DAILY MEDITATION: "Protecting Our Hiddenness" for Tuesday, 15 August 2017
Photo courtesy of Jim van Dijk
If indeed the spiritual life is essentially a hidden life, how do we protect this hiddenness in the midst of a very public life? The two most important ways to protect our hiddenness are solitude and poverty. Solitude allows us to be alone with God. There we experience that we belong not to people, not even to those who love us and care for us, but to God and God alone. Poverty is where we experience our own and other people's weakness, limitations, and need for support. To be poor is to be without success, without fame, and without power. But there God chooses to show us God's love.Both solitude and poverty protect the hiddenness of our lives.
For further reflection...One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them... [Luke 6: 12,13 (NIV)]
Your response...
Where in your life now can you find an experience of the solitude or poverty Henri describes?
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Text excerpts taken from Bread for the Journey, by Henri J.M. Nouwen, ©1997 HarperSanFrancisco. All Scripture from The Jerusalem Bible ©1966, 1967, and 1968 Darton, Longman & Todd and Doubleday & Co. Inc. Scripture chosen by L. Yeskoo.
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