“It probably takes many years of monastic practice to equal the spiritual growth generated by one sleepless night with a sick child.”
Douglas Abrams with Dalai Lama and Bishop Desmond Tutu, Book of Joy
So, recently someone recommended a lovely hike nearby to an area where the patron saint of Switzerland, Niklaus von Flue was born and lived in the 1400s.
He was a wealthy farmer who married and had 10 kids with his wife, but when the youngest was under a year old and the oldest was 20, he left them to become a hermit. According to history, he led an intense prayer life in his cloister (not far from his home), focusing on the suffering of Christ. Bless!
WHAT ABOUT HIS WIFE?? I can’t judge from my spot of privilege 500 years later, but I also can’t help inserting a little eye roll here and asking the question, “Who identified with the suffering of Jesus more – Nik, or his wife who had to deal with the daily stuff of dirty dishes, dirty diapers, and discipline with 10 kids to raise?”
We can elevate the dramatic, the “big” gestures of sacrifice for Jesus as the ones that really “count” in the kingdom and bring radical transformation of us as disciples, but really?
I’ve been thinking about “death by paper cuts” – the spiritual formation that can happen when we invite Jesus into the ordinary irritations of the everyday.
Come Holy Spirit, to the line at the grocery store.
May I find all the things to be grateful for even in the midst of disappointment today.
Come give me patience at the airport when my flight is cancelled.
Help me to see You, Jesus, in the joy of my kids at play.
Give me a willing heart to serve my husband in ways that are inconvenient.
Help me to be present to others as You are to me.
God desires to be recognizable in us in all we do.”
Beth Moore
What is the most ordinary place where you recognize God trying to form you more into His likeness?
