Jitterbugging for Jesus

For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”

— Romans 15: 4

“for our instruction that we might have hope”

As a ravenous, lifelong reader, I live for the quiet excitement of starting a new book and being captured by it.

But to borrow a quote from a Paul Simon song, “I seem to lean on old familiar ways.”

I’m constantly pulling down old, familiar spiritual books that I treasure, re-visiting the words from the dog-eared pages that I’ve underlined or highlighted.

So I’m constantly re-visiting quotes from Henri Nouwen, the Catholic priest and prolific spiritual writer who authored so many books that are loved by common lay people while also being read and studied to this day in Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant seminaries around the world.

So this morning over coffee the spirit led me to re-visit Nouwen’s Finding My Way Home, where I came upon this:

“I have found it very important in my own life to try to let go of my wishes and instead to live in hope. I am finding that when I choose to let go of my sometimes petty and superficial wishes and trust that my life is precious and meaningful in the eyes of God something really new, something beyond my own expectations begins to happen for me.”

Indeed, the excitement of “new life in Christ” begins every day–even on these Mondays that we so dread–and dread only because of our own dreadful attitudes.

Call me “Pollyanna Paul”–and God knows I’ve been called worse things–but I’m telling you (from personal experience): when we let go of all our “stuff”–our fears, our superficial “wants” and wishes, our dread of “Mondays” or “dreads” of anything else–and stay spiritually anchored in hope (and faith and charity), new and exciting things happen.

Have a happy Monday.