Reflection on Making All Things New: Final Part

                 The first session was the best of all because he portrait and express the message clearly with the two words ‘Filled’ and ‘Unfilled.’ The second part is not so profound and organized yet gives the key answer which is to focus on the kingdom of God. In the final part he put some practical disciplines. The discipline of solitude and to make time and space could be the answer for noisy and busy society.
                 Henri rightly said that the beginning of spiritual life is often difficult not only because the powers which cause us to worry are so strong but also because the presence of God’s spirit seems barely noticeable. In many time tangible things of the world seem to be more promising and real than God. The presence of God seems to be too far away from us in many times. It is not enough just to believe that God exist but it is necessary to have active relationship with him. First, having the spirit of contentment in spiritual journey can weaken my spiritual disciplines. Sometime it is very easy to be contented that we don’t need to pray too much after reading or praying regularly. Second, it is very dangerous to bring always before God all the things that occupied and preoccupied our hearts and minds. Therefore, it might become like trying to persuading God to share our workload. It is important to go before God with a listening ear and an obedience heart. When spending time with God it is more important to hear and listen His voice than spend all our times telling God what we need. We should pray without fear which means without worrying that God may not hear clear enough of my needs. It is important to set our heart to listen and to obey whenever we spend time with Him.

Reflection on Making All Things New: IV

a)    Set your hearts
                 We need to set our hearts to work hard. Henry said ‘The spiritual life is a gift. It is the gift of the Holy Spirit, who lifts us up into the kingdom of God's love. But to say that being lifted up into the kingdom of love is a divine gift does not mean that we wait passively until the gift is offered to us.’ Shifting our heart from occupied and preoccupied worries to the kingdom of God involves serious aspirations and strong determination. A spiritual life requires physical, mental, emotional efforts. Therefore, the bible required us to love God with all our being. The forces that keep pulling us back into a worry-filled life are far from easy to overcome.
     Consistency in keeping discipline is the key for Spiritual well being. Discipline is the other side of discipleship. The lesser we pay attention to many worries the more we become sensitive to the small, gentle voice of God.  A spiritual life requires discipline because we need to learn to listen to God, who constantly speaks but whom we seldom hear. When, however, we learn to listen, our lives become obedient lives. The word obedient comes from the Latin word audire, which means "listening."
                 In the beginning of our journey many distractions will be keep presenting themselves. However, when they received less and less attention, they slowly withdraw. Without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life. Solitude begins with a time and a place for God, and time alone. On the con­trary, when we have removed our outer distractions, we often find that our inner distractions manifest themselves to us in full force. On the other hand, we must have community where we can share and be encouraged by others. The community is where we show concern and love for one another. The community is not there to seek for their own interest but it is a community of God’s people who are willing to share life together.
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         [1]Henry Nouwen, Making All Things New: page 65

         [2]Ibid. 67.

Reflection on Making All Things New: III

a)    His kingdom first
     Jesus answered the problem of our worry-filled lives by asking us to move from the ‘many things’ to the ‘one necessary thing.’ ‘Focus’ or ‘Priority’ is the key for spiritual recreation for occupied and preoccupied hearts and minds. Jesus commands us to put His Kingdom first above everything. Jesus' life was a life of obedience. He was always listening to the Father with single-minded obedience, always attentive to his voice, always alert for his directions. Obedient is the core value in shifting our paradigm from worry-filled lives to God-fearing lives. Obedient means a total, fearless listening to our Heavenly Father. The Holy Spirit enables us to have truthful relationship with God and man. The Holy Spirit will lead us to have the same relationship that Jesus has with the Father. When the kingdom of God becomes the centrality of our lives we are partakers of the divine life. The Holy Spirit will transform us into Christ-like lives and we will have obedient relationship with the father. Obedient required attentive listening. A spiri­tual discipline of is necessary in order to shift slowly from an absurd to an obedient life, from a life filled with deafening worries to a life where we began to listen to the Holy Spirit and follow his guidance. As an act of obedient we begun to trust in God and the Spirit of God will occupied our hearts and minds for His kingdom.

Reflection on Making All Things New: II

a)    All these other things
                 In this session the author profoundly reflects struggles and problems in life. The chapter clearly portrait how people think, speak, feel, and act in order to bring awareness to spiritual dryness. ‘Filled’ and ‘Unfilled’ was the best two words to descript our lives by critically looking at how we live our live. The word ‘Filled’ represent the most obvious characteristics of our daily lives. It literally means ‘Busy’ in this book.  We start our day with busyness and end with busyness. Busyness seems to be a world-wide-web. We are busy and yet always falling behind schedule. However, it is abnormal not to be busy. The author said ‘being busy has become a status symbol.1’ People tend to think that being busy and being important as the same thing.
                 Our occupation occupies everything in life and it becomes the center of our identity. On the other hand, the society where we live in now is very production-orientated. However, in the end of carrier everybody become nobody and we need to ask ‘who are we when we no longer have an occupation?’ People are not only occupied by their occupation but also preoccupied by many ‘ifs.’ Jesus said ‘do not worry for tomorrow’ and yet we are preoccupied by many ifs. To be up to date in many things create restlessness and adds many fabricated preoccupations to the already existing ones.2 Therefore, our hearts and minds are filled with our occupations and preoccupations. However, many things that preoccupied our hearts and minds are just false expectations and contrived needs. They occupied our lives so much that we left very little time or no time for the Spirit of God to renewing our lives. The word ‘Unfilled’ highlighted the time when we started to question ourselves. When we are busy, yet wondering if our busyness means anything to anyone. ‘Unfilled’ also means disconnection in this book. We are very busy without any intimate authentic relationship with anyone. Therefore, we become bored, resentful, depressed, and very lonely. Many worries fragmented our lives as we are occupied and preoccupied without intimate relationship with God and man.
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           [1]Henri Nouwen, Making All Things New: page 24.  

           [2]Ibid. 27. 

Reflection on Making All Things New

            Making All Things New book is one of the masterpieces works of great spiritual inspirational author Henri Nouwen. Reading the book drew my attention to find out who Henri Nouwen is and it was amazing to find out who he was. According to Michael Ford, Henry was constantly struggled with intense feelings of loneliness despite of the fact that he has 1,500 personal friends.1 The book is a reflection of his real life and it portrait the reality of life. Therefore, Henry rightly said ‘the authentic spiritual life finds its basis in the human condition, which all people –whether they are Christian or not –have in common.’2
            Making All Things New book is not merely a theory book but rather it open the readers eyes to see themselves clearly in order to understand the true meaning of life. The author strongly inserted that the key to spiritual well being is placing our heart at the right place. Setting hearts for the kingdom of God and making God the centrality of life is the turning point in making all things new in life. The book was divided into three parts such as a) All these other things b) His kingdom first and c) Set your hearts. In general, the fist part of the book was dealing with the destructive effects of worrying in daily lifestyle; second part elucidate the works of God the Holy Spirit in radical transformation of believers’ lives and the final part give some specific disciplines to overcome worries and to allow the spirit of God to do His recreation work.
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           [1] Michael Ford, “BIOGRAPHY OF HENRI NOUWEN,” JOHN MARK MINISTRIES (January 5, 2003): page nr., http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/4673.htm (accessed September 2, 2010).

           [2] Henry Nouwen, Making All Things New: page 15.