Growing into the Truth We Speak

I admit it. I'm a bit of a mailing list junkie. I have joined quite a number of daily/weekly/monthly email lists, and I receive a great number of wonderful things by email every day - scriptures and prayers, jokes, a Garfield comic strip, cultural commentary from a Christian perspective, and these wonderful bits of writing from Henri Nouwen.

The following quote appeared in my mailbox on June 21st, under the same title that I have used for this post:

Can we only speak when we are fully living what we are saying? If all our words had to cover all our actions, we would be doomed to permanent silence! Sometimes we are called to proclaim God's love even when we are not yet fully able to live it. Does that mean we are hypocrites? Only when our own words no longer call us to conversion. Nobody completely lives up to his or her own ideals and visions. But by proclaiming our ideals and visions with great conviction and great humility, we may gradually grow into the truth we speak. As long as we know that our lives always will speak louder than our words, we can trust that our words will remain humble.

I have wrestled often in recent months with some of the ideas that Nouwen so succintly discusses here. I have often had the opportunity to speak with friends and aquaintances, to share their lives and challenge them to new things in their relationship with Jesus. And yet, I have struggled with the opportunities as they have come about.

My life has not been a model of many good things in the last few years. Yes, I still profess Christ - I cling to him more desperately than ever before. But, at the same time, I devote less time to "getting to know him" than I ever have. I am woefully undisciplined at spending time in scripture and in prayer. I attend church and bible study as much for the social interaction as the spiritual value. And, more foten than not, I manufacture the "experience" and the "feelings" necessary to appear engaged during times of worship.

I have been greatly convicted in recent days of the lack of time that I have devoted to the faith that I claim is of central importance to my daily existence. I have often wondered if my own brokenness should disqualify me from offering challenges to those around me. And yet, I keep encountering needy people - people who I can understand because of my own neediness. People to whom I can offer a listening ear and the advice of experience. And yet, I feel hypocritical for offering "answers" when I have so few of my own.

Nouwen's words encouraged me - only when my words stop creating the sense of dis-ease within my own soul, that calls it to conversion, to deeper relationship with Christ, do they stop having value. My prayer is this - that I will never be so "together" that I fail to feel the guilt of knowing that the advice I offer is advice that I am woefully unable and unqualified to live and to dispense, without the grace of Christ.