Waiting is a dry desert between where we are and where we want to be. (Finding My Way Home)
Interpretation
Waiting can feel endless and unproductive, yet it is often a necessary part of our journey toward our goals.
In this quote, Henri Nouwen illustrates waiting as a barren and uncomfortable experience, akin to crossing a dry desert. It signifies the emotional and spiritual distance we often feel between our current situation and our desired destination, reminding us that this waiting period is part of the growth and maturation process necessary for personal development and achieving our aspirations.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech about perseverance and patience.
The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. God loves us, not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love.
The immense joy in welcoming back the lost son hides in the immense sorrow that has gone before....our brokenness may appear beautiful, but our brokenness has no other beauty but the beauty that comes from the compassion that surrounds it.
Suffering invites us to place our hurts in larger hands. In Christ we see God suffering β for us. And calling us to share in Godβs suffering love for a hurting world. The small and even overpowering pains of our lives are intimately connected with the greater pains of Christ. Our daily sorrows are anchored in a greater sorrow and therefore a larger hope.
To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, welcome, to accept.
Becoming the beloved is pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinariness of what I am, in fact, thinking of, talking about and doing from hour to hour.
The life-converting experience is not the discovery that I have choices to make that determine the way I live out my existence, but the awareness that my that my existence itself is not in the center. Once I 'know' God, that is, once I experience God's love as the love in which all my human experiences are anchored, I can desire only one thing: to be in that love.
It is not my prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws.
Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.
Abhor flatterers as you would deceivers; for both, if trusted, injure those who trust them. If you admit as friends men who seek your favor for the lowest ends, your life will be lacking in friends who will risk your displeasure for the highest good.
...That genius is a rare exception (:) It's not true. Talent and genius have been wasted on enormous scale throughout our history; this is all I know for sure.
A man should inure himself to voluntary labor, and not give up to indulgence and pleasure, as they beget no good constitution of body nor knowledge of mind.
Man performs and engenders so much more than he can or should have to bear. That's how he finds that he can bear anything.
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