The mystery of ministry is that we have been chosen to make our own limited and very conditional love the gateway for the unlimited and unconditional love of God.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes how our imperfect love can connect us to the divine love of God.
Henri Nouwen highlights the transformative power of human love, which, despite its limitations and conditions, serves as a pathway to experience and convey the boundless love of God. By embracing and sharing our imperfect love, we become conduits for a greater, unconditional love that transcends our human limitations.
In practice
In a sermon about the importance of love in our lives.
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 β for us. And calling us to share in Godβs 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 was a house at the foot of the tower, close to the thunder of the waves breaking against the cliffs, where love was more intense because it seemed like a shipwreck.
What are you thinking?β She asks. -That you are beautiful. That not everyone could see it. I almost became the kind of person who could not.
She was like a lone angel floating above the surface of the earth, laughing with delight because she could fly but crying out of loneliness.
Love that is not jealous is neither true nor pure.
Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.
As I radiate love and goodwill to others, I will open the channel for God's love to come to me.
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