The mystery of ministry is that we have been chosen to make our own limited and very conditional love the gateway for the unlimited and unconditional love of God.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes how our imperfect love can connect us to the divine love of God.
Henri Nouwen highlights the transformative power of human love, which, despite its limitations and conditions, serves as a pathway to experience and convey the boundless love of God. By embracing and sharing our imperfect love, we become conduits for a greater, unconditional love that transcends our human limitations.
In practice
In a sermon about the importance of love in our lives.
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.
Waiting is a dry desert between where we are and where we want to be. (Finding My Way Home)
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.
You can love somebody through anything when they're your child, and now that I understand that, it makes me work better with people; it makes me more understanding of how much dedication and love I can put into each line. There's no throwaway lines.
What I write comes from a place of deep love, and a deep understanding of all kinds of otherness.
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams _x000D_ of the beautiful Annabel Lee
Got a long list of ex-lovers, they'll tell you I'm insane. But I got a blank space baby, and I'll write your name.
tell me how does it feel with my teeth in your heart!
Humanity is outraged in me and with me. We must not dissimulate nor try to forget this indignation, which is one of the most passionate forms of love.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.