I keep forgetting how much I love the writings of Henri Nouwen. Someone gave me a photocopy of a page of a book of his about 5 years ago. They said they couldn’t remember what it was from, but I googled phrases from it until something matched: Henri Nouwen’s “Clowning in Rome.” And I devoured it — read it over and over. So I pulled it out tonight to re-visit. He talked about total openness to God. He climbed into my heart and pulled out the words I couldn’t find, that say that empty feeling we all have sometimes, that ache in our depths that can’t be relieved, is our space for God, “an openness to being loved first by God.” And he talks about the importance of keeping that space set apart because, “without giving God the first place in our hearts in the midst of the city, we will ultimately fail in the hopeless attempt to fabricate peace and love by ourselves…. Become still and wait for God without anything to show or prove, or to argue…. Stop, wait, and trust that God fills our emptiness”.
