A little criticism makes me angry and a little rejection makes me depressed. A little praise raises my spirits, and a little success excites me. It takes very little to raise me up or thrust me down.
Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son
In my last post I referred to Pastor Philip's comments about how this parable might have ended differently. It empowered me and gave me solace in this particularly terrifying time in our history.
Years ago I was part of a study using Henri Nouwen's book, The Return of the Prodigal Son. In the quote above, Nouwen is being brutally honest about his inner issues.
While I can't fully relate to the quote above, I can relate to, along with everything else, having overwhelming feelings of existential anxiety.
Henri Nouwen was one of our greatest Christian writers. Particularly, I think, because he was brutally honest about himself. By doing this, he helped all of us. (He wrote The Wounded Healer.)
In the study, we learned that, at a time when Nouwen was feeling particularly down, he visited the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he saw Rembrandt's most famous painting. He was stunned by its majestic beauty. He spent more than four hours with the painting that day. And went back the next day.
It was a healing experience.
In 2012, this amazing thing happened to me. David and I went to St. Petersburg and saw the painting. Since the Hermitage has the largest collection of paintings in the world, I wondered if we'd even get to it. But we did. While I didn't feel quite what Nouwen did, I was deeply moved and felt empowered.
I want to be like the Father.
Not only do some art scholars consider Rembrandt's The Return of the Prodigal Son to be the greatest picture ever painted, most biblical scholars consider The Return of the Prodigal Son to be Jesus' greatest parable.
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