The Wounded Healer by Henri Nouwen

For nuclear man the future has become an option.

Only when man feels himself responsible for the future can he have hope or despair, but when he thinks of himself as the passive victim of an extremely complex technological bureaucracy, his motivation falters and he starts drifting from one moment to the next, making life a long row of randomly chained incidents and accidents.

He [nuclear man] is primarily looking for experiences that give him a sense of value. Therefore he is very tolerant, since he does not regard a man with a different conviction as a threat but rather as an opportunity to discover new ideas and test his own... When Christianity is reduced to an all-encompassing ideology, nuclear man is all too prone to be skeptical about its relevance to his life experience.

[Jesus'] appearance in our midst has made it undeniably clear that changing the human heart and changing human society are not separate tasks, but are as interconnected as the two beams of the cross.

I am afraid that in a few decades the church will be accused of having failed in its most basic task: to offer men creative ways to communicate with the source of human life.

When everybody become my 'neighbour' it is worth wondering whether anybody can really become my 'proximus', that it, the one who is most close to me.

The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there.

A Christian leader is a man of hope whose strength in the final analysis is based neither on self-confidence derived from his personality, nor on specific expectations for the future, but on a promise given to him.

Many churches decorated with words announcing salvation and new life are often little more than parlours for those who feel quite comfortable in the old life, and who are not likely to let the minister's words change their stone hearts into furnaces where swords can be cast into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.

Hospitality is the ability to pay attention to the guest. This is very difficult, since we are preoccupied with our own needs, worries and tensions, which prevent us from taking distance from ourselves in order to pay attention to others.

When the imitation of Christ does not mean to live a life like Christ, but to live your life as authentically as Christ lived his, then there are many ways and forms in which a man can be a Christian.

He moved into the neighborhood.

The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.

I've thought about this quote often over the past month. I have graduated from University and am wrestling with the question of what it looks like to live an authentic, Kingdom-seeking life. As Ian McIntosh sings,

What does it sound like when you sing heaven's song?
What does it feel like when heaven comes down?

It is simple and complicated. I know that what I do matters far less than what I am. I know that there is great gain in godliness with contentment regardless of circumstances. But I also know that life is not about following the path of least resistance and I want to be one of those people who will pursue the Kingdom, take hold of it forcfully. What does that look like?

I've moved into a new neighbourhood recently. It isn't the place I would most like to be in the world. There are no rolling hills or country lanes, no wild valleys or cosy tea-rooms. At first, I wondered if I had made a mistake coming here, a priviledged little girl who knows nothing of the struggles faced by many families here. What could I possibly have to offer? But as I think of Jesus stepping in to my world, He who is as 'other' to this earth as an author is to his book, I wonder if perhaps we are all called to follow His example in a way. Our words cannot become flesh until we do 'move into the neighbourhood'. The question becomes, "Whose neighbourhood are we called to?"

Maybe it is the neighbourhood of the poor, the neighbourhood of our brothers and sisters who live on the poverty line and lack hope for a future. But it could be the neighbourhood of the desperate, of the friend who is suffering from loneliness or depression. The move is from words to deeds, from speaking of hope to bringing hope. Jesus CAME. Emmanuel. God with us. If we have the life of Christ in us, if we are His hands and His feet, then I think it is worth some thought and deliberation over this question of how we live our lives. What does it look like when we sing heaven's song?