Waiting is a period of learning. The longer we wait, the more we hear about him for whom we are waiting.
Interpretation
Waiting can be a valuable time for growth and learning about what we desire.
This quote emphasizes the importance of patience and using the time spent waiting as an opportunity for reflection and understanding. When we are waiting for something or someone, it allows us to gather more knowledge, insights, and perspectives which can deepen our appreciation and readiness for whatever or whoever is to come.
In practice
In a speech about personal growth, one might say, 'As Henri Nouwen wisely noted, waiting is a period of learning.'
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.
When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." To this day, especially in times of "disaster," I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers β so many caring people in this world.
I really believe that what happens one day affects the next, and I think that came from that experience of learning that if I told the score inning by inning, play by play, it built up to its natural climax.
A timid dog barks more violently than it bites. Curtius Canis timidus vehementius latrat quam mordet
When you repeat a mistake, it is not a mistake anymore: it is a decision.
He had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it
All my hurts my garden spade can heal.
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