Thursday, October 22, 2009

October 22, 2009

Reflection

The color of paradise

The trees grow bright with praise, lit from within by colors no hand can produce, except yours, Loving Mystery.

Fall comes demanding poetry to capture the colors. But our flat souls lie content with mere prose, words that tear and strain to describe the beauty our eyes caress--and this feeling that arises from a place we cannot name, except that it is in us.

Awaking, I open the door and smell the earth, moist and fresh. My heart rises for reasons it refuses to tell me, but I know: all is well and will be so.

This lightness of being … and hope is the greatest I have known in days, and it comes at the end of things.

Summer is gone. Autumn comes reminding me again that all things end. The warm sun wanes, and winter (too soon to come) must be endured … again, until I am no more.

But the colors speak, an impressionist’s palette of burnished red and gold constantly remixed, shimmering fire and translucent gold, falling by the millions in piles school children shuffle through on their way to more mundane concerns.

Gold leaf covers the back patio inches deep awakening a quiet joy I can neither bid nor stop. Its source is as mysterious as the hand who paints the earth on this October morning.

Too soon it will all be gone. The colors will fade to brown and be swept into gutters. Cold rains will turn the decaying mass to thick dark sludge as we enter winter’s trudge.

But today I have seen the brilliance, the colors lit from within by the uncreated light of the One who is Being itself. I have seen, and having seen I cannot be the same.

Eternity appeared on Janes Avenue, and I was there. And more: the Spirit who paints cool fall days gave me eyes to see the fire that burns in the Heart of Love for whom I most hunger.

That Mystery paints the day with brilliance and wonder, so that with eyes of the heart, we may see the beauty of the One who treasures and holds us, who decorates fall days with the light of eternity that we may know we are made for more than just trudging through our days.

We are made to know more love, more beauty, more wonder than we can imagine. We are made for the More that shines through autumn days and in the beauty of our brother Jesus, who is lit from within by the Love that will not let us fall into the gutter and be swept away.

Some say the life of faith is about avoiding sin and being righteous … that this most glorifies God. But the glory of fall days suggests otherwise.

Maybe our life is about seeing and knowing the More that shines through every beauty, every love, every caring word--and every fresh, moist Autumn morning that awakens the awareness that all is, indeed, well.

And it is, for we rest in the hands of the Maker of the Morning, who decorates the day with the color of paradise.

And in seeing this, our little lives are colored with the beauty we see, alight with a glory beyond all time.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Today's text

1 Peter 1:1-2

Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into a heritage that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away.’s

Reflection

Only you are never spoilt or fade away. We rise and fall. We draw breath and grow quiet. The earth changes, erodes, erupts and reshapes itself in the constant movement of nature, unresting, unceasing, day to day, age to age.

Eons pass. The new that comes allows faint memory of the joys and sorrows of the millions who have gone before, of the earth they knew.

It is the nature of things, and we find ourselves thrown into it, taking our place in the chain of ever-changing generations, rising up with promise only to fade away.

This should be a council of despair to my soul. But it is not, for eternity is known amid the temporal and dying, the unchanging is felt in and through all that changes. You who are n ever spoilt or soiled, you who never fade away are tasted amid all that fails and falls.

Life is known by those for whom death is certain. Of this, I am certain, eve now.

For even now I know life, not as biological fact but as the eternal stirring of your grace and beauty in the tears of hope that are my morning praise to you.

Even here, even now, that which does not fade or fail, spoil or decay dwells in my inner experience of joy and hope … and the love that I know you to be, through and through.

What I taste is but a taste. Yet, it is real, and it is now. And my prayer to know the joyous consolation of your life within my mind and heart finds its answer.

So blessed are you, for you do not let death have its way in human souls. You give life and then life eternal to dead, here and now, and a hungry assurance that what I taste will be forever.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Today’s text

1 Peter 1:1-2


Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead

Reflection

It is at the point of hope that we are most vulnerable, Holy One.

The hope born in us is simple, yet all eternity will not be enough to satisfy it. We hope to know you, and you are inexhaustible.

You are the inexhaustible fountain of life from which all that lives flows. You are the fount of mercy who has mercy even on that which does not yet exist.

How can one have mercy on the nonexistent? I don’t know, but you do.

You look upon the infinite possibilities of life and color and beauty within yourself, and in mercy you make them come to life. Such is the source of my own being, from within you who are Being.

You had mercy on me before I existed. Seeing the possibility of my life, your mercy willed that I should be and know the joy and mystery of just being alive--and of knowing that I had nothing to be bringing myself to be. All is gift.

The inexhaustible flow of your life cannot be dammed or held captive by the cold clutch of death. You bring my brother, Jesus, again to life.

Seeing this, the soul leaps and knows that hope is no illusion. It finds its Source in the Source of Inexhaustible Mercy, in you.

Tasting the sweet surprise of being alive, we sample your mercy. We know you. Hearing the ever-fresh news of Jesus resurrection, we feel hope for all eternity flicker to life in our souls. We know you.

This is our living hope: to know you completely, with a knowledge felt in one’s uttermost depths. I know you as the Inexhaustible Fountain of the life that is in me. I know you as the Infinite Mercy who gives me life again and again that my soul may not die.

The evil one attacks at exactly this spot, seeking to erode the hope of knowing you today.

Surely, today is not special, he taunts. Surely, the pettiness of routine, the crush of deadlines and the challenge of difficult circumstances will push aside all else. Surely, my only real hope is just getting through the thicket of daily detail and making to evening.

But a living hope seeks you in every moment.

So today, I claim again the sweet surprise of being alive with a life I did not make. Today, I claim again the presence of your risen life in my heart and the lives of so many others.

Today, I feel once more that you, Holy Mystery, are the Inexhaustible Fountain of living Mercy that will not let me die.

Today, hope will live in me because you live.

Pr. David L. Miller