inclined to “secularize” Jesus. Instinctively, I look to Jesus for a cheap liberation, a solution to my problems, help with my desire for success, getting even with my opponents, and a good measure of publicity. It’s not always easy to see Jesus as the gospel presents him: as the Lord who calls us to spiritual freedom, shares our suffering, shows us the descending way, challenges us to love our enemies, and secretly reveals God’s love to us. And yet, each time I catch a glimpse of the real Jesus, I’m conscious of a new inward peace, and it is again possible to recognize his voice and follow it.

So I can tell you that these letters have helped me to see the real Jesus and have strengthened my decision to go to Canada and live and work there with mentally handicapped people.

Spiritual life is life lived in the spirit of Jesus. I’ve spoken of the Eucharist as being the center of that life. Jesus is more, much more, than an important historical figure who can still inspire us today. In the Eucharist he sets us free from constraint and compulsion, unites our suffering with his, forms a fellowship in shared vulnerability, offers us a love that forgives even our enemies, and helps us to see God in the seclusion of the human heart. Where the Eucharist is, there Jesus really is present; there too the church really is a body, and there we really do share, even now, in eternal life.

You and I both are called to be disciples of Jesus. The differences between us in age, circumstances, upbringing, and experience are small matters compared with the calling we have in common. What counts is being attentive at all times to the voice of God’s love invit- ing us to obey, that is, to make a generous response.
How can we keep listening to this voice in a world which does its best to distract us and get our attention for seemingly more urgent matters? In this last letter I want to put before you, by way of a conclusion, three forms of listening that for me have proven to be the most productive.

First of all, listen to the church. I know that isn’t a popular bit of advice at a time and in a country where the church is often seen more as an obstacle in the way than as the way to Jesus. Nevertheless, I’m deeply convinced that the greatest spiritual danger for our times is the separation of Jesus from the church. The church is the body of the Lord. Without Jesus there can be no church; and without the church we cannot stay united with Jesus. I’ve yet to meet anyone who has come closer to Jesus by forsaking the church. To listen to the church is to listen to the Lord of the church. Specifically, this entails taking part in the church’s liturgical life. Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost: these seasons and feasts teach you to know Jesus better and better and unite you more and more intimately with the divine life he offers you in the church.

The Eucharist is the heart of the church’s life. It’s there that you hear the life-giving gospel and receive the gifts that sustain that life within you. The best assurance that you’ll go on listening to the church is your regular participation in the Eucharist.

Second, listen to the book. By that I mean read the Bible; read books about the Bible, about the spiritual life, and the lives of “great” saints. I know you read a good deal; but a lot of what you read distracts you from the way that Jesus is showing you. The secondary school and university offer you little in the way of “spiritual reading.” That’s why it’s very important for you to read regularly books which will help you in your spiritual life. Many people are brought to God through spiritual literature that they chance or choose to read. Augustine, Ignatius, Thomas Merton, and many others have been converted through the book. The challenge, however, is not to read a “spiritual” book as a source of interesting information, but rather to listen to it as to a voice that addresses you directly. It isn’t easy to let a text “read” you. Your thirst for know- ledge and information often makes you desire to own the word, in- stead of letting the word own you. Even so, you will learn the most by listening carefully to the Word that seeks admission to your heart.

Finally, listen to your heart. It’s there that Jesus speaks most intimately to you. Praying is first and foremost listening to Jesus, who dwells in the very depths of your heart. He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t thrust himself upon you. His voice is an unassuming voice, very nearly a whisper, the voice of a gentle love. Whatever you do with your life, go on listening to the voice of Jesus in your heart. This listening must be an active and very attentive listening, for in our restless and noisy world Jesus’ loving voice is easily drowned out. You need to set aside some time every day for this active listening to Jesus, if only for ten minutes. Ten minutes each day for Jesus alone can bring about a radical change in your life.

You’ll find that it isn’t easy to be still for ten minutes at a time. You’ll discover straightaway that many other voices—voices that are very noisy and distracting, voices which are not God’s—demand your attention. But if you stick to your daily prayer time, then slowly but surely you’ll come to hear the gentle voice of love and will long more and more to listen to it.

These three ways of listening will guide you to an ever-deepening spiritual life. They will help you to get to know Jesus in a very intimate way, make you aware of the unique manner in which he is calling you, and give you the courage to follow him even to places where you would rather not go. Living with Jesus is a great adventure. It’s the adventure of love. When you admit Jesus to your heart nothing is predictable, but everything becomes possible. I pray that you will venture on a life with Jesus. He asks everything of you, but gives you more in return. With all my heart I wish you much hope, much courage, and abounding confidence.

Affectionate greetings to your parents, and to Frédérique and Reinier.

Henri”

If you want a PDF copy of Letters to Marc about Jesus: Living a Spiritual Life in a Material World, just reply and I will share it with you.

“The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). Matthew 1:23

“Ministry happens when you participate in the mystery of being with. The whole incarnation, God-with-us, Emmanuel, is first of all being with people. Caring means “to cry out with.” Compassion literally means “to be with those who suffer.” Ministry means we are to be precisely where people are vulnerable, not to fix it or to change it. That is an unintended fruit of it, but that is not why you are there. Jesus is first of all God-with-us. For thirty years he was just living in a small village, living the same life that we live. It was only for three years that he was preaching. So even when you look at it in a spiritual way, Jesus’ ministry wasn’t just the three years he was preaching. The mystery is that he shared our lives. Ministry is being with the sick, the dying, being with people wherever they are, whatever their problems. We dare to be with them in their weakness and trust that if we are entering into people’s vulnerable places, we will experience immense joy. That is the mystery of ministry. You can’t solve the world’s problems, but you can be with people.”

Henri Nouwen in Returning to God (St. Louis: All Saints Press, 2014) 21-22.

Jesus modeled the ministry of being with.

This has been a significant area of learning for me in recent years. Think about it. We are most like Christ when we listen and love, when we move toward rather than away from people who are struggling or suffering. And the key is not trying to solve their problems but merely to sit in their presence.

This week Peter Fiorello, Carla Archila, and I spent the week with a group of Chileans who say that they will never be the same. We taught and talked, listened and laughed. It was priceless and wrapped up nicely. I hope to visit them in November for a couple day between work in Brazil and Panama.

Today, I spend time with my dear friend, Dan Busby.

He’s battled Covid and cancer, but his life is so much bigger than these two recent challenges. I am looking forward to time together talking about baseball and books, people and places, family and faith, and so much more. I hope I bless him and look forward to how I am blessed in being with him.

God showed His generosity to us through the ministry of being with. How will you go and do likewise?

As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. But they urged Him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So He went in to stay with them. When He was at the table with them, He took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him, and He disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” Luke 24:28-32

“When Jesus enters into the home of His disciples it becomes His home. The guest becomes host. He who was invited now invites. The two disciples who trusted the stranger enough to let him enter into their inner space are now led into the inner life of their host. “Now while he was with them at table, he took the bread and said the blessing; then he broke it and handed it to them.” So simple, so ordinary, so obvious, and still — so very different! What else can you do when you share bread with your friends? You take it, bless it, break it, and give it. That is what bread is for: to be taken, blessed, broken, and given. Nothing new, nothing surprising. It happens every day, in countless homes. It belongs to the essence of living. We can’t really live without bread that is taken, blessed, broken, and given. Without it there is no table fellowship, no community, no bond of friendship, no peace, no love, no hope. Yet, with it, all can become new!”

Henri Nouwen in With Burning Hearts: A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1994) 65.

When the two disciples invite Jesus in, everything changes for them.

Ponder this with me for a moment. Firstly, think of a person you know with whom you could take, bless, break, and give bread today?

Once you have that person in your mind, secondly, plan a meal with them. Then whilst together, invite Jesus into the conversation. See what happens.

Recently, when I was visiting a friend, we could have talked at length about our problems, our cares, worries, and troubles. Instead, I opened the Scriptures.

Something happened. We invited Jesus into our fellowship and He made all things new! Our troubles did not go away but our perspective lifted and our hope returned.

The same happened in one of our mealtime conversation with the Chilean delegation this week. Again, God showed up and the Word lifted everyone’s Spirits.

Invite Jesus into your conversations. It could be the most generous thing you do.

Pray for a great visit with my friend and mentor, Dan Busby, who is battling cancer. We meet tomorrow before I return to Denver. I don’t know what Scripture I will read. God will guide me.

