Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 17:5-6

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, “be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”

Prayer

What do you mean, Jesus? I want to see your face. Do you say this as if your friends--and I--have no faith at all? Or is that a wry grin that flashes across your lips, suggesting that we should stop worrying, since we have what we need?

We read your word and encounter your otherness, often unable to make comfortable sense of you and what you are saying. But most often I cannot hear your heart because I am in the way. I read through eyes clouded with self-concern. I hear through my anxieties about my acceptability, my unlovliness, my intuitive awareness that I am not much.

And that’s just the problem, isn’t it Jesus? I am so busy seeing myself I fail to see you. I am so preoccupied with my paucity that I can’t perceive your immensity. You would soak me to the soul in your boundless ocean of love and grace were I not captive in this capsule of self.

My faith is small, but that is not your concern, is it? Nor is it the point. You would have me see you, know you, allowing my tiny heart to be loved into self-forgetfulness by your great heart. You care not a wit for the size of my faith but with joy and laughter would enlarge my heart to hold more of you, if only: if only I will look at you and not at myself.

So let me look, and looking see, and seeing love, and loving know … you, who are so much larger than my heart.

Pr. David L. Miller