New encounters unsettle our assumptions, interrupting our habits of thought
Morning all from the south of England. What have I missed this week? Anyone save a good box for later? Anyone carrying your younger self-story into later life? Or fall in love? Living a transformed life is both serious and personal - it’s also an invitation to become fully alive and fully human. Here’s what has been on my mind over the last few days.
I’m interested in people’s lives and this week I’m continuing to read Surrender1 by Bono, the frontman of U2. In it he describes a piece of art hanging in their home by the German filmmaker, Wim Wenders (I’m an artist so that interests me too). It’s a cinematic-scale photograph of The Road to Emmaus, just outside Jerusalem. Bono reflects on how easily we can be oblivious to the stranger, to the people around us who, in one way or another, play a significant role in our lives. It’s a thought worth lingering over. Personally, U2’s albums, songs, and lyrics have accompanied and shaped my life and I’ve written about that in previous posts (link at the end of this post). But as I take in that expansive image, a quieter, simpler thought from that biblical story focuses in my mind.
Without exception, on both our individual and collective journeys through life, our own long or short acquaintance with the Divine cannot be relied upon to prepare us for any recognition of a wholly new presence among us. A new encounter is just that, new! This signals transformation. Our relationship is about to change.
Below photograph: Wim Wenders, The Road to Emmaus, near Jerusalem, 2000.
No matter who we are or how long we have walked this path, when a new encounter breaks in our lives, He rarely feels familiar at first, often strange and sometimes, if we’re - I’m - being honest, very unwelcome too. I think these meetings unsettle our assumptions, interrupt our habits of thought, disrupt our personal certainty, and open us to possibilities, inviting us into a deeper relationship that we had not known before. These new encounters are transformative, relationally life-changing. We often don’t recognise new encounters because transformation arrives beyond our knowing, beyond our understanding. We are new. We understand later. The Creator is at play, in your life and mine. The Spirit, often mysterious, invites trust more than explanation.
"My own experience of spiritual formation did not evoke in me an interest in spiritual formation but a need for Trinity."
I’m captivated by the life God is authoring in us each day. In the immediate, the here and now. What is God up to in your life? Are you unsettled, experiencing a disruption in your habits of certainty? Do you recognise Him? Welcome and or resist Him?
-Andy.
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Jun 2, 2026 Writers, Authors, Publishers, Pastors, Ministers, Leaders, Creatives
