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 – for us. And calling us to share in God’s 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.
There's no such thing as turning back the hands of time, and it makes me crazy that we live in a society where that's sold to women—that we're supposed to believe that if we're getting older, we've failed somehow, that we have failed by not staying young. I wish that women would let other women age gracefully and allow them to get older and know that as we get older, we become wiser.
Sweet is the memory of past troubles.
Your greatest adversary is also your greatest teacher. Like it or not, it is the job of certain people to bring out the worst in you. What they trigger is already in you. They are here to reveal the sore, tender wounded places in your heart and mind, and they are providing you with a wonderful and divine opportunity for healing.
Follow your instincts. That's where true wisdom manifests itself.
I will tell you that there have been no failures in my life. I don't want to sound like some metaphysical queen,but there have been no failures. There have been some tremendous lessons.
Only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.
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