Articles By: Fil Anderson

There’s a compelling story that Adele Ahlberg Calhoun tells in her Spiritual Disciplines Handbook about an entire French village that risked their lives during World War II extending hospitality by welcoming and sheltering Jews. When a local pastor was asked why the village responded in this way, he replied, “I could not bear to be separated from Jesus.” Indeed, that is the essence of hospitality, a virtue that reflects the belief that when we welcome others we welcome Jesus.  

I hope that I’ll never forget a phone call I received several years ago on a Saturday morning.

“Fil, this is Eric’s mom. Can you tell me what happened to him? He’s not the same person!”

“I’m not certain I know what you’re referring to,” I replied.

“Ever since he came home from that camp, Eric’s been a different person. He’s so happy and pleasant to be around. Whatever happened, his dad and I are utterly amazed and we want to thank you.”

Sitting before me appears to be an innocent picture of a young boy, neatly dressed, standing next to his dad. Yet to me, it’s the most revealing picture that I’ve ever seen. It has become a window into my soul enabling me to see into my life as a child and understand how at an early age my soul was formed.

“What do you hear from God when you practice lectio with the past year of your life?”

That’s the question Conversations Journal’s editor invited me to ponder. My initial reaction was to think: “This is going to call for a good bit of time and effort!” After all, my answer to most “what did you hear from God?” questions has typically required my heart and mind to patiently wait for hours. However, this time it was different. Almost immediately, what I heard from God while prayerfully reading and contemplating the story of my life this past year was both an invitation and a command. It is contained in these three words:

“COME TO ME.”

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I think I shall always remember this black period with a kind of joy,

with a pride and a faith and deep affection

 that I could not at the time have believed possible,

for it was during this time

that somehow I survived defeat and lived my life

through to a first completion,

and through the struggle, suffering,

and labor of my own life

came to share some of those qualities

in the lives of people all around me.

Thomas Wolfe, The Autobiography of an American Novelist

I crave comfort. My idea of “roughing it” is waiting for room service to deliver my filet mignon and hot fudge sundae.  Therefore, I didn’t naturally “take” to the notion of desert time. Yet, God is the creator of lush, bountiful gardens as well as parched, barren deserts. And God calls me, both to “come and see” what brings me consolation and to “come and die” in desolation. In the desert, like a paring knife, God sometimes cuts me to the core, exposing my lack of faith. God uses desert time to work in my life like a solvent, stripping away the hardened veneer.  In the desert God empties me of the toxic cargo I carry, opening space for the Holy Spirit to fill, like ballast, in order to keep my life upright.

I’ll admit that whenever a movie touches a place deep within my soul my obsessive/compulsive tendency kicks into high gear.

If you’re catching my drift, then you won’t be too startled to hear me say, You absolutely must see “Get Low”!

Back in the early 1970s when I was beginning my career with Young Life, a mentor introduced me to the discipline of spiritual reading. In addition to the Bible, he urged me to cultivate the habit of reading biographies and autobiographies of followers of Jesus. Clueless about the soul shaping power that was about to be unleashed, I followed his promptings. With hindsight’s 20/20 vision, today I can see how this practice has shaped my soul.

Recently I’ve been pondering author Barbara Brown Taylor’s outlook on how our body’s condition affects our spiritual health. In her book An Altar in the World, she writes, “Whether you are sick or well, lovely or irregular, there comes a time when it is vitally important for your spiritual health to drop your clothes, look in the mirror, and say, ‘Here I am. This is the body-like-no-other that life has shaped. I live here. This is my soul’s address.’”

Despite its emphasis on abstinence, the faith tradition I grew up in taught me nothing about Lent. But I won’t be critical or hold anyone in contempt. From what I can gather, the same would’ve been true if I’d grown up in the early church.  Apparently the custom of spending forty days in self-denial and repentance in preparation for Easter wasn’t introduced until after the initial surge of Christian adrenalin waned and believers became lackadaisical about their faith.

Reflecting back on my life as a husband and father of three grown children I can recall times when the mere mention of spiritual formation and families was all it took to make me sweat and begin feeling like a failure. That’s because I was living in the illusion that my family’s spiritual formation was ultimately my responsibility. However, the reality that I’ve been waking up to in recent years, albeit later than I wish, is that I can’t manage or control the work of God’s transforming presence, neither in my own life nor in the life of my family.