Today’s text
Isaiah 43:1-3a
And now, thus says Yahweh, he who created you, Jacob, who formed you, Israel: Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name, you are mine. Should you pass through the waters, I shall be with you; or through rivers, they will not swallow you up. Should you walk through fire, you will not suffer, and the flame will not burn you. Should you pass through the waters, I shall be with you; or through rivers, they will not swallow you up. Should you walk through fire, you will not suffer, and the flame will not burn you.
Reflection
My fears confound me, Holy One, leaving unrest in my heart. I see a soul to whom I want (or feel I should) reach out, but other people and duties distract me before I can step into the space of meeting.
I allow it to happen, but only when it involves someone with whom I am less than comfortable because of past conflict or misunderstanding. I know the meeting may prove awkward. We may not know how to speak comfortably with each other. At worse, my overture of conversation may be refused or forcefully resisted.
But the connection between us needs one of us to take the risk, to seek encounter, lest the bonds of human community stretch thin and snap.
Knowing this, I still allow distractions to curb me from the place of my discomfort, the faces of my anxiety.
Mine are small fears in the great sweep of human struggle. They amount to almost nothing, yet they are the minutia that erodes community and fires distrust, as human hearts walk around each other instead of obeying the need of their hearts to understand and be understood.
It’s all about fear, Holy One, and here you speak gently, telling me not to fear. “Do not fear even though awkward and rejecting moments of life fragment your soul and shatter the peace you seek.”
“Do not fear,” you say. “You will walk through deep water, through fires of anger and division, amid threats that you’d rather avoid.
“But nothing is lost. No part of you will be scattered so far that it is beyond my gracious reach. Do not worry about being broken, about resistance and the pain of distrust. Do not fret that your soul will hurt when community is broken, when your overtures are unwelcome or when you are judged wanting or condemned. The waters will not swallow you up.
“I will gather up all the broken pieces of your heart and make you whole. I am the Lord, and nothing is lost to my love; no wounded part of you is lost to my healing.”
Pr. David L. Miller
http://prayingthemystery.blogspot.com/
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Thursday, January 07, 2010
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Today’s text
Isaiah 43:1-3a
And now, thus says Yahweh, he who created you, Jacob, who formed you, Israel: Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name, you are mine. Should you pass through the waters, I shall be with you; or through rivers, they will not swallow you up. Should you walk through fire, you will not suffer, and the flame will not burn you. Should you pass through the waters, I shall be with you; or through rivers, they will not swallow you up. Should you walk through fire, you will not suffer, and the flame will not burn you.
Reflection
“You are mine,” you say, your voice more solid than the earth upon which I stand, and I hear your passion Holy One. I feel who you are.
Jealous and possessive is your love for those you cherish, a passion stronger than death, determined that nothing and no one should be lost to you. No soul shall be singed by the fires of life, drowned in woes that overwhelm and sweep us away.
You see all that our human frame suffers, and you shout to the heavens, “This shall not be. They are mine. I have fashioned and made them. I cherish them like a mother her infant child. More.
“Their souls shall not be lost, for I see them whenever they go, and I witness whatever befalls them. Their pains are felt in my divine heart, and I shall bring them back from where they are scattered. I will command the seas to give them up to my hand.
“I will raise them from the places they fall and breathe life into them after every death they suffer. I will gather the scattered fragments of their broken lives and make them whole again.
“For nothing will be lost to me; all they are shall be redeemed. And they will know I am a God of life and love, who cannot forget his own, who remembers the name of his myriad beloved, and who dwells in searching sorrow until all are gathered into my divine embrace.
“For you are mine, and I will not forget or leave you to flounder in the deep waters or to be consumed by threatening fires.
“There is nowhere you shall go; no place you shall fall that I will not be. You are mine, and the love and life that I am is yours.”
Pr. David L. Miller
Isaiah 43:1-3a
And now, thus says Yahweh, he who created you, Jacob, who formed you, Israel: Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name, you are mine. Should you pass through the waters, I shall be with you; or through rivers, they will not swallow you up. Should you walk through fire, you will not suffer, and the flame will not burn you. Should you pass through the waters, I shall be with you; or through rivers, they will not swallow you up. Should you walk through fire, you will not suffer, and the flame will not burn you.
Reflection
“You are mine,” you say, your voice more solid than the earth upon which I stand, and I hear your passion Holy One. I feel who you are.
