Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Today’s text

Matthew 21:33-35

'Listen to another parable. There was a man, a landowner, who planted a vineyard; he fenced it round, dug a winepress in it and built a tower; then he leased it to tenants and went abroad. When vintage time drew near he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his servants, thrashed one, killed another and stoned a third.'
Reflection

They forgot. They don’t own it. Neither do I.

I don’t own the vineyard of your creation, Holy One. I don’t even own my own life. The breath in my lungs is on loan. Someday it will flee this mortal form, and I will return to the dust from which you made me.

But for now you give breath in my lungs, strength in my limbs and power in my soul.

You give the power to remember who I am--or to forget that all that I am and have is a miracle of a creation I did not fashion and cannot fathom.

I simply wake up in this world, surprised to be alive and existing, knowing only that I did not create myself but am the breath of the Mystery who is Life.

You are Life, and you freely give it, asking only that I do not forget you, the Giver, who makes life out of nothing and my life from the lives of those who have gone before.

Forgetting is the greatest tragedy. It is death. It is separation from you, the Source, the Eternal Fountain. To forget is isolation, loneliness and fear. It creates distance between my soul and the Soul who breathes life into all that lives in the vineyard of creation.

Little wonder that when I feel far from you my breath grows short and my heart feels alone and anxious.

But not today. Today, tapping raindrops of a grainy fall morning whisper, “Remember.”

Today, the laughter of gracious people still rings through my soul, as the joy of last evening lifts me to the awareness that the vineyard of life is not mine. I am here, sharing it with other souls who are gifts to me, as I to them.

We shared, laughed and felt alive. We didn’t forget that our lives and the shining moments of feeling alive--all of it--is gift … on loan from You, who breathed us out and who will take us back into yourself.

Pr. David L. Miller