Friday, July 06, 2007

Friday, July 6, 2007

Today’s text

3 John 1: 3-4

“I was overjoyed when some of the friends arrived and testified to your faithfulness to the truth, namely, how you walk in the truth. I have no greater joy than this, to hear that my children are walking in the truth.”

Prayer

What is it to walk in the truth if not to walk in you, Gracious One? What can it be, if not to express your beauty, to share in your giving, to live--in some small or great way--the love whom you are?

This is life. This is living. All else misses the point and fails to satisfy the soul’s deep hunger. You fulfill our hunger as we share what you give in the daily round of our life, with the soul in the bed, the heart who hungers for acknowledgement, the friend or family member who doubts her own goodness as your child, the vacant eyes who can no longer hope for wholeness or joy.

We find joy as we receive and share your blessing. You complete our joy as we know and celebrate the lives of those near or even complete strangers who incarnate your life in their living. But if they bear your life, they are not strangers at all, are they?

Let us walk in the truth this day that we may honor you and bring your joy to those who long for your beauty. Amen.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Tuesday, July 3, 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


How good it is, how pleasant when we live together in harmony. It fills the soul with peace and quiet joy.

And it fulfills your purpose, Blessed Triune One. Our harmony reveals the loving unity of your inner life. The wonder of unity bears the final future into the present that we may know the completion of life in your kingdom. We taste eternal life, and know the goodness to which we move.

Harmony among my sisters and brothers of the faith, of the flesh, of friendship comforts and completes my heart, Dear Friend. Seeing human souls live a single moment in harmony and care-full unity can move me to tears. I know why.

Tears come at the appearance of souls finding a home where they might rest, revealing my own hunger and promising its fulfillment. More than a promise, such a sight allows me to rest, knowing my home is ever in you, in the love you are, the love you incarnate in frail human relationships.

May it happen again today. And may I see it. Amen.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, July 02, 2007

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