What Can He Give You?

There’s a small corner in my house that I consider my sacred space. It holds a dark wood antique desk, a black wooden chair draped with a lap blanket, and a tall dark bookshelf that holds my favorite books and meaningful gifts. On the desk is my Bible and current sacred reading, as well as a few symbolic ornaments. Right in my line of sight as I sit at the desk is a small area I call my “wall of grace”: hanging upon it are several symbolic and sacred pieces of artwork that remind me of my heart with God.

This is the place where I meet God. It is the place where, each morning, I take my mug of coffee and sit for an extended period of time in the quiet. I open the white curtains to reveal the foliage and brick-lined street just outside my window, and I breathe a small prayer for God to meet me as I open the pages of Scripture to read.

It is the place where, after having read, I sit and reflect and pray. It is where I type my prayers and thoughts onto pages that I feed through my vintage typewriter and then place into a manila folder that holds all my thoughts and prayers for that particular season of life.

And yet, for the last month or so, I have not spent much time sitting in this sacred corner.

At the beginning of May, I took a 5-day silent retreat on Captiva Island that was profound and formative, but when I returned home I plunged into a season of intense activity and transition.

I researched and wrote the final capstone project for my graduate degree, and I traveled north to Michigan to participate in my graduation festivities. I was offered the opportunity to work on a meaningful project with my church, which led to transitioning out of another work assignment elsewhere. Along the way, my husband received an exciting and fulfilling promotion at work, which has led to a bit of adjustment in our schedules and life at home.

It’s been a season of busyness. Of transition. Of movement. And so my sacred little corner has sat lonely and unused. 

This morning, though, I sat down in this sacred corner once again.

I brought my mug of coffee with me and breathed a small prayer for God to meet me here. I opened the curtains and looked out the window as my little girl kitty sat on my lap and let me rub her ears.

Then I opened to the fourth meditation of With Burning Hearts by Henri Nouwen and read about the ever-giving love of our Christ in these words: 

Jesus is God-for-us, God-with-us, God-within-us. Jesus is God giving himself completely, pouring himself out for us without reserve. Jesus doesn’t hold back or cling to his own possessions. He gives all there is to give.

— With Burning Hearts, p. 83

As I stand on the cusp of a new season in my own life, I find such hope in these words.

My spirit is a bit tired from the previous season of activity and all the endings and transitions it has held. My heart aches from a lack of time spent here in this quiet corner with God over these past several weeks. My mind races with all there is to do in the weeks and months ahead of this new season before me.

I sit and wonder how I am to behold this new season. I wonder what kind of wisdom and guidance from God will be needed.

I read these words above from Henri Nouwen, and I remember: 

Jesus gives himself to us completely. 

All we need to receive, he will give. All we need to know, he will teach. What can he give to us? All we need to do is ask. He freely gives to us his whole self. In what he gives, there is never any lack.

And so I ask you to consider:

How might you need to receive what Jesus has to give to you this day? What does receiving from God look like for you right now? If you take just a moment to consider, what is it God can give to you?

How Does He Heal You?

As an Easter gift, my husband gave me a copy of Henri Nouwen’s book With Burning Hearts, a collection of meditations on the Eucharistic life based on Luke 24, which is the passage about the two companions joined by Jesus on the road to Emmaus after his death.

The first meditation centers on the downcast eyes and spirits of the two sojourners were were so sad to have followed Jesus throughout his life of ministry, only to see him crucified. They spoke to Jesus, not realizing who he was, of the reports they’d heard from some of the disciples about his possible resurrection, but they’d not seen the risen Christ for themselves and didn’t know what to think. 

Through this first portion of the Luke 24 passage, Nouwen gives us an opportunity to remember the reality of our losses. He says: 

If there is any word that summarizes well our pain, it is the word “loss.” We have lost so much! Sometimes it even seems that life is just one long series of losses. When we were born we lost the safety of the womb, when we went to school we lost the security of our family life, when we got our first job we lost the freedom of youth, when we got married or ordained we lost the joy of many options, and when we grew old we lost our good looks, our old friends, or our fame.

— With Burning Hearts, p. 24

I could not help but be taken back into my many losses when I read this meditation. Nouwen is right: ordinary life is one long string of losses, and it becomes easy to despair. And instead of choking out the reality of those losses, Nouwen encourages us to feel them, to let them touch us and prick our hearts.

These losses are part of our human experience. They put us in touch with the limits and agony of human life in order to point us toward the hope of heaven and make us vulnerable to love, which heals us.

This is the hope of the Eucharist, Nouwen says — the opportunity to open ourselves to the possibility and hope of healing, which we carry with us through the darkness:

As we listen carefully to the deeper voices in our heart we realize that beneath our skepticism and cynicism there is a yearning for love, unity, and communion that doesn’t go away even when there remain so many arguments to dismiss it as sentimental childhood memories.

— With Burning Hearts, pp. 40-41

Despite our pain and brokenness, and in the midst of our cynicism and doubt, hope remains. And that is the gift of Christ: the reality of the grace of new life. 

This morning, I also read Mark 3, which relates the following: 

Jesus went off with his disciples to the sea to get away [from the Pharisees who sought to ruin him]. But a huge crowd from Galilee trailed after them — also from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, across the Jordan, and around Tyre and Sidon — swarms of people who had heard the reports and had come to see for themselves. He told his disciples to get a boat ready so he wouldn’t be trampled by the crowd. He had healed many people, and now everyone who had something wrong was pushing and shoving to get near and touch him.

— Mark 3:7-10, The Message

It says, “He had healed many people, and everyone who had something wrong was pushing and shoving to get near him.” 

