Friday, November 27, 2009
Today’s text
1 Thessalonians 3:12-13
May the Lord increase and enrich your love for each other and for all, so that it matches ours for you. And may he so confirm your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless in the sight of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.
Reflection
The only holiness we have is the love that you wring from our stingy souls. And wring is the correct word, as we cling with death grip to our puny self-respect and the carefully tended masks that hide the need we fear to name.
I grow more insular each year, more drawn into myself, protecting my thoughts and anxieties, yet continually more needing the simplicity of connection, accepting friendships where all that matters is transparent humanity.
I long for moments of discovery when the beauty of a human heart shines through the bruises and wounds apathetic life inflicts on our fragile souls. And fragile, they are, easily lost to apathy or anger, to old wounds and suspicious bitterness born of too little love and too much living.
We hunger for the sacrament of safe space, for space in which false faces fade and masks are put away, and we risk needing and being needed. We need to become children again, unashamed of our want.
It is then that joy surprises us as we taste the happy communion for which you made us Holy One, a joy in which the love we know and share streams from the depth of eternity.
Most times we arrive at this grace only after denials of our needs are stripped away, when failed attempts to fill the hole in our hearts have proved futile, when you reveal (again) to our recalcitrance that we cannot be human except through surrender to need and love.
In that surrender we know you; even those who say they don’t believe know you, though they do not know how to name you.
But then neither do I. Who can name you?
For you are the Love that has left this wound, this need for Love in our hearts, and you are the Love that alone can heal us. Every love is a sacrament of the Love you are.
And loving is our only holiness, a share in the mystery of your life.
So let it be.
Pr. David L. Miller
http://prayingthemystery.blogspot.com/
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Friday, November 27, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Today’s text
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Look, the days are coming, Yahweh declares, when I shall fulfill the promise of happiness I made to the House of Israel and the House of Judah: In those days and at that time, I shall make an upright Branch grow for David, who will do what is just and upright in the country. In those days Judah will triumph and Israel live in safety. And this is the name the city will be called: Yahweh-is-our-Saving-Justice."
Reflection
May the day come soon.
I understand why those who first heard Jeremiah’s words hungered for victory and safety. They lived under the heel of bitter oppression. Past ravages by sworn enemies put their fears on hair-trigger alert. It was a terrible way to live, always watching, anxiously anticipating the worst.
They wanted triumph, even revenge on the oppressor. I understand the urge, even as I reject it because it only creates more of the same. The ugly cycle of oppression, struggle, restoration and renewed oppression constantly repeats itself in human history and in our own personal histories.
The struggle draws the best and worst from our souls. The beauty of those who sacrifice for the liberation of others moves tears at the human capacity to give. But the tendency of the liberated to oppress once they have power moves astonishment at our forgetful idiocy: “How quickly we forget. Will we ever learn?”
So the prophet’s words do not move hunger for triumph over enemies far or near, Holy One. There is no blood lust in my soul these days, only sad longing for the day you promise, a day when you will be our saving justice.
So come and save us from ourselves. Save us from our angers, our myopic self-interest, our need to be right, our denunciations of others, our bitterness over slights and rejections and especially our failure to feel in our bones that that all of life, all of humanity, is one intricately connected family.
Transform our hearts so that we t know that the Love you are is life’s only justice, intended for all. May our hearts hunger for your justice and become your salvation, ending the ugly cycle that runs through all history and the depth of our hearts.
Save us from ourselves that we may become as you are.
Pr. David L. Miller
Today’s text
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Look, the days are coming, Yahweh declares, when I shall fulfill the promise of happiness I made to the House of Israel and the House of Judah: In those days and at that time, I shall make an upright Branch grow for David, who will do what is just and upright in the country. In those days Judah will triumph and Israel live in safety. And this is the name the city will be called: Yahweh-is-our-Saving-Justice."
Reflection
May the day come soon.
I understand why those who first heard Jeremiah’s words hungered for victory and safety. They lived under the heel of bitter oppression. Past ravages by sworn enemies put their fears on hair-trigger alert. It was a terrible way to live, always watching, anxiously anticipating the worst.
They wanted triumph, even revenge on the oppressor. I understand the urge, even as I reject it because it only creates more of the same. The ugly cycle of oppression, struggle, restoration and renewed oppression constantly repeats itself in human history and in our own personal histories.
The struggle draws the best and worst from our souls. The beauty of those who sacrifice for the liberation of others moves tears at the human capacity to give. But the tendency of the liberated to oppress once they have power moves astonishment at our forgetful idiocy: “How quickly we forget. Will we ever learn?”
So the prophet’s words do not move hunger for triumph over enemies far or near, Holy One. There is no blood lust in my soul these days, only sad longing for the day you promise, a day when you will be our saving justice.
So come and save us from ourselves. Save us from our angers, our myopic self-interest, our need to be right, our denunciations of others, our bitterness over slights and rejections and especially our failure to feel in our bones that that all of life, all of humanity, is one intricately connected family.
Transform our hearts so that we t know that the Love you are is life’s only justice, intended for all. May our hearts hunger for your justice and become your salvation, ending the ugly cycle that runs through all history and the depth of our hearts.
Save us from ourselves that we may become as you are.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Today’s text
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Look, the days are coming, Yahweh declares, when I shall fulfill the promise of happiness I made to the House of Israel and the House of Judah: In those days and at that time, I shall make an upright Branch grow for David, who will do what is just and upright in the country. In those days Judah will triumph and Israel live in safety. And this is the name the city will be called: Yahweh-is-our-Saving-Justice."
Reflection
Come, Lord Jesus. You are the righteous branch who grows from King David’s line. You are the fulfillment of promise and not of God’s promise alone. You fulfill the longing prophetic words stir in our hearts long centuries after their origin.
And we have such longing. We hunger to see, hear and be blessed by one who wills what you will, Loving Mystery, who loves what you love, who is pure in heart, fully given to your eternal desire.
We long to know Jesus, our brother who is truly your child, given solely to you. Seeing him, we know you and the life and the happiness for which we are intended.
So turn my heart from the distractions in which I delight. Turn my eyes to Jesus that I may see a life always guided by your eternal desire.
Let me see in him the beauty for which I hunger, for it is only in seeing and knowing that beauty also within myself that happiness comes, with truest humanity and the peaceful assurance that, finally, I have arrived home.
Pr. David L. Miller
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Look, the days are coming, Yahweh declares, when I shall fulfill the promise of happiness I made to the House of Israel and the House of Judah: In those days and at that time, I shall make an upright Branch grow for David, who will do what is just and upright in the country. In those days Judah will triumph and Israel live in safety. And this is the name the city will be called: Yahweh-is-our-Saving-Justice."
Reflection
Come, Lord Jesus. You are the righteous branch who grows from King David’s line. You are the fulfillment of promise and not of God’s promise alone. You fulfill the longing prophetic words stir in our hearts long centuries after their origin.
And we have such longing. We hunger to see, hear and be blessed by one who wills what you will, Loving Mystery, who loves what you love, who is pure in heart, fully given to your eternal desire.
We long to know Jesus, our brother who is truly your child, given solely to you. Seeing him, we know you and the life and the happiness for which we are intended.
So turn my heart from the distractions in which I delight. Turn my eyes to Jesus that I may see a life always guided by your eternal desire.
Let me see in him the beauty for which I hunger, for it is only in seeing and knowing that beauty also within myself that happiness comes, with truest humanity and the peaceful assurance that, finally, I have arrived home.
Pr. David L. Miller
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