Reflection for First Sunday of Advent

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Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with . . . the worries of this life. Luke 21:34

Waiting with the Word - First Sunday of Advent   Our waiting is always shaped by alertness to the Word. It is waiting in the knowledge that someone wants to address us. The question is, are we home? Are we at our address, ready to respond to the doorbell? We need to wait together, to keep each other at home spiritually, so that when the Word comes it can become flesh in us. That is why the Book of God is always in the midst of those who gather. We read the Word so that the Word can become flesh and have a whole new life in us.      Advent Book Discussion    Join us during Advent as we reflect on Henri Nouwen's A Spirituality of Homecoming and A Spirituality of Living. Facilitated by Brynn Lawrence and Ray Glennon. You are welcome to participate in any way that is spiritually nourishing for you! READ  *  REFLECT  *  SHARE       This week's Advent reflection is from Finding My Way Home, page 107, © Henri J.M. Nouwen. Published by The Crossroad Publishing Company and reprinted here with publisher's kind permission. Scripture quotations are from New Revised Standard Version Bible, © 1989, 1993 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Photo Credits: Henri Nouwen by Frank Hamilton, used with kind permission. San Diego sky by Sharon Sheehan, used with kind permission.    Suggested Advent Reading Life of the Beloved Finding My Way Home A Spirituality of Homecoming A Spirituality of Living Home Tonight Wait for the Lord

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Daily Meditation: Spiritual Bodies

Sunday November 30, 2014 Spiritual Bodies In the resurrection we will have spiritual bodies.  Our natural bodies came from Adam, our spiritual bodies come from Christ. Christ is the second Adam, offering us new bodies not subject to destruction.  As Paul says:  "as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man [Adam], so we shall bear the likeness of the heavenly one [Christ]" (I Corinthians 15:49). Our spiritual bodies are Christ-like bodies.  Jesus came to share with us the life in our mortal bodies so that we would also be able to share in his spiritual body.  "Mere human nature," Paul says, "cannot inherit the kingdom of God" (I Corinthians 15:50).  Jesus came to dress our perishable nature with imperishability and our mortal nature with immortality  (see I Corinthians 15:53).  Thus it is in the body that our spiritual life finds its fullest manifestation.   Comment on this Daily Meditation. Join our Advent book discussion.   Visit our website for inspiration, resources, news, events, community.     Text excerpts taken from Bread for the Journey, by Henri J.M. Nouwen, ©1997 HarperSanFrancisco. All Scripture from The Jerusalem Bible ©1966, 1967, and 1968 Darton, Longman & Todd and Doubleday & Co. Inc. Photo by V. Dobson.

Forward this Daily Meditation to a friend! This email was sent to cbgamb@gmail.com, by email_lists@henrinouwen.org Update Profile/Email Address | Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe™ | Privacy Policy. Henri Nouwen Society | PO Box 220522 | St. Louis | MO | 63122 | USA Henri Nouwen Society | 95 St. Joseph Street, Room 214 | Toronto | ON | M5S 2R9 | Canada

Daily Meditation: Our Lives, Sowing Times

Saturday November 29, 2014 Our Lives, Sowing Times Our short lives on earth are sowing time.  If there were no resurrection of the dead, everything we live on earth would come to nothing.  How can we believe in a God who loves us unconditionally if all the joys and pains of our lives are in vain, vanishing in the earth with our mortal flesh and bones?  Because God loves us unconditionally, from eternity to eternity, God cannot allow our bodies - the same as that in which Jesus, his Son and our savior, appeared to us - to be lost in final destruction. No, life on earth is the time when the seeds of the risen body are planted.  Paul says:  "What is sown is perishable, but what is raised is imperishable; what is sown is contemptible but what is raised is glorious; what is sown is weak, but what is raised is powerful; what is sown is a natural body, and what is raised is a spiritual body" (1 Corinthians 15:42-44).  This wonderful knowledge that nothing we live in our bodies is lived in vain holds a call for us to live every moment as a seed of eternity. The wonderful knowledge, that nothing we live in our body is lived in vain, holds a call for us to live every moment as a seed of eternity.   Comment on this Daily Meditation. Join our Advent book discussion.   Visit our website for inspiration, resources, news, events, community.     Text excerpts taken from Bread for the Journey, by Henri J.M. Nouwen, ©1997 HarperSanFrancisco. All Scripture from The Jerusalem Bible ©1966, 1967, and 1968 Darton, Longman & Todd and Doubleday & Co. Inc. Photo by V. Dobson.

Forward this Daily Meditation to a friend! This email was sent to cbgamb@gmail.com, by email_lists@henrinouwen.org Update Profile/Email Address | Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe™ | Privacy Policy. Henri Nouwen Society | PO Box 220522 | St. Louis | MO | 63122 | USA Henri Nouwen Society | 95 St. Joseph Street, Room 214 | Toronto | ON | M5S 2R9 | Canada