Lent, day 5, First Sunday

Nouwen uses a prayer from Charles de Foucauld to close his meditation for the First Sunday of Lent. As I recall reading elsewhere, Nouwent prays this prayer either daily or frequently. I quote that prayer here:

Father,

I abandon myself into your hands;

do with me what you will.

Whatever you may do, I thank you;

I am ready for all, I accept all.

Let only your will be done in me,

and in all your creatures.

I wish no more than this,

O Lord.

Into your hands I commend my soul;

I offer it to you with all the love

of my heart,

for I love you, Lord,

and so need to give myself,

to surrender myself into your hands,

without reserve

and with boundless confidence.

For you are my Father.

Amen.

Lent, Day 4, Saturday

(Okay, I missed doing this yesterday. Deal with it. :)...)

"Jesus noticed a tax collector, Levi...and said to him, 'Follow me.' And leaving everything Levi got up and followed him" (Luke 5:27-28)

How many times have I preached and/or taught or led a discussion from the scene? Way lots of times. But it still speaks to me. Know what I mean?

How do we know if we have "left everything"? Is it when we have moved away from our childhood home, because Jesus called us to serve elsewhere? Is that "leaving everything"? Is it passing up a promotion at work so we can give more time with our spouse & family? Or so we can serve more at church? Is that "leaving everything"? Is it moving to another country? Or moving to the inner city? Or living in a monastery?

When Abraham left Ur, he thought he was leaving everything. When he wandered in the promised land, a wealthy man without a home, he thought he had left everything. When he yielded to Lot's demands for the green pastures, he thought he had left everything. (You know where this is going, don't you?) When he led his son up Mt. Moriah, he thought he had left everything. And maybe at that point, he (and God?) finally knew that he had indeed left everything to follow God.

But at the same time, how do I know that I am following him? Is it when I go to India? Or to some other far-off land? Is that following Jesus? Is it when I extend Christian fellowship to someone in my community who is from an ethnic group not my own? Is that following Jesus?

When Matthew left his tax collecting business, he started following Jesus. But it meant so much more. When Matthew watched his Teacher get arrested, maybe he wasn't sure about following Jesus anymore. But when he joined the other believers after the resurrection in the Upper Room, he followed Jesus. And when he witnessed to the crowds on Pentecost Sunday, he followed Jesus. And when he died a martyr's death in Ethiopia, he followed Jesus.

But doesn't following Jesus also mean more than going to geographical destinations? And more than executing certain physical acts? Matthew could not have followed Jesus in witnessing to a mocking crowd (Pentecost), if he had not already followed Jesus to deeper devotion to God? Similarly, he could not have followed Jesus to a martyr's death, if he had not already learned the deep devotion Jesus modeled and taught?

So for me, leaving all and following Jesus has to do with deeper and unseen devotion. Then when God sees fit, he will have me ready for a test that will give witness to having left everything and followed him.

What do you think?

Lent, Day 3

This statement jumped out at me from Nouwen's thoughts printed for today:

"Many people flock to places and persons who promise intensive experiences of togetherness, cathartic emotions of exhilaration and sweetness, and liberating sensations of rapture and ecstasy. In our desperate need for fulfillment...we are all too prone to construct our own spiritual events. In our impatient culture, it has indeed become extremely difficult to see much salvation in waiting."

Part of what this says to me is this: I have begged God for some kind of work in my life that would change me, something that would liberate me from the chains that bind. I have envisioned going to this or that extreme in order to experience God's liberating work in my life.

But what if he simply wants me to wait? What if the salvation I seek is simply a "wait" away? What if the liberation did not come in a mind-blowing sensation or rapturous ecstasy? What if it came instead in a still small voice?

Can I wait for the quiet voice? Can I accept the quiet voice as the liberating, saving act of God?

Lent, Day 2

The scripture Nouwen followed for today's reading is from Deut. 30:19-20. I don't know if the following is his personal translation or if it comes from another source. It reads: "Choose life, then, so that you and your descendants may live, in the way love of Yahweh [his term] your God, obeying his voice, holding fast to him; for in this your life consists."

In his meditation on this passage (or more accurately the thoughts he wrote elsewhere which his editors cut and pasted to go with this reading), he says, "Trusting in the unconditional love of God: that is the way to which Jesus calls us."

Why is it so difficult to trust the unconditional love of God? For my part I cannot even get my mind close to grasping this notion. I cannot even intellectually reason out the notion of unconditional love. I cannot fathom unconditional love even in the most abstract sense--that is as if someone might love anyone unconditionally. The concept simply does not register. Why is that so?

I certainly have seen sacrificial love from my parents. Whether or not it was unconditional, I cannot say. But I think we generally grow up with the feeling--the intangeable sense--that regardless of what our parents said, it was still conditional love. Without casting any stones toward my parents, I think I have always had the sense that there was some vague boundary out there that if I crossed that point, love would cease. I repeat: Nothing my parents said or did told me that. But I think I just grew up with that assumption.

As my children grew to adulthood, I cannot imagine anything occurring that would stop me from loving them. Still, I sensed that for me at least, there must be some condition placed on someone loving me.

Does everyone feel this way? If so, does that help explain why we cannot fathom a statement about God's unconditional love? If we cannot believe that a human we have seen could love us unconditionally (I am bridging off of St. John's logic), how could we believe that God whom we have not seen could love us unconditionally?

Somehow, I must come to terms with the notion that God loves me just as I am and without reservation. That is the task for me for today.

Ash Wednesday

One of the most influential writers for my spiritual growth is Father Henri J. M. Nouwen. His book, The Way of the Heart, has touched me deeply. And I have read it more times than I recall right now. And I've shared it with a number of others, including my father, who never marked what he read but in this case actually placed a few little dots beside passages that spoke to him (as they had to me).

All of the above to say: I have been reading Nouwen again of late. One that I finished just last week is titled Show Me the Way. It is a devotional based on daily Lenten readings. Having finished it so recently, it occurred to me to read it again as it was intended to be read: one devotional per day during this season.

My intention in connection with these daily readings to give some of my thought in response to what Nouwen says and what God seems to be saying to me through the priest's words.

One statement today caused me to pause: "Our temptation is to be so impressed by our sins and failings ... that we get stuck in a paralyzing guilt. It is the guilt that says: 'I am too sinful to deserve God's mercy.'"

It sounds almost masochistic to say we are impressed by our sins and we don't deserve God's mercy. Well, on the one hand, we don't deserve God's mercy. If we deserved it, it wouldn't be mercy. On the other hand, we enter the realm of heresy to think we have done anything that God's mercy cannot address. Satan enjoys getting me to fixate on how I have failed God. The problem is: I have failed God. But that's not the point. the point is, that we have all failed him. But the greater point is: God forgives our sins and failings. And the still greater point is: God's unconditional love floods over those sins and failings.

Nouwen goes on to contrast Judas and Peter: "Are we like Judas, who was so overcome by his sin that he could not believe in God's mercy any longer and hanged himself, or are we like Peter who returned to his Lord with repentance and cried bitterly for his sins?"

The time of crying bitterly for my sins is past--for me. Now has come the time to become an overcomer!