Thursday, September 13, 2007

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 14:33

“So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.”

Prayer

This should be a somber song, Jesus, but I hear your words and smile, and I wonder: Do you, too, wear a wry grin as you speak them? You should.

I am possessed by desires and needs, wants and compulsions all of which leave me in anxious bondage. I wake in the wee hours wondering: how will I get my work done? How can I redeem my clumsy failures of speech and leadership? Why did say that” How could I forget this? Is there anything in me worth sharing?

I cannot keep this melancholy soul afloat when night demons cackle. They stir a restless sea of anxiety over status and ego, affirmation and failure, revealing again that I am possessed by what some lost part of me imagines is required to justify this life.

And you come along, Jesus, telling me to give it all up. Little wonder that your words make me smile. You invite me to drop what is in my hands that I may embrace you, and find, finally, the day break of love eternal before which my melancholy flies and night demons flee.

May this smile give you praise all the day long.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 14:28-30

“For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, “This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.”

Prayer

You trick us, Jesus, and your words are not fair. How can we count the cost of following you? We cannot read the future. Our eyes are too weak to penetrate time. The cost of serving you can never be counted in advance.

We have no advance warning system to alert us how breathtakingly difficult life can become. We possess no cup capable of measuring our sweat or tears in advance. We do not know what scenes we will be forced to watch or what suffering our mortal bodies will bear before we are done. Already I carry a host of images that break my heart, and I know there are more to come. Just what? Who can know?

Perhaps that is blessing. If we knew … could we live … now?

But I fear my questions miss the mark. It doesn’t seem to matter to you how hard or how much struggle will test our strength. For, there is no bait and switch with you, Jesus. You ask for all, for my life, from the beginning, so does it matter what is to come? Either I enter the struggle to give all--whatever comes--or I refuse it.

I entered that struggle long ago. That foundation was laid by loving souls who moved me to love you. Now, in the midst of life, I don’t know if I am a capable of finishing what they started decades past. I understand the weakness of human resolve all too well--and trust it thoroughly, especially my own.

I know neither the future nor my own strength, Jesus. But I do know you. And it is you, not me, who completes the tower. So take my fear and weakness, my uncertainty and questions, and melt them all in the heat of your love. That will be enough for me.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 14:27

“Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

Prayer

What is this cross I am to carry, Jesus? Do I know; will I ever? And why do I feel care slipping from my soul?

I have never believed that you call us to soul killing labor or lonely isolation that drains us of the spark of joy. Surely, struggle marks our life in you, since your ways are not ours. And it takes a lifetime of struggle to know them; even then we know next to nothing.

But I have long thought that even the crosses we carry, in their own way, stir faith, hope and love in us--and joy, that joy in giving and serving we know in moments when we are truly alive and vibrant. Such life is your desire for us.

I hunger for this buoyancy because joy slips through my fingers and my heart languors. But I wonder: is this yearning for elusive joy an avoidance of the labor to which you call me? Or is it a holy whisper telling me I am going the wrong way--that the cross that drains care from my soul is not mine to bear? I just don’t know.

All I know is that I need you, your presence, your nearness, your tenderness, your help my brother. Without you, I can carry nothing, certainly not the cross of divine love for the world that you bore in and out of troubled days.

Grant us clear vision of how we may best follow you, Jesus. And let our hearts drink the joy of your nearness, especially when we lose our way and lonely questions close upon us.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, September 10, 2007

Monday, September 10, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 14:25-27

Now large crowds were traveling with [Jesus]; and he turned and said to them, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

Prayer

You certainly know how to thin out a crowd, Jesus. Who can listen to this and want you? Many must have withdrawn from your side. Others, too enthralled with you to leave, surely scratched their skulls raw wondering if you meant it, and if so, how?

Is this a case of pedagogical exaggeration? I guess. But this takes the sting away too easily, glibly passing over the oddness I have always felt about you.

Loving you makes us odd, or at least it always has such effect on me. I hold fast the outrageous claim that you live, and live incarnate in the lives of all who love. I confess you as Lord of my and all life, believing that our lives do not belong to us but are to be lived faithfully in your service.

And I do this in a culture that celebrates the “cult of me,” worshiping king ego, sacrificing soul, substance even children to the fashionable whim of the moment with little thought of what endures. So much of it leaves me cold, a chill revealing the very good news that my heart belongs to a world that makes me strange in this one that so frequently lacks loving reverence for life.

So permit me to odd again, Jesus. For, I don’t find your words strange at all; arresting certainly, but beneath their surface flows the current of freedom carrying us to love what is Love and to find our home in what endures.

Fill our senses with the world of grace you bring, Jesus, that we may be the full expression your love intends in us. Freed and unhindered by the judgments of others, we will focus solely on what love and grace require. Strange it is, that any should find this odd.

Pr. David L. Miller