Reflection of the Week - 15 April 2025

By Henri Nouwen

Posted Apr 15, 2025 in Faith

In the Deep Place of Your Heart

‘A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity’. – Proverbs 17: 17

Joy and sadness are as close to each other as the splendid colored leaves of a New England fall to the soberness of barren trees. When you touch the hand of a returning friend, you already know that he will have to leave you again. When you are moved by the quiet vastness of a sun-colored ocean, you miss the friend who cannot see the same. Joy and sadness are born at the same time, both arising from such deep places in your heart that you can’t find words to capture your complex emotions.

But in this intimate experience in which every bit of life is touched by a bit of death can point us beyond the limits of our existence. It can do so by making us look forward in expectation to the day when our hearts will be filled with perfect joy, a joy that no one shall take away from us.

Henri Nouwen, In the Deep Place of Your Heart - Henri Nouwen

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