Friday, April 11, 2008

Today’s text

John 10:7-10

Jesus spoke to them again: In all truth I tell you, I am the gate of the sheepfold. All who have come before me are thieves and bandits, but the sheep took no notice of them. I am the gate. Anyone who enters through me will be safe: such a one will go in and out and will find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come so that they may have life and have it to the full.

Prayer

I rise again, my Friend. I have rested secure in your heart. Thank you.

Yesterday brought more joy than expected. Far more. Today will bring tears of remembrance and sober awareness of our human state. Again we will find that the power of our love (so mighty) cannot prevent tragedy and the passing of golden days we wanted never to end.

I pass through you into this day. I acknowledge your nearness as I walk through the gate of early morning into a world less calm and embracing than this quiet cell where I raise my heart to you.

I wish I could say I passed into every day this way. I don’t. But today I do, hearing you say that, no matter what befalls, I walk into fields of promise where I will find nurture. Pasture, you call it.

And as you do a thousand images of the rolling hills of Northwest Illinois come into view. And I am there on the land that made me much of what I am. Thank you for this too.

But it is not the land for which I most thank you or the gifts it continues to give me. I most thank you for your abiding. I thank you that I may pass into every new day through you, hearing your voice telling me that it is for abundance you come.

And it is the abundance of your divine heart that I will find on all the fields of my life, as I enter each day through you.

Pr. David L. Miller