Hard Things
Henri Nouwen, via Abby–who really should devote an entire blog to interesting tidbits of religious thought she runs across–has this to say:
Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute to the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life. Jesus asks, “Do you love me?” We ask, “Can we sit at your right hand and your left hand in your Kingdom?
This, I think, is the hardest of many hard things. No matter the beginnings or desired ends of our power, we are inclined to believe that as long as we work hard enough, deliberately enough, prayerfully enough, then that will be enough. We can shape the world with our hands, into a smooth, faultless globe. No chasms to be bridged, no cracks to slip through. And to do this, we will need all the unbridled agency we can muster. In this department, there is no such thing as ‘enough’.
The intended endgame of this is not a world without pain. It is a society in which the greatest kind of love is no longer needed; More aptly still, it in which Christ is merely, powerfully, obsolete.
