May 1, 2024
Pause. Pray. Read. Be Still. Pray. Reflect: I have always been drawn to reading the profound writings of the late Henri Nouwen. He expresses so well the beauty of opening ourselves up to the Divine. The below devotion comes from Nouwen’s You Are Beloved: 365 Daily readings and Meditations for Spiritual Living. This is a devotion I return to from time to time when I feel the need to quiet my mind and recenter inner being. I thought I’d share his words with you today. I pray you will open yourself by allowing yourself to experience an inner peace to the movement of God’s Spirit in your life – as Nouwen says, “to allow yourself to be read, and loved, by God.” Enjoy. The Kingdom of God is Within You The Jesus Prayer or any other prayer form is meant to be a help to gently empty our minds from all that is not God. Is meant to be a help to gently empty our minds from all that is not God and offer all the room to him and him alone. But that is not all. Our prayer becomes a prayer of the heart when we have localized in the center of our inner being the empty space in which our God-filled mind can descend and vanish, and where the distinctions between thinking and feeling, knowing and experience, ideas and emotions are transcended, and where God can become our host. “The Kingdom of God is within you,” Jesus said (Luke 17:21). The prayer of the heart takes these words seriously. When we empty our minds from all thoughts and our hearts from all experiences, we can prepare in the center of our innermost being the home for the God who wants to dwell in us. Then we can say with St. Paul, “I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). Then we can affirm the words, “Grace is the experience of being delivered from experience.” And then we can realize that it is not we who pray, but the Spirit of God who prays in us. Reaching Out, pp105-106. Consider this, if you are enjoying the Practice the Pause daily devotionals, I invite you to share the link with someone else today, encouraging and offering them a blessing along the way. Invite them to subscribe (and confirm their subscription.) You never know what the light of Christ may ignite within them. |