Today’s text
1 Peter 1:6-7
This is a great joy to you, even though for a short time yet you must bear all sorts of trials; so that the worth of your faith, more valuable than gold, which is perishable even if it has been tested by fire, may be proved -- to your praise and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Reflection
Trials come with the sunrise. Sleep is blessed respite for those who can, but anxiety and pain flood the conscious mind of the burdened before slumber leaves their eyes.
It is so for many, and certainly for those who fill my mind as quickly as I choke the alarm’s infernal buzzing. Their faces bring no new questions, only old unanswered ones.
Why this suffering? Why do those who already have too much on their plate get second and third helpings? Why do even the young suffer so much illness, depression, abuse and untimely death?
This is so gloomy compared to the joy you speak to my heart, Lord. Your words penetrate and clear away my questions without offering an answer.
“You must bear all sorts of trials.” Yes, we know. You need not tell us. But the hope we hold is “a great joy.”
Now that we most often don’t know. Hope gets hidden in the cloud of trial, and its joy is lost to us. We must struggle for it.
We must remind each other that You are not silent. Love speaks. It is near as the trembling flesh and quavering voice of those who know neither what to do or say to end our trials, but who come near, bearing the weight of their own humanity.
There will come a day when the separation of our mortality and your immortality is gone, when our ceaseless need and your constant love fully find each other at last.
I believe this not because words on a page tell me so, but because every experience of love and loss, trial and struggle reveals an objection and a hope written on my soul. Each trial awakens awareness that we hunger for more, for freedom from all that disfigures life and snatches it away.
This comes from you and is flagged into flame by the resurrection of Jesus. So that on days like today, I look at the present circumstance knowing, “this, too, will find redemption.”
I don’t know how, where or when. But it will, and I will fight to make it happen even if I don’t get to see it until the day you make all things new.
It is your fight, Holy One. Let me fight it with joyous hope, for I want to honor you.
Pr. David L. Miller
http://prayingthemystery.blogspot.com/
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Friday, November 06, 2009
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:3-5
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. It is reserved in heaven for you who are being kept safe by God's power through faith until the salvation which has been prepared is revealed at the final point of time.
Reflection
At the heart of our lives, Holy One, is a yearning for a great love, a love for which we stretch and grasp but which lies always beyond our reach. We hunger to unite as one with that love to fulfill this longing, an ache we did not choose but find within ourselves.
We yearn and stir with anxious agitation, hungry for final satisfaction of soul that can come only as we and that love are one love, abiding in each other so closely that we find that love within ourselves and find ourselves within that love, walls of separation finally gone.
I feel this better than I describe it, My Lord, for I know it within myself. And I know what it is that I describe--salvation, the final wholeness for which our human frame is made.
The word … salvation … has grown so trite and meaningless in our world. It is used for those who have made some kind of decision about who you are, those intended for heaven, those who will escape final punishment. It’s all so disconnected with what is most deeply rooted in us that you seem so intent on saving.
You would save our inmost being, that hunger for love (for you!) that you fashioned in us, a salvation that comes not from some decision of ours but only as we find and see and surrender to the presence of Love within our own being.
There are moments when your love and ours seem one, when your joy and mine are shared, when your struggle and my labor beat in time, singing a single tune. The heart falls quiet, at rest, and I realize I am possessed, indwelt by a Love I did not fashion. I find myself (yes, finally) in a space where your love surrounds and envelops me and all that is.
This is salvation, and the joy it brings need not be forced or even requested. It is just there before any asking can occur.
I suppose something like this is what you have prepared and laid up in heaven for us. But great as this will be, I think I might recognize it. For, I have known it here and now, kneeling and lighting a candle and discovering a joy within that spills from your heart and into my own, sensing that we are not two, but one.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Peter 1:3-5
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. It is reserved in heaven for you who are being kept safe by God's power through faith until the salvation which has been prepared is revealed at the final point of time.
Reflection
At the heart of our lives, Holy One, is a yearning for a great love, a love for which we stretch and grasp but which lies always beyond our reach. We hunger to unite as one with that love to fulfill this longing, an ache we did not choose but find within ourselves.
We yearn and stir with anxious agitation, hungry for final satisfaction of soul that can come only as we and that love are one love, abiding in each other so closely that we find that love within ourselves and find ourselves within that love, walls of separation finally gone.