When I read this, I can’t help but think of the reality of that statement spread far and wide throughout the course of Christ’s ministry. Everywhere he went, people followed him. Men and women sought to be near him in order to be healed or gain healing for those they loved. Even after he died, people flocked to his disciples because they, too, offered the hope of healing. 

He came to heal us from our pain of body and soul. 

One of my favorite passages of Scripture is the ministry of healing found in Isaiah 61 and quoted later in Luke 4 as Christ’s ordained mission: 

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me,
Because the Lord has anointed Me
To preach good tidings to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,
And the day of vengeance of our God;
To comfort all who mourn,
To console those who mourn in Zion,
To give them beauty for ashes,
The oil of joy for mourning,
The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
That they may be called trees of righteousness,
The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.

— Isaiah 61:1-3

How can we read those words and not find hope and gladness? The one we follow, called Jesus, came to heal us of our brokenness, to forgive us of all we have done wrong, to draw us near and cherish us with a close embrace, and to crown us with beauty instead of ashes.

He wants to crown you with beauty instead of ashes. 

Do you believe that to be true? In the reality of your brokenness and despair, how have you sought the hope of healing for body and soul that Christ offers you? How might you seek after that healing he offers you today?

How Do You Approach Jesus?

I’ve been listening to a podcast before bed every night called Pray as You Go. (I highly recommend it.) Each day, there’s a new recording with a bit of sacred music, a Scripture reading, and an opportunity for reflection and prayer on the Scripture passage. Each recording lasts about 10-13 minutes, and I find it to be a centering and grace-filled way to end each day. 

Last night, the Scripture reading was from Matthew 15. It was a story about a woman who comes calling after Jesus in a crowd to heal her daughter, who is afflicted by a demonic spirit. In the story, Jesus doesn’t respond to her at first, and his disciples ask Jesus to tell her to go away because they think she’s quite disruptive. But she persists and keeps asking Jesus to help her. At one point she lands on her knees and begs him. But still he resists. Yet even when he persists in resisting, she persists in asking … until finally he answers her plea.

I’ll be honest and say that upon first hearing this passage on the podcast last night, all I could think about was how much it bothered me that Jesus resisted her. It distracted me that he did this, especially because I know Jesus to be fully accessible to anyone who wants to know him. 

But instead of asking me to reflect on my initial response, the reader of the passage on the podcast asked a different question: 

Put yourself in the crowd. What do you hear? 

I started thinking about all the other voices in the crowd. How many of them judged this woman for crying out over and over again to Jesus to get his attention? How annoyed were they? What did they say as they whispered among themselves about her? How many verbally cut her down? 

And then I noticed: I would do the same.

In fact, I was doing the same thing. It bothered me that she would come so boldly in a crowd to receive something from Jesus — the one person in that mass of people that everyone else wanted to touch and hear and see, too. What made her so special that she would be the one to make the most noise and get the most attention?

Then the reader asked a second question: 

What do you see? 

I saw a woman bold enough to throw herself at Jesus’s feet. I saw someone who didn’t care about her reputation because she knew exactly what she wanted and cared more about getting it than getting anything else. I saw her tears, her distress, and her despair at her daughter’s pain. I saw her great hope in Jesus to heal. Hope shone through her eyes, even as tears flowed from them. 

Then in the passage, we see a even stranger exchange between the woman and Jesus. He calls her a dog! (The reader notes this was a word the Jews commonly used for non-Jews at the time.) And yet the woman is able to use that name “to her advantage,” says the reader. She can hold her own with Jesus. She can match his wits. 

And that makes all the difference. Jesus gives her what she wants.

I think Jesus knew she had great faith. There are many passages in the Gospels that speak of Jesus’s ability to know the hearts of those standing before him. Her heart was not unknown to him, even as he resisted her in the crowd. 

And yet he waited. He walked on. He let her throw herself in front of him. He resisted her with cultural norms. And then, eventually, he awarded her for her faith.

I found myself wondering: would I have that kind of faith? How boldly do I approach Jesus?

This whole experience made me think of you. It made me want to ask you these same questions: 

How do you approach Jesus? Are you bold? Shy? Skittish? Demanding? Do you ask him anything at all? Do you expect him to respond? What would it be like for you to demonstrate the kind of faith this woman did?

I Am Not I

For Christmas, and in honor of this website, a dear friend gave me a collage print she’d created and framed. The collage has the name of this website, “Still Forming,” at the top, formed from letters cut out of magazines, with a huge white gardenia and golden leaf nestled in the center. In the bottom left corner of the collage, she pasted the words of a poem we both recently discovered. It’s a poem that speaks to the spirit of this site, about how we are not yet what we will one day be.

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I Am Not I by Juan Ramon Jimenez

I am not I.
          I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
who remains calm and silent while I talk,
and forgives, gently, when I hate,
who walks where I am not,
who will remain standing when I die.

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When I read this poem, I tend to think that the one “walking beside me whom I do not see” is Jesus. It is, after all, his image we are being conformed into, his image we will one day be. And I think it is true that he walks beside us, remaining calm and silent while we talk, forgiving us gently when we hate, and will remain standing for us when we die.

And sometimes when I read this poem, the one “walking beside me whom I do not see” is the person I will one day really be, the person I am slowly becoming in this life, the Christianne that is the truest manifestation of herself, the purified and holy and fully loving me, the Christianne God intended me to be when he spoke me into existence. That “I,” the true “I,” is slowly becoming more and more like Jesus, someone who is calm and gentle and forgiving and loving, who is brave and willing to walk where I am currently afraid to walk, who will stand before God in the end, unblinking and full of love.