Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Today’s text

John 10:22-26

It was the time of the feast of Dedication in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was in the Temple walking up and down in the Portico of Solomon. The Jews gathered round him and said, 'How much longer are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us openly.' Jesus replied: I have told you, but you do not believe. The works I do in my Father's name are my witness; but you do not believe, because you are no sheep of mine.’

Reflection

Where is the place of meeting? We can only notice this. No one can really tell us. We must answer: Do heaven and earth meet here? Are eternal realities known here?

It is the reason my fingers are on these keys, Holy One. This is a place of meeting, a temple where the holy and the mundane overlap and your beauty pours into and through me.

It doesn’t happen every time. Or does it?

Perhaps it’s best to say that I don’t feel it every time. But this little space in a basement office, this time of listening to no one but you, this desk where my fingers poise over dark keys ready to receive a word from you, this is a temple, a place of holy meeting.

The grace of all eternity comes to me here. You cross whatever invisible membrane that separates my consciousness from knowing you near, and the joy of awareness of you who are love comes and touches me and makes me alive again.

So this must be a temple, for you and I meet here. It doesn’t look much like a holy place. There are books and papers on the desk, a printer and this computer. Three or four cards with symbols and religious pictures perch precariously atop the book case, and Dixie’s photos of flowers and trees peer at me from the wall.

So I suppose there are those elements that point to your beauty and the heart ties that bind me to other souls who love and need you as much as I do.

But it is not these external signs but an internal awareness that moves me to come and sit here this place of meeting where I wait for you to break through my dimness and light my heart with the joy of love.

I wonder about those who asked you to answer, “Are you the Christ.” Did they ever ask themselves what it was like when they were with you? Did they ever feel moved to praise God for the power or the grace present in your deeds?

Did they ever look into their hearts and notice if that eternal love for which no name will do … did that One come to expression in you?

Perhaps they couldn’t because you defied all their expectations. But I think that’s what you wanted them to do: to stop, to look and to ask, “Do heaven and earth meet here?

If so, then you are the temple, Jesus, the place of meeting, the one even I meet even here.

Pr. David L. Miller