I feel this better than I describe it, My Lord, for I know it within myself. And I know what it is that I describe--salvation, the final wholeness for which our human frame is made.
The word … salvation … has grown so trite and meaningless in our world. It is used for those who have made some kind of decision about who you are, those intended for heaven, those who will escape final punishment. It’s all so disconnected with what is most deeply rooted in us that you seem so intent on saving.
You would save our inmost being, that hunger for love (for you!) that you fashioned in us, a salvation that comes not from some decision of ours but only as we find and see and surrender to the presence of Love within our own being.
There are moments when your love and ours seem one, when your joy and mine are shared, when your struggle and my labor beat in time, singing a single tune. The heart falls quiet, at rest, and I realize I am possessed, indwelt by a Love I did not fashion. I find myself (yes, finally) in a space where your love surrounds and envelops me and all that is.
This is salvation, and the joy it brings need not be forced or even requested. It is just there before any asking can occur.
I suppose something like this is what you have prepared and laid up in heaven for us. But great as this will be, I think I might recognize it. For, I have known it here and now, kneeling and lighting a candle and discovering a joy within that spills from your heart and into my own, sensing that we are not two, but one.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:3-5
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. It is reserved in heaven for you who are being kept safe by God's power through faith until the salvation which has been prepared is revealed at the final point of time.
Reflection
How might I be different if I consistently believed that I am “kept safe” by your power? My mind would entertain far fewer anxious thoughts. My anxious heart would find rest even when threat is near, for you, Holy One, are here, always holding us.
The things that happen to all human beings can and will happen to me. I expect no special protection from the pains of mortality and finitude. The last day provides ample evidence that those nearest me possess no special exemption.
For one, insidious decline brings greater confinement. She must be tied down lest she hurt herself, while those who love her best look on, helpless to do anything for the person who most taught them how to be human.
For others, financial and housing set-backs reveal that they have less influence over what happens to them and their families than they want, need or imagined they had. The weakness of the flesh is their daily bread.
Undeniable threat and inevitable loss loom near. And for some, the only assurance is greater grief.
Safety is not the condition for any of those who faces appear in my morning mind.
But even these, you tell me, are kept safe in your power. Even now, even these rest in the hand of grace from which they will not be snatched. Even in unsafest condition, the power and grace you are can and will be known.
Trust, you say. Have faith. Tears are laced with grace. Threat has its moment. Sorrow endures an evening, but grace will have its say, and its final day holds no setting of the sun. It will not fade once begun.
For I am. And I am love unbounded. Morning will come … and stay. Even in grief, grace will mark your cheeks, and the hope held in your heart will hold you.
As do I.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Peter 1:3-5
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. It is reserved in heaven for you who are being kept safe by God's power through faith until the salvation which has been prepared is revealed at the final point of time.
Reflection
How might I be different if I consistently believed that I am “kept safe” by your power? My mind would entertain far fewer anxious thoughts. My anxious heart would find rest even when threat is near, for you, Holy One, are here, always holding us.
The things that happen to all human beings can and will happen to me. I expect no special protection from the pains of mortality and finitude. The last day provides ample evidence that those nearest me possess no special exemption.
For one, insidious decline brings greater confinement. She must be tied down lest she hurt herself, while those who love her best look on, helpless to do anything for the person who most taught them how to be human.
For others, financial and housing set-backs reveal that they have less influence over what happens to them and their families than they want, need or imagined they had. The weakness of the flesh is their daily bread.
Undeniable threat and inevitable loss loom near. And for some, the only assurance is greater grief.
Safety is not the condition for any of those who faces appear in my morning mind.
But even these, you tell me, are kept safe in your power. Even now, even these rest in the hand of grace from which they will not be snatched. Even in unsafest condition, the power and grace you are can and will be known.
Trust, you say. Have faith. Tears are laced with grace. Threat has its moment. Sorrow endures an evening, but grace will have its say, and its final day holds no setting of the sun. It will not fade once begun.
For I am. And I am love unbounded. Morning will come … and stay. Even in grief, grace will mark your cheeks, and the hope held in your heart will hold you.
As do I.
Pr. David L. Miller
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