Today’s text
1 John 3:15-17
“All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them. We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us--and we ought to lay down our live for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need yet refuses to help?”
Prayer
Eternal life is love abiding. Grant us this every morning, Living One. For we, too, do murderer to the souls of those we bypass and take for granted. We work destruction in our failures of gratitude and grace, our refusals to bless and heal, to build up and encourage. We kill the souls of your beloved and the unity of your beloved community with glib words and backbiting.
We each are more fragile and needy than we have courage to acknowledge. We need you. We need each other. We need our communal sharing to be a holy sacrament of your eternal life lest we die, lest we dwell in haunts of sadness and prisons of distrust and anger.
Our souls yearn for the sweet freedom to soar and share and be, for once, ourselves, that rare person who emerges in the morning sun of unspeakable grace where we know we are loved beyond any measure.
And we are. You laid down your life for us, Risen Jesus, and now pour the resurrection of grace into our souls that we may live and grace every life we touch with the love we have received from you, the flowing fountain of eternal life.
May it be so today. Amen.
Pr. David L. Miller
http://prayingthemystery.blogspot.com/
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Friday, April 13, 2007
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Today’s text
1 John 3:11-14
“For this is the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We must not be like Cain who was from the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. … We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death.”
Prayer
We know life, your risen life, in the presence of love, your love, abiding in us. Love is the form of your presence in and among us, Holy Mystery. And we yearn to rest in you whose name is Risen Love Abiding--and abiding here with me.
We yearn because we know what it is to abide in death, Risen One. It is an altogether common experience. Death is dwelling in anxiety about who I am, how I look, how I am doing, how others perceive me. It is fear about today and preoccupied worry about tomorrow.
Death is dwelling in cynicism and disdain for others, their actions and motives. It is separation from all with whom we share common human vulnerability.
Death is dwelling apart from you, separate from your liberating nearness, Risen Restless Love. Death, I know too well, and I weary of its hateful face.
So I come again in these moments to rest my soul in the mystery of your loving nearness. Knowing you here, abiding in this love I have for you, I know again, all is well. And resurrection happens again. I pass from death to life, knowing the love you breathe and speak through this soul.
May I never weary of this endless passage from death to life through which you breathe the life of your love into my soul. Amen.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 John 3:11-14
“For this is the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We must not be like Cain who was from the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. … We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death.”
Prayer
We know life, your risen life, in the presence of love, your love, abiding in us. Love is the form of your presence in and among us, Holy Mystery. And we yearn to rest in you whose name is Risen Love Abiding--and abiding here with me.
We yearn because we know what it is to abide in death, Risen One. It is an altogether common experience. Death is dwelling in anxiety about who I am, how I look, how I am doing, how others perceive me. It is fear about today and preoccupied worry about tomorrow.
Death is dwelling in cynicism and disdain for others, their actions and motives. It is separation from all with whom we share common human vulnerability.
Death is dwelling apart from you, separate from your liberating nearness, Risen Restless Love. Death, I know too well, and I weary of its hateful face.
So I come again in these moments to rest my soul in the mystery of your loving nearness. Knowing you here, abiding in this love I have for you, I know again, all is well. And resurrection happens again. I pass from death to life, knowing the love you breathe and speak through this soul.
May I never weary of this endless passage from death to life through which you breathe the life of your love into my soul. Amen.
Pr. David L. Miller
Monday, April 09, 2007
Monday, April 9, 2007
Today’s text
1 John 3:9-10
“Those who have been born of God do not sin because God’s seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God. The children of God and of the devil are revealed in this way: all who do not do what is right are not from God, nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters.”
Prayer
You sow the seed of tomorrow in our hearts, Risen One. Planting your future deep in the soul’s soil, your seed takes root and grows into a vibrant hope that at once comforts and agitates, so that nothing satisfies but your grace, your life, your justice, your mercy … you.
Bearing your future in our bones, we hunger for the healing of time and space and of our own fractured souls. Such is your promise. Nowhere is it more transparent than in the transfiguration of your wounds, blessed Jesus.
You emerge from your tomb bearing the marks of the nails, the scars of your mutilation. The marks of living and dieing are not wiped from your flesh. They remain. So, too, on us.
Your wounds give silent witness to God’s purpose to heal not by removing our scars but by sowing in them the seeds of tomorrow, which flower into your immense beauty even in places of cavernous wounds and sorrow.
Grant that the seed of your resurrected love should take such root in us that sin be choked out so that you may bear in us the harvest of your love and mercy. There is no surer sign of your blessed rising. Amen.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 John 3:9-10
“Those who have been born of God do not sin because God’s seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God. The children of God and of the devil are revealed in this way: all who do not do what is right are not from God, nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters.”
Prayer
You sow the seed of tomorrow in our hearts, Risen One. Planting your future deep in the soul’s soil, your seed takes root and grows into a vibrant hope that at once comforts and agitates, so that nothing satisfies but your grace, your life, your justice, your mercy … you.
Bearing your future in our bones, we hunger for the healing of time and space and of our own fractured souls. Such is your promise. Nowhere is it more transparent than in the transfiguration of your wounds, blessed Jesus.
You emerge from your tomb bearing the marks of the nails, the scars of your mutilation. The marks of living and dieing are not wiped from your flesh. They remain. So, too, on us.
Your wounds give silent witness to God’s purpose to heal not by removing our scars but by sowing in them the seeds of tomorrow, which flower into your immense beauty even in places of cavernous wounds and sorrow.
Grant that the seed of your resurrected love should take such root in us that sin be choked out so that you may bear in us the harvest of your love and mercy. There is no surer sign of your blessed rising. Amen.
Pr. David L. Miller
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