Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Today’s text

John 16:4-7

But I have told you all this, so that when the time for it comes you may remember that I told you. I did not tell you this from the beginning, because I was with you; but now I am going to the one who sent me. Not one of you asks, 'Where are you going? Yet you are sad at heart because I have told you this. Still, I am telling you the truth: it is for your own good that I am going, because unless I go, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.

Reflection

There is no time for sadness because there is no separation. Never.

You are here always and always will be. In this quiet place, I know you present and with me. No, the One you send is not with me, not beside or around me, but in the depth of the mystery of my own being, the Voice deeper than every other voice.

You are the Voice that renders all other voices irrelevant.

In the silence you speak the wonder of a Loving Presence who is the first and final truth of my life. And I flee there, to that place within where I might hear, even as gentle music of longing filters into consciousness from the stereo across the room.

As long as you were with the disciples, Jesus, they fixed on your nearness, eager to lean into your side as they walked along. And why not?

In you they knew a Holy Presence, a soul transparent to the mystery of God. Their hearts woke from sleep when they sat with you.

Could it be true? Could they know and feel the fullness of God so close that their skin tingled in delight?

Could they feel so alive and free that the anxieties and threats that surround life disappear? Could they feel a Love beyond all loves with their hands and heart? Could they feel it filling them, so that they knew this Love like their own breath and the warmth in their chest?

They didn’t need to ask such questions. They knew. In Jesus presence, they knew all this and more, although words mostly failed them when they tried to express what they knew.

Their sadness when Jesus was about to leave them was heavy, palpable, understandable … and unnecessary.

For as long as he was with them they would not and could not listen to the Spirit, the Voice within them and hear that same Voice and Spirit that filled Jesus and made him transparent to the Eternal God.

When Jesus left they felt bereft, alone and abandoned, but they were not alone, not ever. The Spirit of truth, the Helper, the Eternal Voice that is the Holy Presence of Love beyond all measure was there, given to them, in them.

And they, like us, needed to learn to listen at that deep place where speaks the Voice of Eternal Love telling us that we are not and never will be … alone.

There is never a moment when you, Holy Mystery, are not here.

Pr. David L. Miller