I now know that I have a difficult time focusing on God when caught up in the "typical" American life. Being in Thailand has given me energy - energy to read, think, pray, change, and chase after God. As I reflected on that difference last month, I realized that most of my deepest experiences of God have taken place during such displacements - IV summer conferences in the mountains or islands, my trip to India, and my trip to Manila.
In Compassion, Henri Nouwen and his coauthors link God's call to us to come out of this world to our call to form compassionate community together as Christians. They state, "The call to community as we hear it from our Lord is the call to move away from the ordinary and proper places." The Compassion authors use Luke to illustrate this point (9:60-62, 14:26, 18:22), but the same message is illustrated over and over in the Bible. Jesus's own life was one of displacement - a coming down from heaven to an Earthly existence, a move from Nazareth into Bethlehem for his birth, a flight into Egypt, and the eventual call into Jerusalem to face death. God calls Abraham and Sarah, Joseph, Moses, David, Elijah, Elisha, Ruth, Esther, Jonah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Nehemiah, Hosea, Amos, all 12 disciples (especially Peter, Andrew, James, John, and Matthew), Paul, Barnabas, Silas, and Timothy to leave their "ordinary and proper place" and enter into a different life with God. And while each one of these displacements disrupted the "normal" life of these people and their families, they brought much greater life to God's people in the long run. It took obedience in the form of displacement, over and over again in history, for God's people to be a "people" and for the Christian church to exist at all.
I don't think that God calls everyone to dramatic moves away from home. But I think he calls all of us to stop listening to the standards of the world and start listening to His voice instead, and in that process to be open to dramatic change.
When we open ourselves to the possibility that God is calling us to something different than what the world calls us to in our daily decisions, we make it easier to hear Him when He does call us to those dramatic moves. I think that's why I start doing better spiritually when I am away from "home". When I'm in the typical work/home/church life in California, it's easy for me to get caught up in my society's expectations of a "normal" life. When I pursue God outside of this "normal" routine, whether it be a summer conference in the mountains or an internship in Thailand, I get the constant reminder that the "normal" life is not the life I am being called to lead, and my energy gets shifted to God's calling on my life instead. Then, if and when God calls me to more dramatic defiance of the world's expectations, it will be that much easier for me to hear Him.
The Compassion authors sum up this holy obedience well:
Only three years after writing this passage, Nouwen took his own "drastic" displacement by leaving the Harvard faculty and living among the mentally disabled in the L'arche Daybreak community in Toronto, where he would remain for the rest of his life.
May we also listen to God's call on our lives and practice obedient in defiance of the standards of the world, that even in old age we can follow God away from this world's call into the greater community that He has to offer us.
In Compassion, Henri Nouwen and his coauthors link God's call to us to come out of this world to our call to form compassionate community together as Christians. They state, "The call to community as we hear it from our Lord is the call to move away from the ordinary and proper places." The Compassion authors use Luke to illustrate this point (9:60-62, 14:26, 18:22), but the same message is illustrated over and over in the Bible. Jesus's own life was one of displacement - a coming down from heaven to an Earthly existence, a move from Nazareth into Bethlehem for his birth, a flight into Egypt, and the eventual call into Jerusalem to face death. God calls Abraham and Sarah, Joseph, Moses, David, Elijah, Elisha, Ruth, Esther, Jonah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Nehemiah, Hosea, Amos, all 12 disciples (especially Peter, Andrew, James, John, and Matthew), Paul, Barnabas, Silas, and Timothy to leave their "ordinary and proper place" and enter into a different life with God. And while each one of these displacements disrupted the "normal" life of these people and their families, they brought much greater life to God's people in the long run. It took obedience in the form of displacement, over and over again in history, for God's people to be a "people" and for the Christian church to exist at all.
I don't think that God calls everyone to dramatic moves away from home. But I think he calls all of us to stop listening to the standards of the world and start listening to His voice instead, and in that process to be open to dramatic change.
When we open ourselves to the possibility that God is calling us to something different than what the world calls us to in our daily decisions, we make it easier to hear Him when He does call us to those dramatic moves. I think that's why I start doing better spiritually when I am away from "home". When I'm in the typical work/home/church life in California, it's easy for me to get caught up in my society's expectations of a "normal" life. When I pursue God outside of this "normal" routine, whether it be a summer conference in the mountains or an internship in Thailand, I get the constant reminder that the "normal" life is not the life I am being called to lead, and my energy gets shifted to God's calling on my life instead. Then, if and when God calls me to more dramatic defiance of the world's expectations, it will be that much easier for me to hear Him.
The Compassion authors sum up this holy obedience well:
The more we are able to discern God's voice in the midst of our daily lives, the more we will be able to hear him when he calls us to more drastic forms of displacement. Some of us are indeed called to move away from our cities and live in caves; some of us are indeed called to sell all we have, give it to the poor, and follow Christ in total poverty; some of us are indeed called to move away from our more familiar milieus and live with the sick and the dying; some are indeed called to join nonviolent communities of resistance, to protest loudly against social ills, to share in the misery of prisoners, the isolation of lepers, or the agony of the oppressed; some are even called to undergo torture and violent deaths. But no one will be able to hear or understand these very blessed calls if he or she has not recognized the smaller calls hidden in the hours of a regular day. Not everyone is called in the way St. Francis, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez, Dorothy Day, Jean Vanier, Archbishop Romero, and Dom Helder Camera were called. But everyone must live with the deep conviction that God acts in her or his life in an equally unique way. No one should ever think that he or she is just an "ordinary citizen" in the Kingdom of God. As soon as we start taking ourselves and God seriously and allow him to enter into a dialogue with us, we will discover that we also are asked to leave fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters and follow the crucified Lord in obedience. Quite often we will discover that we are asked to follow our Lord to places we would rather not go. But when we have learned to see him in the small displacements of our daily lives, the greater call will not seem so great after all. We then will find the courage to follow him and be amazed by our freedom to do so.
Only three years after writing this passage, Nouwen took his own "drastic" displacement by leaving the Harvard faculty and living among the mentally disabled in the L'arche Daybreak community in Toronto, where he would remain for the rest of his life.
May we also listen to God's call on our lives and practice obedient in defiance of the standards of the world, that even in old age we can follow God away from this world's call into the greater community that He has to offer us.
1 comment:
But I will answer Rosey, because you make a really good point. :)
The displacements that are spoken about are mostly in the context of leaving the standards/expectations of the world and listening to the voice of God. So as long as you are acting in response to God, then no, the displacement does not become "ordinary life" again. But I think that something that was orginally a call from God CAN become ordinary life if you stop listening to God and start listening to the world.
For example, you might leave your home and go into foreign missions in response to God's voice. But if you start doing the missions to look impressive to other people, or to fit their ideas of success, or to build up your own pride, then you've just fallen back into the standards of the world you tried to leave. Or, perhaps God did call you away to foreign missions, but now he's calling you to something new or an expansion of the previous call, but you're so used to your current life that you fail to respond to the new call He has for you.
So I think that my answer to your second question would be to keep listening to God, keep guarding your heart from the call of the world, always know that you have further to grow, and always be open to God calling you to something new and different than what you have known.
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