Jealous and possessive is your love for those you cherish, a passion stronger than death, determined that nothing and no one should be lost to you. No soul shall be singed by the fires of life, drowned in woes that overwhelm and sweep us away.
You see all that our human frame suffers, and you shout to the heavens, “This shall not be. They are mine. I have fashioned and made them. I cherish them like a mother her infant child. More.
“Their souls shall not be lost, for I see them whenever they go, and I witness whatever befalls them. Their pains are felt in my divine heart, and I shall bring them back from where they are scattered. I will command the seas to give them up to my hand.
“I will raise them from the places they fall and breathe life into them after every death they suffer. I will gather the scattered fragments of their broken lives and make them whole again.
“For nothing will be lost to me; all they are shall be redeemed. And they will know I am a God of life and love, who cannot forget his own, who remembers the name of his myriad beloved, and who dwells in searching sorrow until all are gathered into my divine embrace.
“For you are mine, and I will not forget or leave you to flounder in the deep waters or to be consumed by threatening fires.
“There is nowhere you shall go; no place you shall fall that I will not be. You are mine, and the love and life that I am is yours.”
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Today’s text
Isaiah 43:1
And now, thus says Yahweh, he who created you, Jacob, who formed you, Israel: Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name, you are mine.
Reflection
Do I hear a cry in your voice, Loving Mystery, or is it my cry that falls on the ear?
No, there is but one single cry. It calls out of your great heart and finds its echo in my own soul. Yes, this is what I think, what I feel, what I hear.
“You are mine,” your eternal heart cries out. “I created you; I formed you. Come find your rest in my encircling presence, in the arms of my everlasting embrace which even now holds all time, all space.
“I will that my pain and yours should cease, for I, too, endure sorrow until all my wandering ones are at home, at peace, at rest.”
I hear your cry and feel that pain, knowing it, finally, not as my lonely sorrow, but as the sadness of your great heart, which I, too, feel when my heart feels far from you.
But I am not, for all that is resides in your immensity, encircled by arms of grace in the field of your Spirit’s play, seeking to draw me, the resistant, into the joy of knowing I dwell constantly in the atmosphere of love--of Love, who wants only that I should see and rest at home in this mystery, at peace and whole.
This comes to me in this instant, and an image appears in the mind’s eye: arms vast as the universe itself, no larger, a circle drawing in, ever so slowly, all that is, and I am in that embrace, but so seldom do I look and see the Drawing Love you are.
But right now, I know all this, as you invite me to make my home in you: you, who will cry for me until the day I rest finally and fully in you, who are Love.
Until then, I will know that when my soul grows sad and lonely that it is not my loneliness I feel, but the echo of your own, calling me home, to calm your cry.
Pr. David L. Miller
Isaiah 43:1
And now, thus says Yahweh, he who created you, Jacob, who formed you, Israel: Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name, you are mine.
Reflection
Do I hear a cry in your voice, Loving Mystery, or is it my cry that falls on the ear?
No, there is but one single cry. It calls out of your great heart and finds its echo in my own soul. Yes, this is what I think, what I feel, what I hear.
“You are mine,” your eternal heart cries out. “I created you; I formed you. Come find your rest in my encircling presence, in the arms of my everlasting embrace which even now holds all time, all space.
“I will that my pain and yours should cease, for I, too, endure sorrow until all my wandering ones are at home, at peace, at rest.”
I hear your cry and feel that pain, knowing it, finally, not as my lonely sorrow, but as the sadness of your great heart, which I, too, feel when my heart feels far from you.
But I am not, for all that is resides in your immensity, encircled by arms of grace in the field of your Spirit’s play, seeking to draw me, the resistant, into the joy of knowing I dwell constantly in the atmosphere of love--of Love, who wants only that I should see and rest at home in this mystery, at peace and whole.
This comes to me in this instant, and an image appears in the mind’s eye: arms vast as the universe itself, no larger, a circle drawing in, ever so slowly, all that is, and I am in that embrace, but so seldom do I look and see the Drawing Love you are.
But right now, I know all this, as you invite me to make my home in you: you, who will cry for me until the day I rest finally and fully in you, who are Love.
Until then, I will know that when my soul grows sad and lonely that it is not my loneliness I feel, but the echo of your own, calling me home, to calm your cry.
Pr. David L. Miller
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