Making All Things New is an eloquent and simple explanation of the spiritual life from Henri J.M. Nouwen, author of Letters to Marc About Jesus and A Letter of Consolation and one of the best-loved spiritual writers of the twentieth century.
Gracepoint Church Library
Fostering love of good reading in the children & adults (& college students!) of Gracepoint Berkeley Church and BEYOND!
Gracepoint Church Library 
Want to know what it means to grow in your spiritual life and you can do that?
Well, that is actually what this book did for me!
The author does an amazing job actually trying to show you concrete ways in growing your spiritual life both in solidarity and in a community. One point that really hit me was the idea of boredom in my life and that it is connected to disconnectedness and resentment. It made me want to hold onto the verse Matthew 6:33 where Nouwen shows you to actually seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and make Jesus the center of my life.
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“Making All Things New: An Invitation to the Spiritual Life” really helped bring to light the importance of the discipline of solitude and of community to me. It’s true that life feels super busy all the time, often filled with tasks and obligations that we have to take care of, in addition to the many thoughts and fears that constantly cloud our minds. In a condition like this, it’s hard to find quiet time to connect with God, and I appreciate how this book really enabled me to confront the issue that I haven’t been making enough effort to give time to solely be with God. I also enjoyed this book because Nouwen teaches readers how to hear God speaking to them both during time alone and time with other Christians in our community, guiding us on how to bring ourselves back to God.
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“The spiritual life is the active presence of God’s spirit in the midst of a worry-filled existence.”
One thing I will remember from this book is Nouwen’s helpful outline of the spiritual life in the context of both solitude and community. He stressed the importance of discipline as the means to creating the space in our distracted and worry-wrought lives for God to speak to us. I often find myself not knowing what to pray about when I do make the time and space for God, and eventually my efforts peter out. His point about how to establish attentiveness: to find in the words of scripture a “psalm, a saying of Jesus, or a word of Paul, Peter, James…” and focus on it, forming “a safe anchoring place in a stormy sea” of thoughts, I think, will prove itself helpful to me as I am trying be more consistent in approaching God in a quiet space of reflection/prayer/repentance.
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