Wednesday, June 20, 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
An elderly person I know tells me, “Whether I live or whether I die there is someone waiting for me.”

Hers’ are eyes of faith. She looks beyond what is happening in the moment to what the moment will bring.

Illness or death, healing or renewed life: there’s someone waiting no matter what comes. I know she is speaking of friends in this life and a husband and friends who have passed into eternity.

But her words carry a double meaning. They echo with the Presence of One who says, “Peace, be still. I wait for you in every new moment, in every fresh morning, in every storm that comes your way.”

Whatever else the day brings, Holy One, it holds you. The tempest of the hour, the challenge of the day, the work and faces we meet, all of it … holds you.

But it also hides you. The surface noise of the now distracts our anxious vision from the Presence of the Love who abides, who waits for us in every future.

Jesus rests in this awareness and invites us to lay our worried heads, our anxious minds, our troubled hearts on the cushion of this certainty. He does not say, “Look at me.”

He says, “See what I see. Hear what I hear. Live where I live.”

He sees and hears the Love who always whispers, “Do not fear. Ever. Love waits for you in every time, every place.”

Pr. David L. Miller