Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Today’s text

Colossians 1:3-4

We give thanks for you to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, continually in our prayers, ever since we heard about your faith in Christ Jesus and the love that you show towards all God's holy people because of the hope which is stored up for you in heaven.

Reflection

Love through hope: that is the sequence, and it stirs both hope and skepticism in me this morning.

You call us to yourself, Holy One, promising a love that outstrips every other we know or seek. Falling into the Love you are, our souls fly open, no longer grasping at life but relishing all we see and touch as a gift from your open hand.

Knowing you stirs hope that all our days will be immersed in the grace that transports our souls in moments your love frees us from gray despondency.

This land of grayness has been my home in recent days. More than anything it is the church that confines me there.

I need to feel the love hope stirs in your holy people, as you call us. But are we really?

I find too much, that is not love, that doesn’t reflect the holy presence of the love you awaken in depth of soul when we know that we eternally belong to your gracious care.

The hope stored up for us has not so impressed itself on our busy, distracted hearts that its seed can grow into the love that I need to find, if I am to escape the land of grayness.

Disappointed, I often turn from the church in despair, distancing myself from the people and place that first taught me that I have a soul and that every grace points to that Source for whom I yearn for union.

I turn from the home that long has pointed me toward Home, the people who at their best have been a sacrament of your welcome. I turn from those I need, disappointed that they cannot love any better than I can--or sometimes not nearly as much.

Can we, who are distracted, too busy and often apathetic and callous, bear the love you awaken in your people in so many other times and places?

I am skeptical, yet I hope. Mine is a fearing hope that wonders if we can truly be your people, brimming with the love you are, awakened by the hope that we are forever yours.

Remind us again that we are forever yours. Perhaps, today, we will listen … and learn to love.

Pr. David L. Miller