Last week I wrote of the Henri Nouwen’s striving to aspire
to be like the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son. Nouwen’s book The Return of the Prodigal Son explores his exploration of the
parable which was initiated by his encounter with the painting by Rembrandt of
the same name based on the parable.
Nouwen saw that what it meant for him to aspire to be like God the father was to
be compassionate. Nouwen states that the
most radical statement Jesus made was, “Be compassionate as your father is
compassionate”. He acknowledges that this
is in no way easy for him. To do this
you must live a life that is based on cooperation rather than competition—which,
of course, is truly radical in today’s culture. However, he identifies three ways to a truly
compassionate fatherhood. These ways of compassion are; grief,
forgiveness, and generosity.
I will look
at each of these ways this week and subsequent weeks beginning with grief. Nouwen notes that there is no grief without
tears; either tears that flow from our eyes or tears that flow from our
hearts. He notes that there is no
shortage of things to grieve over in this world, “When I consider the immense
waywardness of God’s children, our lust, our greed, our violence, our anger,
our resentment, and when I look at them through the eyes of God’s heart, I
cannot but weep and cry out in grief.”
For there to
be tears of grief I believe that there must be an open heart. As one who has not always had the gift of
tears of compassion that came to me often or easily, I am aware that it is because
my heart has not been open to much of the waywardness in the world. I have had a protective wall around my heart that
requires breaching. To enable this to
happen, we must be open to being hurt by the world.
Nouwen
proposes that much of grieving is prayer.
A good prayer for the grief that comes from compassion is to prayer that
the walls around our hearts will come tumbling down like the walls of Jericho. Blessings.
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