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Mark 1:35

“In solitude we can slowly unmask the illusion of our possessiveness and discover in the center of our own self that we are not what we can conquer, but what is given to us. In solitude we can listen to the voice of Him who spoke to us before we could speak a word, who healed us before we could make any gesture to help, who set us free long before we could free others, and who loved us long before we could give love to anyone. It is in this solitude that we discover that being is more important than having, and that we are worth more than the result of our efforts. In solitude we discover that our life is not a possession to be defended, but a gift to be shared. It’s there we recognize that the healing words we speak are not just our own, but are given to us; that the love we can express is part of a greater love; and that the new life we bring forth is not a property to cling to, but a gift to be received.”

Henri Nouwen in Journey of the Heart (St. Louis: All Saints Press, 2010) 14.

There’s something unmatched about the power of being alone with God. Nouwen unpacks aspects of it for us today. We can unmask, listen, discover, and recognize things we could not otherwise discern, hear, learn, and see.

But it’s not really a popular activity. Why?

Most people focus on pursuing things or achievements. They think about healing others when they themselves need healing. I’ve been guilty this and am finding it true first-hand. And the idea of possessiveness actually closes us to what we really need to receive, which is the new life that God offers us.

So what does this have to do with generosity?

Follow the example of Jesus. Get up early some day over the next week. Journal what you discern, hear, learn, and see from God. Do this before going to share love, healing, or care to others. Discover how it fills and forms you to be an agent of transformation. Receive first. Then give the life that is to be shared.

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. 1 Peter 4:8-9

“How does healing take place? Many words, such as “care” and “compassion,” “understanding” and “forgive­ness,” “fellowship” and “community,” have been used for the healing task of the Christian minister.

I like to use the word “hospitality,” not only because it has such deep roots in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, but also, and primarily, because it gives us more insight into the nature of response to the human condition of loneliness.

Hospitality is the virtue that allows us to break through the narrowness of our own fears and to open our houses to the stranger, with the intuition that salvation comes to us in the form of a tired traveler. Hospitality makes anxious disciples into powerful witnesses, makes suspicious owners into generous givers, and makes closed-minded sectarians into interested recipients of new ideas and insights.

But it has become very difficult for us today to fully un­derstand the implications of hospitality. Like the Semitic nomads, we live in a desert with many lonely travelers who are looking for a moment of peace, for a fresh drink, and for a sign of encouragement so that they can continue their mysterious search for freedom.

What does hospitality as a healing power require? It requires first of all that hosts feel at home in their own house, and second, that they create a free and fearless place for the unexpected visitor.”

Henri Nouwen in Wounded Healer: Ministry in a Contemporary Society (New York: Image, 1972) 95-96.

Nouwen teaches us yet again how to minister to others in this broken world: “create a free and fearless place for the unexpected visitor” that “makes anxious disciples into powerful witnesses, makes suspicious owners into generous givers, and makes closed-minded sectarians into interested recipients of new ideas and insights.” The apostle Peter urges us to reflect on God’s love for us to move beyond grumbling.

The time with the Chilean delegation is going well at Black Rock Retreat. Peter Fiorello (our host), Carla Archila (GTP Spanish translator and interpreter from Guatemala), and I have worked to make this a place where they can feel welcome, grasp new concepts, and experience transformation. What about you? Does your home, your office, or your place of ministry draw people in and minister to them deeply?

Encouraging Christian generosity, Nouwen might say, is about first feeling “at home” in your own house. That is, finding contentment in our Lord Jesus Christ and peace in His matchless care, so that you can share freely all He has supplied had fearlessly give what you have knowing He will care for you. Soak in this. The first step is feeling at home. Rest in His love then create a free and fearless space.

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

“Paul not only encourages unceasing prayer, but also practices it. “We continually thank God for you” (1 Thessalonians 2:13), he says to his community in Greece. “We also pray continually that our God will make you worthy of his call” (2 Thessalonians 1:11). To the Romans, he writes: “I continually mention you in my prayers” (Romans 1:9), and he comforts his friend Timothy with the words: “I remember you in my prayers constantly, night and day” (2 Timothy 1:3).

