Monday, July 2, 2007

Today’s text

3 John 1:1-2

“The elder to the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth. Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, just as it is well with your soul.”

Prayer

I wake in the morning to find a love already stirring my soul. Who put it there? How did it get in me … and grow, so that it is not at my command? It bubbles from a place beyond reach of conscious willing. Apparently, I bear a Spirit beyond my own that has its own desire and purpose.

Joy accompanies this love, suggesting there is no need to resist. It draws me to faces, past and present, the fleeting thought of which stirs warming gratitude though I’ve not seen some of them for decades. But I carry them with me whether I know it or not, even as I bear the mystery of this love.

The mystery is you, Dear Friend. You are the love that bubbles from source unseen in 21st century souls. You are the same now as when Gaius opened this little letter to find loving gratitude spilling from the heart of a friend, pouring out words of blessing for which we all thirst. At least I do.

I thirst not only to hear them but to find them already whole and formed in my heart, ready to share. For then my heart is filled with you, filled with blessing and joyous consolation and eager to share. I don’t think there is greater joy than this.

And that is the joy I wake to find this day. You answer my heart’s great need before I have words to pray it. But finding the words also blesses and brings joy. Thank you. I know you intend to pull all of us into the joy of your loving--the ancient elder, Gaius, me, the faces that flit through my heart, all of us.

Let us never stray for this awareness. Amen.

Pr. David L. Miller