I’m currently sitting in the Maude Jellison Library at the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park, Colorado. The library has been variably busy for the last 90 minutes. At moments, it’s been a total silence, marred only by the sounds of breathing and keyboards as my wife and siblings work on homework. Then, sounds emerge – other visitors entering to check out books and puzzles while engaging with the library volunteers in quick conversations.
This has been a glorious, much-needed time in the mountains – away from the regular responsibilities of work and life and in the midst of the crisp autumnal peace only found in the mountains.
Today, we sent a message to a family friend who is in her final days of a battle with aggressive cancer. I took a breath this afternoon as my parents and siblings gathered around my mom’s phone for a short voice note to share with our friends. As our family has grown and changed, graduations, priorities, schedules, and my own marriage, it has required much more intentionality to spend quality time together. It struck me as we stood on the porch, looking at the Rocky Mountains and recording this goodbye message, how special this time is as a family, and how timely it was that we were gathered in the same place to share our goodbyes as a group to the Voice Memos app.
I’ve been reading – a longer blog post about The Wounded Healer by Henri Nouwen is in the works. But, one line has caught my attention that feels fitting. Nouwen writes in The Wounded Healer, “Compassion is born when we discover in the center of our own existence not only that God is God and man is man, but also that our neighbor is really our fellow man.” This family friend practiced this compassion in a radical, tangible, and sustainable way. She opened her home to others, asked them real questions that pointed to the truth of the Gospel and the exploration of self, and practiced intentional hospitality, maintaining relationships across space, geography, and time. Even separated by miles and miles, my family felt the neighbor-ness of this friend.
As I now sit in the library, reading, homework, and thinking happening around me, I’m challenged by that word – intentional. It was only in the intentionality to spend this time as a family in the mountains that we got to share that special goodbye, and it was that same intention that preserved this family friendship over the passage of time, and on into God’s glory.
As my wife and I celebrate these early months of our marriage and find the rhythms that allow us to bring glory to God through the ways we live our shared life together, I’m once again drawn to the importance of intentionality. Each decision we make has the power to build community or tear it down, to build friendship or throw it to the wayside, and to testify to the goodness of God or stay silent. I choose intentionality and make the choice of neighbor-ness.
A Profitable Read 