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Moving to the new country…

by Lon on May 25, 2009

A quote from Henri Nouwen about moving on…

You have an idea of what the new country looks like. Still, you are very much at home, although not truly at peace, in the old country. You know the ways of the old country, its joys and pains, its happy and sad moments. You have spent most of your days there. Even though you know that you have not found there what your heart most desires, you remain quite attached to it. It has become part of your very bones.

Now you have come to realize that you must leave it and enter the new country, where your Beloved dwells. You know that what helped and guided you in the old country no longer works, but what else do you have to go by? You are being asked to trust that you will find what you need in the new country. That requires death of what has become so precious to you: influence, success, yes, even affection and praise.

Trust is so hard, since you have nothing to fall back on . Still, trust is what is essential. The new country is where you are called to go, and the only way to go there is naked and vulnerable.

It seems that you keep crossing and recrossing the border. For a while, you experience a real joy in the new country. But then you feel afraid and start longing again for all you left behind, so you go back to the old country. To your dismay, you discover that the old country has lost its charm. Risk a few more steps into the new country, trusting that each time you enter it, you will feel more comfortable and be able to stay longer.

–Henri Nouwen

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Could we be rich fools?

by Lon on August 5, 2008

Here are the slides with the passage and images from the message this past sunday if you missed it or wanted some recall.

What do you think?

I’m not saying we all need to be poor.  The opposite of greed is not poverty, but generosity.

How might you be intentional and strategic about living a life of generosity and not greed or selfishness?

What would it look like to not plan your life towards independence, and not needing one another, or God himself, but planning on a life of generosity that needs inter-dependence & community in return?

There’s a quote by bono i believe in the song a beautiful day that goes along the lines of – what you don’t have already, you don’t need now’.  Could there be some truth in that?

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