Thursday, February 26, 2009
Countdown to Resurrection
Last night one of our daughters asked me what I was “giving up for Lent” --- and I smiled because, while I have been considering the question for a couple of weeks, I really didn’t have an answer. I didn’t know what I was going to ‘give up’ – but I did know what I wanted to accomplish in this season that leads up to the Easter celebration of Jesus’ resurrection. I want to stand before my Savior in 40 days stripped of anything that hinders my loving Him.
Henri Nouwen, when considering the vocational change that led him to leave a professorship at Harvard to become the chaplain at a home for mentally and physically handicapped adults, wrote: “These broken, wounded and completely unpretentious people forced me to let go of my relevant self – the self that can do things, show things, prove things, build things – and forced me to reclaim that unadorned self in which I am completely vulnerable, open to receive and give love regardless of any accomplishments.” For Nouwen, finding unencumbered love required not only that he ‘give up’ his academic and social standing at Harvard, but also that he embrace or ‘take on’ the brokenness and woundedness of others, so that the kingdom of God might be extended through him … to them.
So, as I anticipate celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus in 40 days, I am doing so with Jesus words imprinted anew on my heart: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Matt 16:24-26 (ESV)
My start on the journey is examen – to allow God full access in searching my attitudes, motives, thoughts, words and actions, so that I can crucify the remnants of my old man to make way for the growth of the new. To deny the world in me, so that I may follow the One in me Who is greater than the world.
Counting down,
Harry
Henri Nouwen, when considering the vocational change that led him to leave a professorship at Harvard to become the chaplain at a home for mentally and physically handicapped adults, wrote: “These broken, wounded and completely unpretentious people forced me to let go of my relevant self – the self that can do things, show things, prove things, build things – and forced me to reclaim that unadorned self in which I am completely vulnerable, open to receive and give love regardless of any accomplishments.” For Nouwen, finding unencumbered love required not only that he ‘give up’ his academic and social standing at Harvard, but also that he embrace or ‘take on’ the brokenness and woundedness of others, so that the kingdom of God might be extended through him … to them.
So, as I anticipate celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus in 40 days, I am doing so with Jesus words imprinted anew on my heart: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Matt 16:24-26 (ESV)
My start on the journey is examen – to allow God full access in searching my attitudes, motives, thoughts, words and actions, so that I can crucify the remnants of my old man to make way for the growth of the new. To deny the world in me, so that I may follow the One in me Who is greater than the world.
Counting down,
Harry
