Reflection of the Week - 28th January 2025
A new beginning! We must learn to live each day, each hour, yes, each minute as a new beginning, as a unique opportunity to make everything new.
By Henri Nouwen
Posted in Faith
How an Obstacle Becomes a Door
"… we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies." - Romans 8:22
Without patience, our expectations turn into mere wishful thinking. The word ‘patience’ comes from the Latin patior, meaning ‘to suffer’. The first promise Jesus gives us is that of suffering: ‘I tell you; you will weep and mourn… and your sorrow will turn into joy.’ These, He calls "birth pains." What seems like an obstacle can, in God's hands, become a way forward; what feels like a hindrance can transform into a door; what appears to be a misfit may, in time, become the cornerstone.
Jesus takes our history — full of sorrow and seeming accidents — and transforms it into a constant opportunity for a change of heart. To wait patiently, then, is to allow our grief and struggles to be the refining process that prepares us to receive the joy that is promised.
Reference
Henri Nouwen, How an Obstacle Becomes a Door - Henri Nouwen
Subscribe to receive Faith articles by email >
A new beginning! We must learn to live each day, each hour, yes, each minute as a new beginning, as a unique opportunity to make everything new.
Barbara was in serious need of help. On her own, with a heart condition, two bad hips, and a shoulder injury, she’d already lost the last of her sheep to the drought and the floods.
I have only the desire to remain close to that place in me where I can hear the voice that calls me ‘my son, my beloved,’ and that will tell me what to do, say, or write when the time for it has come.
Comments (3)