Category: Sister Judy (Page 246 of 271)

Devotions from Henri Nouwen’s book, The Inner Voice of Love

There are many times we don’t “feel” God’s love and may instead feel very empty as Henri did. We may try to find our fulfillment in the world with pleasures, distractions, fantasies etc. but this only causes us to leave the true ROCK of our faith on which our spiritual house is built.  We have to trust that the solid place is to say yes to God’s love even when we don’t feel it. In fact we can go to this place over and over again even after every failure. God has promised we will receive the love we have been searching for and He is faithful to His promise. So let us  stop wandering around and looking elsewhere, and just start trusting and receiving!

Devotions from Henri Nouwen’s book, The Inner Voice of Love

We need to be attentive to the inner voice so we can experience new life in freedom and joy.  We must stop seeing ourselves through the eyes of others whom we try desperately to please.  They can not give us our identity and we must let go of all self-made props and trust that God is enough for us. Only when we stop being a pleaser and reclaim our true identity can we be free. Gradually we have to move from crying outward – crying out for people who we think can fulfill our needs – to crying inward to the place where we can let ourselves be held and carried by God. No one person can fulfill all our needs. But the community can hold us and be the human hands that show us God’s faithful love.

Devotions from Henri Nouwen’s book The Voice of Love

Devotions these next days will be taken from Henri’s book written in the darkest time of his life when he lost his self-esteem, his energy to live and work, his sense of being loved, and even his hope in God. He came face to face with his own nothingness and all that had given his life meaning. He was in a safe community at the time, L-Arche, a community of people with mental disabilities. There he hit bottom!  He felt like even God had abandoned him. But in time it became a place of purification that led to new inner freedom, new hope, and new creativity. Each of us has a deep hole in our being that we can never succeed in filling. The hole is enormous and we may be tempted to flee from it by avoiding it, or by becoming absorbed in our pain. He talks of the need to enter our own heart and the heart of God through our pain. God will send to us people with whom we can share and will lead us closer to the true source of love. God is faithful and it is He who will fill our heart and satisfy our deepest desire.

Devotions taken from Ruth Haley Barton

In our lives we all need to take time  for what is most important.
As I read an e-mail from Ruth Barton it was a good reminder.

 “It you attempt to act and do for others or for the world without deepening your own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love, you will not have anything to give others.  You will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of your own obsessions, your aggressivity, your ambitions, your delusions and ends and means…” Thomas Merton

Spiriual formation is important for all of us. It is what Al teaches with the Nuns at Scholastica too.

“Spiritual transformation—the process by which Christ is formed in us for the glory of God, for the sake of others, and for the abundance of our own lives—is an organic process that goes far beyond mere behavioral tweaks. In this process the Spirit of God works deep and fundamental changes at the core of our being, moving us from behaviors motivated by fear and self-protection to trust and abandonment to God. From selfishness and self-absorption to freely offering the gifts of the authentic self. From the ego’s desperate attempts to control the outcomes of our lives to the ability to discern and do God’s will even when it is foolishness to the world around us.”

“Anglican theologian W.H. Vanstone once observed that the church is like a swimming pool in which all the noise comes from the shallow end.  But most of the wisdom is to be found in the deep end, among those who have taken the time and cultivated the habits and disciplines to learn to swim in deeper waters.  If we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, then we need the kind of sustained learning that leads us into the deep end of the pool. “

Let us take time for Him in solitude and quiet so that we may swim in the deep waters!

Devotions from Margaret Silf’s book, At Sea With God

We are all on a journey that we might envision as a circular journey, like a voyage around the world of our own unique circumstances. This voyage seems to keep on returning us to its beginnings.  Our choices help determine whether

our personal spiral is leading upward towards the fullness of everything we are called to become, or downward into disintegration. This spiral journey reveals the windings of our own growth in wisdom and love and understanding.

 Our destination is the ocean of God’s love with its potential to transform us from who we are now into the fullness of all creation into which we are being called. “To live a life of faith is to trust the journey and to shape our choices in favor of the spiral that leads to life.”

We can learn from all that has been, to help us sail true into the waters that still lie ahead. Each of us is making a unique journey and we begin at our own home port and sail to the horizon that will reveal who we truly are before God.  We each have to deal with our wind patterns, the storms, and  both the best and worst in ourselves.  We must take the responsibility for our pathway through life, even though we journey alongside others. “When we are ready to voyage beyond the horizon, it won’t matter anymore that our boat falls apart,. We will have learned to trust the immensity of the ocean of God’s love.”

Devotions from Margaret Silf’s book, At Sea With God

Do you ever feel like you’re stuck and not going any where, like being adrift on the sea? It could be that we are stopped in our tracks by illness or injury or we’ve lost our vision and sense of direction. Or maybe we feel like we’re going around in circles or we’ve had to change our plans radically. Whatever form of feeling stuck may take, we feel helpless and wonder if God is still there. It may force us into a time of waiting for the breeze that might lift us beyond the stagnation we feel. “Prayer can be the means of taking the salty, sometimes corrosive or destructive experience of our everyday life and distilling it into something fresh and live-giving.”  God can recycle our experience, showing us what is to be fostered and life-giving and what is destructive to us and to be set aside. As this fresh water falls upon us and our circumstance, it brings new growth to our hearts and cleansing and refreshing. Why not start the habit of noticing God’s presence and action in everyday things, the people around us and the ordinary events that happen to us.  Notice the ways in which God has rewoven the brokenness of our experience to help us live a fuller life. It may help to spend time in creation without trying to solve problems, to read an inspiring book, to listen to music that nourishes us in our depths, or visit a spiritual friend. Remember we have the Bedrock that will hold us and is the source of our eternal lives!

Devotions from Margaret Silf’s book, At Sea With God

As we voyage on the sea of life, we may be hit by storm-force winds that surprise us and challenge us.  We can never really be prepared for them. They can be an unexpected turn of events that demands a radical rearrangement of our lives, or in interpersonal conflict, a family crises etc. The effects of storms can be far-reaching and sometimes we are left feeling alone and isolated, with our energy being sapped. At such times of turbulence it is good to make space to regularly be still and to reflect and pray. It is a time to ask for clear vision, energy, and focus for what is most essential in our journey. When there is a break in the storm, we can take the opportunity to get our bearings, and to reconnect with the world around us, responding to its needs and allowing it to nourish us. The storms have a way of helping us to deepen our trust in the Lord as we have to let go of our old understanding of what makes us “secure”  in order to discover a new layer of solid ground in Him. Perhaps we can gain insight and growth out of the stormy times in our lives even more so than the smooth stretches.

May we hear the silent assurances in the midst of our storms urging us to venture further, across the water in Faith.

Devotions from Margaret Silf’s book, At Sea With God

As we voyage on the sea of life the wind speed and wind direction may change without notice… something may happen out of the blue, or a word may be spoken that pitches us in a new direction.  We may ask ourselves if this sudden wind change furthers our journey with the Lord or if it hampers it. If it furthers it, we can run with it. But if it hampers it, we need to work against it.  We need to be reflective if we are to monitor these shifts and be aware of the people, events, and movements all around us, catching the positive winds and standing firm against the gust that might blow us over. We respond to the wind flux by using the rudder. Perhaps the rudder is our deepest, most authentic wisdom, which is the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. It is what gives purpose and meaning to life. It is the way we implement the course changes we may need to hold true.  When we are at home with the wind and the waves, we can trust the movements of our circumstances and the process through which we are becoming the person God is dreaming into being. “To sail sensitively is to cooperate with that becoming, moment by moment, and to trust it.”

Let us be quiet before Him and listen so we can hear Him more clearly and become that true person!

Devotions from Margaret Silf’s book, At Sea with God

As we voyage on the sea of life there are deep, invisible underwater currents that can pull us in a positive or a negative direction. They can even rip our vessel apart. Currents tend to be strongest where there is some kind of constriction. In our spiritual journey we may be able to detect their presence with the benefit of hindsight, and it is good to take time to notice deep currents that may be revealed. It could be an issue that drags us off course or an overreaction.  So many of the currents that affect us are invisible and may carry us along sometimes against our own better judgment. An example may be the subtle power of advertising that seems to seduce us to generate artificial desires that undermines our core desire to live God’s dream.  If we are in a turbulent tide zone right now, we need to take an anchor and use it to hold ourselves steady and to take stock of what is going on. This anchor is primarily time for prayers and reflection, time to be still with God as the ground of our being.  An anchor might also be a friend with whom we can share our experience or a place where we can reconnect to our own roots.

Devotions from Margaret Silf’s book. At Sea With God

As we voyage with the Lord, what really matters is that we are trying to live true to the deepest alignment of our souls to God. As we do this, it becomes an attractor to encourage others to seek out their own deepest alignment.  Most of us know people like this, who, we feel, are deep down living true to themselves.  It helps us to trust and make our life choices with reference to our innermost compass too. They can be like a lighthouse for us to navigate life’s seas. They beam out a steady signal and these signals can help us to steer our boat. Let us in the core of our being, seek to live in alignment with all that is truest within us. Then what we experience as a powerful flow tide can usually be trusted to bring us closer to the destination of who God has dreamed us to be. The tides that generate feelings of unease will usually be indicative that we are running off course.  May God help us to learn to work against the negative movements that tend to pull us off course and flow instead with what is of Him.