Ragamuffin Ramblings

Ever get the feeling someone has been reading your mail? Well, this would be one of those times, for me. Here's the July 29th devotion from the Henri Nouwen Society:

Spiritual Dryness
Sometimes we experience a terrible dryness in our spiritual life. We feel no desire to pray, don't experience God's presence, get bored with worship services, and even think that everything we ever believed about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is little more than a childhood fairy tale.

Then it is important to realise that most of these feelings and thoughts are just feelings and thoughts, and that the Spirit of God dwells beyond our feelings and thoughts. It is a great grace to be able to experience God's presence in our feelings and thoughts, but when we don't, it does not mean that God is absent. It often means that God is calling us to a greater faithfulness. It is precisely in times of spiritual dryness that we must hold on to our spiritual discipline so that we can grow into new intimacy with God. (from Bread for the Journey)

Thank you, God, for people like Henri who had enough guts to describe the struggles openly and honestly enough for the rest of us to be able to say, "Wow...even he felt like that? Then maybe I can pull out of this, too..."