Being Sent into the World
Each of us has a mission in life. Jesus prays to his Father for his followers, saying, “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world” (John 17:18).
We seldom realize fully that we are sent to fulfill God given tasks. We act as if we have to choose how, where, with whom to live. We act as if we were simply dropped down in creation and have to decide how to entertain ourselves until we die. But we were sent into the world by God, just as Jesus was. Once we start living our lives with that conviction, we will soon know what we were sent to do.
Fulfilling a Mission
When we live our lives as missions, we become aware that there is a home from which we are sent and to which we have to return. We start thinking about ourselves as people who are in a faraway country to bring a message or work on a project, but only for a certain amount of time. When the message has been delivered and the project is finished, we want to return home to give an account of our mission and to rest from our labors.
One of the most important spiritual disciplines is to develop the knowledge that the years of our lives are years “on a mission.”
The Answers to Our Questions
We spend a lot of time and energy raising questions. Is it worth it? It is always good to ask ourselves why we raise a question. Do we want to get useful information? Do we want to show that someone else is wrong? Do we want to conquer knowledge? Do we want to grow in wisdom? Do we want to find a way to sanctity?
When we ponder these questions before asking our questions, we may discover that we need less time and energy for our questions. Perhaps we already have the information. Perhaps we don’t need to show that someone is wrong. For many questions we may learn that we already have the answers, if we just listen carefully to our own hearts.
Question from Above
What are spiritual questions? They are questions from above. Most questions people ask of Jesus are questions from below, such as the question about which of a woman’s seven husbands she will be married to in the resurrection. Jesus does not answer this question because it comes from a legalistic mind-set. It is a question from below.
Often Jesus responds by changing this question. In the case of the woman with seven husbands he says, “At the resurrection men and women do not marry . . . have you never read what God himself said to you: ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob?’ He is God not of the dead but of the living” (Matthew 22:23-30). We have to keep looking for the spiritual questions if we want spiritual answers.
~From Henri J.M. Nouwen, Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith
