Today's text
Luke 6:20-21
"Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled."
Prayer
I am filled, and I hunger. My hunger is not that of the myriad whose cries rend your divine heart as they call to you for food and justice. They suffer and die for want of the grace of simple human kindness.
Needs of food and shelter are more than well cared for in my case, and I thank you for the goodness of your earth. But I have another need, connected, I believe, with the need of the multitude for tender mercies.
I long to have my heart filled with you. You, Gracious, Surprising Mystery have opened my heart to “get it,” to know a fullness of soul and love not made by human hands.
You have filled me, and filled, I long for more of you, who are the Infinite More. Nothing else satisfies my heart so that I fall quiet and calm, generous and whole-hearted, even as you are whole hearted, loving good and evil alike.
You invite, indeed, you coax me to know the More you are. You draw this stubborn and timid heart into whole-hearted loving surrender to a world of need, to the soul cries of the many, to the next human heart waiting at the door.
“Look there,” you say. “Surrender to this, and you will be filled. Come and know me.”
Pr. David L. Miller
http://prayingthemystery.blogspot.com/
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Friday, November 02, 2007
Thursday, November 01, 2007
November 1, 2007 All Saints Day
Today's text
Luke 6:20-21
"Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kigdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled."
Reflection
It happened again, Sunday. The front wall of the sanctuary disappeared. Standing behind the table, the pastor raised her hands lifting the bread, then the cup. Suddenly, the bricks behind her were not there anymore, obscuring my vision of eternity. Instead, I saw those who have gone before and now enjoy clear vision of the One whose name is mercy, the blessed God whom I glimpse but in bits and snatches.
I saw them, and their eyes, too, rose as the pastor lifted the holy gifts of God’s constant giving. A great crowd with smiling eyes and moist cheeks, they looked back at us, the living congregation among whom I stood.
We were not two, but one congregation: Here and there, in time and eternity, living and … well, living. One part shining in glory, the other struggling and confused, yet all sharing “mystic sweet communion” with the One we receive at the Lord’s Table.
I saw Grandma Lavina and my beloved father, as gentle an s ever. I saw strangers and faces I have known in the death camps of Sudan and Somalia, the deserts of Namibia and the hovels of Nicaragua to those I knew and loved on the sun-baked plains of Nebraska, Magdalena and Eilert and all the rest, all of us gathered around the table, receiving God’s inexhaustible, eternally abundant life.
My vision, like the holy table, is not an illusion. It is reality. It is now. And it is the future to which the risen Christ is drawing all things, you and me and the beloved for whom our hearts long.
We gather around God’s eternal table of grace, those in time and eternity, those here and those who gaze upon the beauty of God.
We stand together, with all the hosts of heaven, with saints of every time and place, with all the missing faces for whom we light our candles. With them, we hold out empty hands and taste eternity, even now, even here, at this table.
The body and blood of the One who is life is here for us all.
Pr. David L. Miller
Luke 6:20-21
"Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kigdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled."
Reflection
It happened again, Sunday. The front wall of the sanctuary disappeared. Standing behind the table, the pastor raised her hands lifting the bread, then the cup. Suddenly, the bricks behind her were not there anymore, obscuring my vision of eternity. Instead, I saw those who have gone before and now enjoy clear vision of the One whose name is mercy, the blessed God whom I glimpse but in bits and snatches.
I saw them, and their eyes, too, rose as the pastor lifted the holy gifts of God’s constant giving. A great crowd with smiling eyes and moist cheeks, they looked back at us, the living congregation among whom I stood.
We were not two, but one congregation: Here and there, in time and eternity, living and … well, living. One part shining in glory, the other struggling and confused, yet all sharing “mystic sweet communion” with the One we receive at the Lord’s Table.
I saw Grandma Lavina and my beloved father, as gentle an s ever. I saw strangers and faces I have known in the death camps of Sudan and Somalia, the deserts of Namibia and the hovels of Nicaragua to those I knew and loved on the sun-baked plains of Nebraska, Magdalena and Eilert and all the rest, all of us gathered around the table, receiving God’s inexhaustible, eternally abundant life.
My vision, like the holy table, is not an illusion. It is reality. It is now. And it is the future to which the risen Christ is drawing all things, you and me and the beloved for whom our hearts long.
We gather around God’s eternal table of grace, those in time and eternity, those here and those who gaze upon the beauty of God.
We stand together, with all the hosts of heaven, with saints of every time and place, with all the missing faces for whom we light our candles. With them, we hold out empty hands and taste eternity, even now, even here, at this table.
The body and blood of the One who is life is here for us all.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Today’s text
John 8:31-36
To the Jews who believed in him Jesus said, “If you make my word your home you will indeed be my disciples; you will come to know the truth and the truth will set you free.” They answered, “We are descended from Abraham and we have never been the slaves of anyone; what do you mean ‘You will be set free?’” Jesus replied: “In all truth I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave. Now a slave has no permanent standing in the household, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will indeed be free.”
Prayer
Your freedom is like no other, Dear Friend. Abiding, resting, dwelling in the heart of your love for me, the soul opens up in a generosity of spirit known no where else.
The heart becomes a wide open space with room for many visitors and grace for all who come, a comfortable room where the souls of others may take their rest, a broad oak giving a circle of shade where the heat of rush and the enslavement of ‘have-tos’ and ‘must-dos’ filters away in the breeze.
Resting in the Eternal Love, the divine Word whom you are, the soul comes to such rest and is filled with the awareness that “I belong.” Indeed, for the heart arrives home. Why do we ever leave this space? Why do we imagine there is need for us to labor and earn some kind of self-justifying meaning, when being in your love is the fulfillment of the heart and of all that is?
This is the freedom you give, and which you allow me to enter even as I write these few words. The words themselves bear me into you, my home, where sin is replaced by sonship, enslavement by freedom, and the heart wants only to know and be the love that makes free.
Pr. David L. Miller
John 8:31-36
To the Jews who believed in him Jesus said, “If you make my word your home you will indeed be my disciples; you will come to know the truth and the truth will set you free.” They answered, “We are descended from Abraham and we have never been the slaves of anyone; what do you mean ‘You will be set free?’” Jesus replied: “In all truth I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave. Now a slave has no permanent standing in the household, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will indeed be free.”
Prayer
Your freedom is like no other, Dear Friend. Abiding, resting, dwelling in the heart of your love for me, the soul opens up in a generosity of spirit known no where else.
The heart becomes a wide open space with room for many visitors and grace for all who come, a comfortable room where the souls of others may take their rest, a broad oak giving a circle of shade where the heat of rush and the enslavement of ‘have-tos’ and ‘must-dos’ filters away in the breeze.
Resting in the Eternal Love, the divine Word whom you are, the soul comes to such rest and is filled with the awareness that “I belong.” Indeed, for the heart arrives home. Why do we ever leave this space? Why do we imagine there is need for us to labor and earn some kind of self-justifying meaning, when being in your love is the fulfillment of the heart and of all that is?
This is the freedom you give, and which you allow me to enter even as I write these few words. The words themselves bear me into you, my home, where sin is replaced by sonship, enslavement by freedom, and the heart wants only to know and be the love that makes free.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Today’s text
John 8:31-24
To the Jews who believed in him Jesus said, “If you make my word your home you will indeed be my disciples; you will come to know the truth and the truth will set you free.” They answered, “We are descended from Abraham and we have never been the slaves of anyone; what do you mean ‘You will be set free?”
Prayer
In your word, your substance, the delight of your giving, we know you, Dearest Friend. We know you and are free. And it is you I want to know beyond all else. If I do not know you, I lack the one needful thing, the secret substance that transforms all other knowledge and learning into praise and joy.
Without you my soul languishes in sorrows of my own making. But resting in you, in the words of beauty and belovedness that you constantly whisper in my soul (if I would only stop and hear), all is well, no matter what is, no matter the outward circumstance.
For I dwell in you, this geography of grace, an open space where light floods the soul and life’s duties become blessed play in meadows of freedom, where the sheer delight of being alive lifts the heart beyond all drudgery.
I am at home in you, walking in the atmosphere of divine delight, in the joy you take in loving and giving your own heart to me. This is freedom, anything less is the drudgery of labor east of Eden. So I give you thanks, and I pray let me not wander this day from this holy space where I know you.
Pr. David L. Miller
John 8:31-24
To the Jews who believed in him Jesus said, “If you make my word your home you will indeed be my disciples; you will come to know the truth and the truth will set you free.” They answered, “We are descended from Abraham and we have never been the slaves of anyone; what do you mean ‘You will be set free?”
Prayer
In your word, your substance, the delight of your giving, we know you, Dearest Friend. We know you and are free. And it is you I want to know beyond all else. If I do not know you, I lack the one needful thing, the secret substance that transforms all other knowledge and learning into praise and joy.
Without you my soul languishes in sorrows of my own making. But resting in you, in the words of beauty and belovedness that you constantly whisper in my soul (if I would only stop and hear), all is well, no matter what is, no matter the outward circumstance.
For I dwell in you, this geography of grace, an open space where light floods the soul and life’s duties become blessed play in meadows of freedom, where the sheer delight of being alive lifts the heart beyond all drudgery.
I am at home in you, walking in the atmosphere of divine delight, in the joy you take in loving and giving your own heart to me. This is freedom, anything less is the drudgery of labor east of Eden. So I give you thanks, and I pray let me not wander this day from this holy space where I know you.
Pr. David L. Miller
Monday, October 29, 2007
Monday, October 29, 2007
Today’s text
John 8:31-24
To the Jews who believed in him Jesus said, “If you make my word your home you will indeed be my disciples; you will come to know the truth and the truth will set you free.” They answered, “We are descended from Abraham and we have never been the slaves of anyone; what do you mean ‘You will be set free?”
Prayer
This is not my question, Holy One. I know what it is to be enslaved to fears and questions for which I have no answers. I know the shame that I can no more slip than I can shed my own skin. But I also know you, and you are freedom.
I do not know how you unloose my soul that I enter sweet liberty. But it happens. My soul enters a broad and open space when I look at your face and see eternal compassion looking wordlessly upon me. It happens as I listen to all you say and are, Jesus. It happens when I sing the mystery of your love for me.
“Enter my freedom, enter my freedom,” you say. But how can I do that? My soul is tied to earth, held fast by anxieties and internal conflicts that have haunted me since the earliest days of my memory.
But not when I am with you. I sit with you, see your face and hear your words. I come near and see myself walking with you, and my fears fade into illusion. Anxiety and shame flee the scene and the landscape of soul opens into green fields of play, where joy and release chase off all constriction of thought, emotion and imagination.
Only in awareness of your nearness do I enter freedom. Only there do I discover the Spirit of freedom that you bear percolates also in my soul, awaiting its release that I may be, finally, human, that self that appears only in the atmosphere of your presence.
So let me dwell near your heart this day that I may see your face, hear your voice, and walk in the open fields of blessed liberty.
Pr. David L. Miller
John 8:31-24
To the Jews who believed in him Jesus said, “If you make my word your home you will indeed be my disciples; you will come to know the truth and the truth will set you free.” They answered, “We are descended from Abraham and we have never been the slaves of anyone; what do you mean ‘You will be set free?”
Prayer
This is not my question, Holy One. I know what it is to be enslaved to fears and questions for which I have no answers. I know the shame that I can no more slip than I can shed my own skin. But I also know you, and you are freedom.
I do not know how you unloose my soul that I enter sweet liberty. But it happens. My soul enters a broad and open space when I look at your face and see eternal compassion looking wordlessly upon me. It happens as I listen to all you say and are, Jesus. It happens when I sing the mystery of your love for me.
“Enter my freedom, enter my freedom,” you say. But how can I do that? My soul is tied to earth, held fast by anxieties and internal conflicts that have haunted me since the earliest days of my memory.
But not when I am with you. I sit with you, see your face and hear your words. I come near and see myself walking with you, and my fears fade into illusion. Anxiety and shame flee the scene and the landscape of soul opens into green fields of play, where joy and release chase off all constriction of thought, emotion and imagination.
Only in awareness of your nearness do I enter freedom. Only there do I discover the Spirit of freedom that you bear percolates also in my soul, awaiting its release that I may be, finally, human, that self that appears only in the atmosphere of your presence.
So let me dwell near your heart this day that I may see your face, hear your voice, and walk in the open fields of blessed liberty.
Pr. David L. Miller
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