Seeking the Kingdom

     I recently re-picked up a book titled "Soul Survivor" by Philip Yancey that was recommended to me by my Uncle Tim.  I began this book about a year and a half ago and never completely finished it.  Yancey's book  tells us of his spiritual struggles and how 13 different mentors (13 different chapters) helped to shape his faith in God.  All the chapters have really challenged me to think about my own spiritual walk but the last chapter really struck a chord with me  

     The final chapter is about a priest named Henri Nouwen who had much to say about how our Christian journey is about realizing how our struggles and pain have been redeemed by God and about how he uses those events in our lives to help us realize that we need to rest in the comfort that we are the beloved of God.    Nouwen wrote in his book, Making All Things New, that:

Poverty, pain, struggle, anguish, agony, and even inner darkness may continue to be part of our experience.  They may even be God's way of purifying us.  But life is no longer boring, resentful, depressing, or lonely because we have come to know that everything that happens is part of our way to the house of the Father.

Nouwen demonstrates in his writings and through his life that flaws and faithfulness are not mutually exclusive characteristics that we possess but instead that these characteristics coexist.  All of us bear some kind of wound in our life.  Whether it be through rejection, chronic illness, deep pain, repetitive sin, family issues, church frustrations, etc.  We can either live as victims of these issues, blaming God and others for our misfortune or we can allow those wounds to drive us to the Father.

     Nouwen's words most impact me when he speaks of downward mobility.  Many of us have heard of the phrase upward mobility-a drive for prestige, power, and ambition in our lives-a distinct characteristic of American culture.  Nouwen writes of downward mobility this way in an 1981 article of Sojourners:

The great paradox which Scripture reveals to us is that real and total freedom can only be found through downward mobility.  The Word of God came down to us and lived among us as a slave.  The divine way is indeed the downward way.

In his own life, Nouwen referred to this as "inward mobility."  In other words he withdrew in order to look inward, to learn how to love God and be loved by God so that he could also call others into that same love.  Nouwen's intent with this phrase "inward mobility" is best understood by a passage he often cited from Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

Pirsig describes two kinds of mountain climbers.  Both place one foot in front of the other, breathe in and out at the same rate, stop when tired, and move forward when rested.  But the "ego-climber" misses the whole experience.  He does not notice the beautiful passage of sunlight through the trees.  He looks up the trail to see what's ahead even though he just looked for the same thing a second ago.  "His talk is forever about somewhere else, something else.  He's here but he's not here.  What he is looking for, what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn't want that because it is all around him."                                (From The Genesee Diary)

     I so often view my life as one of the ego-climber.  My life is a series of books to read, skills to learn, games to play, boxes to check, appointments to make and people to see.  Very rarely do I find the time to stop and notice the beauty around me . . . to see the people that God has placed in my path, to see the moments that God is encouraging me to take advantage of, and to witness His awesome power that is alive in so many different ways.  I find myself constantly peering down the road, straining to see further down the trail of my life.  I have tried to fill my life up with more accomplishments, meeting more people, becoming more successful and hopefully to someday get somewhere on this road that i feel is important to walk.  Where is it again that i want this road to take me?

     Nouwen, through Yancey, reminds me that my life is about "downward & inward mobility."  That my purpose here in this place (or wherever i am) is to examine who i am in God's eyes (beloved), with all my flaws and faithfulness, and seek to encourage others to know that God also sees and loves them the same way.  That i need to slow down and witness the amazing ways that God is at work in my life and other lives around me every day and speak confidently about what God is doing.

     I am reminded that even Jesus' life was about downward mobility.  In Luke 4, Jesus visits his hometown of Nazareth to begin his ministry.  As he visits the synagogue on Sabbath, he stands to read from the prophet Isaiah and quotes this verse from Isaiah 61:1, 2:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

The Son of God was sent to earth to become lowly and human, so that he might redeem each of us from our sin, through His death on the cross.  He came to preach to the poor, to set the captives free, to heal the blind and to bring glory to His father.  Our Savior chose downward mobility so that each of us (the poor, the sinful, the spiritually blind, the captives, the sick) might have the opportunity to be redeemed to God.

     This week, think about how you can be more downwardly mobile in your life . . . how you can find ways to look inward and share that same introspection and love with others so that they might see God.  To see how you can be the anointed ambassador that seeks to heal peoples hurts and shares the love of God.