Looking back on the last 3 months, I’m fairly sure part of the difficulty of being back in Nampula has been a lack of deep spiritual input in my life. Of course the Lord feeds one from his Word, but now that I am reading something exhilarating again, I realize how much I missed being challenged in my thinking by writers and thinkers that the Lord has blessed with wisdom and spiritual insight. Said book is Devotional Classics, edited by Dallas Willard and James Smith, and consists of 52 readings, each followed by questions for group discussion or own spiritual exploration. I obviously can’t keep an SIL library book for a year and spend as much time as needed on the exercises, but love what I’m reading so far. Two quotes that stand out are by C.S. Lewis (from Mere Christianity, which I own and have read twice without noticing this in particular) and John of the Cross.
Lewis:
The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back, in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all our natural frettings and fussings; coming in out of the wind.
For me, the hardest part about this, even though the words make my spirit long for that simplicity and the joy of letting go of my own strivings, is remembering to do this daily. Why do I so easily barge into a new day, even when starting it in devotion, and lose sight of my own self-absorption?
Yet I am encouraged by these words of John of the Cross, not just as applied to spiritual disciplines, but to everything I need to grow in in my life:
The feelings we receive from our devotional life are the least of its benefits. The invisible and unfelt grace of God is much greater, and it is beyond our comprehension.
What comfort that God is truly the one who begins and will end all his work in us. Truly He seems to be much more concerned with refining me than with my work as a missionary per se…
I absolutely loved this and it is such a good reminder and encouragement to me. Henri Nouwen also speaks of how much we fear silence and fill our surrounds with noise and distractions because we are so afraid, but were we just to let all that noise die down, in the quietness we would hear His voice telling us that we are the Beloved.