The two Greek terms that appear repeatedly in Paul’s letters are pantote and adialeiptos, which mean “always” and “without interruption.” These words make it clear that for Paul, prayer is not a part of living, but all of life, not a part of his thought, but all of his thought, not a part of his emotions and feelings, but all of them. Paul’s fervor allows no place for partial commitments, piecemeal giving, or hesitant generosity. He gives all and asks all.

This radicalism obviously raises some difficult questions. What does it mean to pray without ceasing? How can we live life, with its many demands and obligations, as an uninterrupted prayer? What about the endless row of distractions that intrude day after day? Moreover, how can sleep, needed moments of diversion, and the few hours in which we try to escape from the tensions and conflicts of life be lifted up into unceasing prayer? These questions are real and have puzzled many Christians who want to take seriously Paul’s exhortation to pray without ceasing.

One of the best-known examples of the desire for unceasing prayer is the nineteenth-century Russian peasant who wanted so much to be obedient to Paul’s call for uninterrupted prayer that he went from staretz to staretz (hermit to hermit) looking for an answer until he finally found a holy man who taught him the Jesus Prayer. He told the peasant to say thousands of times each day, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” In this way, the Jesus Prayer slowly became united with his breathing and heartbeat so that he could travel through Russia carrying his knapsack with the Bible, the Philokalia (an anthology of Eastern Christian mystical writings), and some bread and salt, living a life of unceasing prayer.

Although we are not nineteenth-century Russian peasants or pilgrims, we share the quest of the simple pilgrim: “How to pray without ceasing?” I want to answer this question not in the context of the wide, silent Russian prairies of a century ago but in the context of the restlessness of our contemporary Western society. I suggest that the practice of unceasing prayer is a threefold process: we first cry out to God with all our needs and requests. Then we turn our unceasing thoughts into continual conversation with God. Finally, we learn to listen to God in our hearts through a daily discipline of meditation and contemplative practice.

Henri Nouwen in Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith (New York: Harper One, 2006) excerpt from chapter 5.

My GTP work is going well with the delegation from Chile.

In my early morning reading in my room at the retreat I read a chapter, and this sentence in particular struck me: “Paul’s fervor allows no place for partial commitments, piecemeal giving, or hesitant generosity. He gives all and asks all.”

So, how do we come to a place of giving all and asking all?

We practice unceasing prayer. It starts with crying out, it leads us to conversation with God, and concludes with contemplation, reflecting on what God is teaching us. In plain terms, we acknowledge our weakness, He meets us there, and we go away transformed.

God desires that we abandon partial commitments, piecemeal giving, and hesitant generosity.

But the only way for us to do that is to acknowledge our weakness, to meet with Him to discover His all sufficiency, and then to consider what steps we must take to live and act on what is true. It’s a journey.

We only figure it out as we live it out that the path leads to life, freedom, and rich generosity.

My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. James 1:19-20

“Community as discipline is the effort to create a free and empty space among people where together we can practice true obedience. Through the discipline of community we prevent ourselves from clinging to each other in fear and loneliness, and clear free space to listen to the liberating voice of God… Community has little to do with mutual compatibility. Similarities in educational background, psychological make-up, or social status can bring us together but they can never be the basis for community. Community is grounded in God, who calls us together, and not in the attractiveness of people to each other… I would like to describe one concrete form of this discipline of community. It is in the practice of listening together. In our wordy world, we usually spend our time together talking. We feel most comfortable in sharing experiences, discussing interesting subjects, or arguing about current issues. It is through a very active verbal exchange that we try to discover each other. But often we find that words function more as walls than as gates, more as ways to keep distance than to come close.”

Henri Nouwen in Making All Things New: An Invitation to the Spiritual Life (New York: HarperOne, 1981) 80-84.

As I serve brothers and sisters from Chile with the assistance of a translator from Guatemala this week, I am trying to create community by encouraging listening to one another to hear how God might teach us through one another.

Some may perceive me as having all the answers, and whilst I might share some content this week as a teacher, my focus is listening so that words don’t function as walls instead of gates.

Our generous service, whether paid or as volunteers, must create community through listening and loving. I may be attuned to this because I’ve failed so much with it in the past.

God help all of us create space where people can practice true obedience together and learn from each other what that looks like. Do this by your Holy Spirit we ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.