Wednesday, October 4, 2006

Today's reading

Philippians 2:1-8

“If there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being of full accord and one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regards others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” (Phil 2:1-4).


Prayer

If ... ? If there is any ... ? Shall I laugh now? If so, my laughter praises you in the darkness of morning. For you have turned my heart to an indestructible joy despite the melancholy that has always haunted me. Mine is the laughter of one who has known so little of you but just enough to know the consolation of an infinite compassion. My consolation is to live enveloped in an all encompassing love that embraces me even as the air gentles my flesh as I sit in this gray chair.

You, O Risen Love, humbly conform to the waywardness of my life and choices wrapping me in a cloak of divine mercy in every place and circumstance so that I cannot escape. Where can I go to flee you? Alive beyond the power of death, you cannot be contained by time and space but seek us in every time and space.

Is that any consolation, any compassion, any encouragement, or is it the eternal secret of an abundance only you can give?

May my smile praise you this day as no words can. It is the smile of one who knows the secret that frees from selfishness and conceit that even I may bear the love you are. Let it be so today. Amen.