Show me your ways, Lord,
teach me your paths.
Guide me in your truth and teach me,
for you are God my Savior,
and my hope is in you all day long.
These are the words of Psalm 25.4-5 and the words that give shape to the culture of Nou Hope, which partners with rural communities in Haiti where the paths of loving, learning, and working together bring each person to embrace the hope of Christ.
While this passage can easily be intellectualized in thought and bring about a sense of hope, it also clearly calls for action - being guided, along the path of truth, in order to learn holistically from our experience of God. This seems particularly important as we navigate our world today, including injustice like racial violence committed at Lake Monroe last weekend against Vauhxx Booker. We walk and take action on the path of truth.
There are times in which we - especially those of us who are “doing repressed” - are stretched and guided to take paths of action that God leads us in. We are encouraged to pay special attention to the center we most repress or resist as it is often where the Spirit will do the most transforming work. The integration of our centers of intelligence - gut/doing, mind/thinking, heart/feeling - bring about transformation and freedom in Christ. Together, we embrace hope.
Today, we hear from John Millis who has engaged the intuitive/doing/gut center to process what is thought and felt through shared experience, not only serving on the Nou Hope board of directors, but in spending time with people in Haiti.