Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Today’s text

Matthew 11:16-19

'What comparison can I find for this generation? It is like children shouting to each other as they sit in the market place: We played the pipes for you, and you wouldn't dance; we sang dirges, and you wouldn't be mourners. 'For John came, neither eating nor drinking, and they say, "He is possessed." The Son of man came, eating and drinking, and they say, "Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners." Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.'

Reflection

It is not just Jesus’ generation. It is every generation.

Unrest distresses the soul. Deep at heart, we are confused about what we really want, better, what we truly need. So we keep ourselves busy, distracted, drowning out the echo of our inner emptiness.

And we look askance at the missions of the Spirit that come each day to our spirits, missing what is right before us.

Distrust colors the heart. We evaluate and discover what is wrong and flawed with what comes each day, missing divine beauty and invitation where they so regularly appears in words and faces and the new light of every sunrise, little asking: from what immensity, from what infinitely generous dimension does life (and my life) appear?

Blind to Spirit, we live dissatisfied lives, dismissing beauty, simple graces and moments of happiness and freedom as diversions or exceptions to “real life,” instead of invitations to truly living.

John appears, gripped by God’s overwhelming holiness, demanding a change of heart and action to honor the author of all life, and he is dismissed as a crazy man. Jesus parties with outcasts and no-counts--the well-heeled, too, and he is discounted as a party boy.

Both were an appeal of Spirit to human spirits, giving knowledge of the God who can never be fully known, the Mystery who seeks us in all beauty and comes in every small grace.

We discover what we want and need, amid surprising joy, as we give ourselves to the moment, to the now, receiving what is given there, ready to accept and receive rather than dismiss whatever the Spirit sends our way.

The Spirit’s missions of life come each day and in every moment. The wise do not dismiss but receive what comes, trusting that each is an invitation to know and become the Seeking Love who seeks them.

Pr. David L. Miller