Thursday, October 02, 2008

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Today’s text

Philippians 3:7-11

But what were once my assets I now through Christ Jesus count as losses. Yes, I will go further: because of the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, I count everything else as loss. For him I have accepted the loss of all other things, and look on them all as filth if only I can gain Christ and be given a place in him, with the uprightness I have gained not from the Law, but through faith in Christ, an uprightness from God, based on faith, that I may come to know him and the power of his resurrection, and partake of his sufferings by being molded to the pattern of his death, striving towards the goal of resurrection from the dead.

Reflection

Your world is distraction, my Lord, and your church, your people. It is in the silence of this room that I most know you. In the silence I meet you, O Great and Holy Silence, abiding, waiting, here, always.

It is in this silence that my soul slows and my eyes open. Here I learn to walk slowly, and the pressure to react to a million bombarding stimuli falls away. My soul quiets, and the mind calms.

Then only am I fit for the day, able to be with others, abiding with them in peace, no longer driven by internal frustrations or the demands of others. Then only am I prepared to be human, for I have been with you in the silence where I know your abiding.

Failing this, I lose you--and me, and I am unfit for human contact.

So I come here, counting everything as loss, as garbage, next to what I know here. For I know you here, and that other anxious self dies as I hear you, Great Silence, in the quiet of an abiding love.

May the noise and fury of the days not distract me from you or cause me to lose what you give me here. For you give me your own self. The life of you who are Life grows, emerging from the soil of my soul that I may be the self you are in me.

Rising again and again, until all of me is raised from the dead, and death itself is gone.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Today’s text

Philippians 3:7-11

But what were once my assets I now through Christ Jesus count as losses. Yes, I will go further: because of the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, I count everything else as loss. For him I have accepted the loss of all other things, and look on them all as filth if only I can gain Christ and be given a place in him, with the uprightness I have gained not from the Law, but through faith in Christ, an uprightness from God, based on faith, that I may come to know him and the power of his resurrection, and partake of his sufferings by being molded to the pattern of his death, striving towards the goal of resurrection from the dead.

Reflection

I cannot deny the power of your resurrection. In some miniscule way, I know it. I say this with resistance flowing through my veins. But say it I must, for your power is more present than my resistance and more persistent.

So I speak: I know the power of your rising, holy Jesus, the power that lifted you alive from the death of the tomb, the power of Being Itself, the power that lives in all that lives, the power that never rests until life overwhelms the emptiness and completes all that is.

I come to this place of prayer, and you lift me again from coldness to joy, from sloth to purpose, from dissipation to vitality, from bondage to freedom, from death to life.
Your power pulses in my blood, and in its rush I know the power of your rising … rising also in me.

How may I stay connected to you, the Infinite Source of resurrection, that life may come to my every death? So many days drag me down into the tomb of fear and mere existence, and I want more. I want the power of your rising bubbling and filling, overflowing and freeing this soul that I may be the joy you intend.

Compared with this blessed freedom, little else matters. So what is your answer, Jesus?

“Come. Come to me,” you say. “Each day. Whatever your condition. Come. Surrender all claims to meaning or significance. Give up the self you think you are. It is illusion. You are only that which you become in the nearness of the love that I am. From eternity you are loved and known, and love attends your every step and indwells your soul, however buried it may be. This love is my present nearness.

“Flee to those places where you know love. Love the small details of your days, attending each with care. You will enter deeply the love that abides, the life that attends your every step.

“And you will know the power of my rising, for that power is love and nothing but love--the one power that alone is stronger than the death you fear.”

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Today’s text

Philippians 3:4b-8a

If anyone does claim to rely on them, my claim is better. Circumcised on the eighth day of my life, I was born of the race of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrew parents. In the matter of the Law, I was a Pharisee; as for religious fervor, I was a persecutor of the Church; as for the uprightness embodied in the Law, I was faultless. But what were once my assets I now through Christ Jesus count as losses. Yes, I will go further: because of the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, I count everything else as loss.

Reflection

The words awaken memory, Jesus. You told tales: the pearl of great price, the treasure hidden in a field for which one gives everything to purchase. Such is the value of what you are and bring.

This comes first as intuition and then experience. We hear your words, imagine your face or feel the mysterious something stirred in us by the presence of the love you are. You awaken in us awareness of the Love who is the Father, the One you sought in the quiet hours of your days.

And we know: life is not bread alone. There is bread that feeds forgotten parts of our soul we barely knew were there. There is a Love that plays at the deep heart of things, even in us, beckoning us to come home. It sings for us to come and know, come and rest, come and join the song of Love in time and space. Come and know the Love who dwells hidden within, waiting to be awakened by the Love and who labors in all we touch and see.

Come and feel alive, again or perhaps for the first time. Come and know the joy for which you are intended, for which I made you. So says the Lord, the One I cannot see or imagine, but yet whom I hear beckoning me in every love I have ever known.

Come pray out whatever is in you. Bring it all. It does not matter what. Come and discover the blessed awareness that washes fresh the soul when we find that all else pales before the knowledge of this Christ, this love, this wonder.

Then and only then are we free. In knowing him, the soul is released from bondage to disordered desire and cravings that disturb and burden.

And we know: this Christ, this Love, is the pearl of great price. And it lies hidden within us, never far from us, waiting to be awakened by the slightest invitation of willing souls.

Pr. David L. Miller