Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Today’s reading

Philippians 2:12-13

“Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you to will and work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12-13).

Prayer

Who are you? Who are you who work at the secret center, weaving sinews of flesh and spirit into a rational soul, a breathing being so that I might somehow please you? Who are you, Secret Heart, who fashions in me a heart of flesh whose pleasure is your good pleasure? Who is this who molds in human flesh a heart after your own divine heart, one that lives to love?

It is morning. You wake me again from the little death of sleep because it is your joy to make breathing and beautiful beings come to life. Beauty, I have little, but what little I have is you. You have known me from the time I was not. You willed my existence. I am your desire. You wanted me and wanted that I should be particular expression of your good pleasure.

You knit me together in my mother’s womb. You have walked with me every moment. You bear in your immense mercy every wound, every bruise, every cry of body and soul, every blessed word I have heard, every gentle hand I have touched, every place I have been, every voice I have heard, every face I have met, laboring in the whole mess to make a human soul capable of loving and of loving you.

You are large, your heart all-expansive, all-encompassing, holding in redemptive mercy every moment of my life, every evil and wasted word I have spoken, every failure and misstep, every refusal to love and respond to your mercy, every blessing you have somehow wrung from my resistant heart, and every tear I have shed for the sheer joy of loving and being loved, tears that surely must make you smile.

All of it, all of it, and much more you used for your good pleasure. It brings you joy to labor at the secret center to make us live and live truly in love, the only life that is life. If there are words to give thanks for all of this, I don’t have them. Amen.