With Others

Read in my devotional time today, from Henri J.M. Nouwen's Here and Now:

One of the discoveries we make in prayer is that the closer we come to God, the closer we come to all our brothers and sisters in the human family. God is not a private God. The God who dwells in our inner sanctuary is also the God who dwells in the inner sanctuary of each human being. As we recognize God’s presence in our own hearts, we can also recognize that presence in the hearts of others, because the God who has chosen us as a dwelling-place gives us the eyes to see the God who dwells in others. When we see only demons within ourselves,, we can see only demons in others, but when we see God within ourselves, we can see God also in others.
This might sound rather theoretical, but when we pray, we will increasingly experience ourselves as part of a human family infinitely bound by God who created us to share, all of us, in the divine light.
We often wonder what we can do for others, especially for those in great need. It is not a sign of powerlessness when we say: “We must pray for one another.” To pray for one another is, first of all, to acknowledge, in the presence of God, that we belong to each other as children of the same God. Without this acknowledgement of human solidarity, what we do for one another does not flow from who we truly are. We are brothers and sisters, not competitors or rivals. We are children of one God, not partisans of different gods.
To pray, that is, to listen to the voice of the One who calls us the “beloved,” is to learn that this voice excludes no one. Where I dwell, God dwells with me and where God dwells with me I find all my sisters and brothers. And so intimacy with God and solidarity with all people are two aspects of dwelling in the present moment that can never be separated.

I love this. For me, it helps to explain so much. How Jesus saw so intimately into the hearts of those He encountered. How God's Spirit inside us can prompt us to pray for someone in need. How we can experience a glimpse of God's broken-heartedness over the plight of His creation. How we can see into the heart of another's sadness or depression or grief with unexplainable insight. How we can feel such a strong bond with those who are physically far from us, but in spirit, so near we almost feel their heart beating within our chest. How we can weep with those we have never met and laugh with those we newly meet on the street.

We are all children of our Creator. We are all lost. We are all, whether it appears this way or not, looking for our Father, our Home, our Rest. We should be boosting each other up over the wall rather than scrambling and scratching to find our own way up. It would make life a lot easier. And more joyful. And, well, a lot more fun.

But, wow, how convicting: When we see only demons within ourselves, we can see only demons in others, but when we see God within ourselves, we can see God also in others. God, help me to see You within myself, so that I can more easily see You in others!