Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Today’s text


Mark 4:37-40

Then it began to blow a great gale and the waves were breaking into the boat so that it was almost swamped. But he was in the stern, his head on the cushion, asleep. They woke him and said to him, 'Master, do you not care? We are lost!' And he woke up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, 'Quiet now! Be calm!' And the wind dropped, and there followed a great calm. Then he said to them, 'Why are you so frightened? Have you still no faith?'

Reflection

Jesus’ command was not really spoken to the wind and the waves. It is spoken to us. He invites us into the awareness in which he rests amid the storm.

“Peace, be still,” he says, but stillness cannot come when our hearts have two eyes.

We live with one eye focused on the tumult of living and the anxieties of the day, while our other eye looks warily at God, wondering, “Are you there? Do you care? Can you help?’

Only a single eye, a singular focus brings peace, an eye open to God, steadily gazing into the heart of Love who made us for love and in love holds each moment.

Storms come; winds blow, and we fear. We fear losing that which is most essential to our life and happiness. We fear what the future might bring, what it will inevitably bring and what we cannot control.

But the storms are temporary; the love is eternal. Storms operate on the surface of consciousness; the Love abides deep in the heart.

So we descend into the depths. We sink beneath the surface of noise of the now into awareness of an abiding, creative, ever-present love who breathes us into existence each moment, though we do not ask and cannot control its breathing.

Love abides beneath the noise and anxieties of the day. It breathes, “Peace, be still.”

Jesus dwells in this awareness. It is the cushion on which he lays his head. He is the living embodiment of the life to which we are called but which escapes us because we do not see with a single eye focused on the One unchanging amid the storm, the Love who always … is, and always will be.

May we see with one eye … and find peace … this day.
Pr. David L. Miller