Friday, September 21, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 15:8-10

[Jesus said:] “Or what women having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in presence of God over one sinner who repents.”

Prayer

I long to be this beauty, Holy Laughter. I have stood on the outside looking in for much too long.

It is not enough for me just to see your beauty, though it is holiest sacrament, capturing sacred moments with word and image. I thought it was, but I was wrong, again. Nothing new there.

Transcendent joy lights the face of the woman, her tiny coin clutched fast in hand. But I see such joy not just in her, Jesus. I savor it in all who surrender to Love Itself, seeking to enfold their beloved, utterly given to the soul’s most needful search. They glisten with the purity of your heart, your search, your love, your joy.

And through them you have found me, again, just like a thousand times before.

But it is no longer enough to see, describe and celebrate. It is time to enter the transparency of sacred joy that illumines the heart that I, too, may glow with the discovery of my heart’s delight. Unashamed, unabashed, utterly given, surrendered in joy to the Joy who finds me on my wandering way.

Thank you. Light my heart; dissolve my fears. Let me shine with the beauty of that joy that you take in me and in all the lost you somehow manage to find, despite our most determined efforts.

Pr. David L. Miller