Friday, August 24, 2012

Friday, August 22, 2012


Today’s text

John 6:56, 67-69

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in that person.

Then Jesus said to the Twelve, 'What about you, do you want to go away too?' Simon Peter answered, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe; we have come to know that you are the Holy One of God.' and we believe; we have come to know that you are the Holy One of God.'

Reflection

Where do you live? We ask this question when first meeting someone, trying to place them in their state or neighborhood, thinking about how their life is similar or different from our own.

The biblical word is menein, abide. It asks, where do you live? Where does you heart dwell? Where are you at home? Where does your soul rest?

Where does peace appear, bubbling from depths of being even in surprising moments?

Where does the feeling of being wonderfully, beautifully alive, loved and wanted wash through you--even amid your brokenness, despite the pain or challenge of the day?

So many times we dwell in the land of our failures, or we abide and make our home in our anger and frustration over how life has gone for us.

Our minds and hearts travel well-worn roads back to the voices that diminished and defined us as unwanted and unworthy. We make our home in moments we felt judged. We dwell in the land of the lost, despairing beneath the weight of our brokenness, believing we can never be good and whole again.

We make our home in inhospitable lands that diminish our souls and wither the love and grace that is in us.

Jesus comes to us and all who need him bearing a land in which he bids us dwell, a land in which the love that fills him flows from his pores and every word telling us the truth and wonder of who we are.

We … you … are beloved and known, wanted and cherished, amid all your human imperfections and the wounds from the past and present.

“Come, to me,” he says. “Come and abide in me. Dwell in the circle of my nearness. This is your home. So come, receive and eat the truth. Take it into your body. Chew on it until it becomes part of your DNA.

“For what is in me is love without limit, a river of grace that never runs dry. Taste what is in me. Beauty and the joy of life will flow from your soul, and you will know, truly know, the life of eternity, right here and now.’”

Pr. David L. Miller





Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Wednesday, August 22, 2012


Today’s text

John 6:63

Then Jesus said to the Twelve, 'What about you, do you want to go away too?' Simon Peter answered, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the message of eternal life.'

Reflection

Where do you go when in pain? What do you do when the world turns upside down or the details of the day make you dizzy?

Where is the portal through which you may step from the world of constant change into awareness of the eternal constancy, which gives rest to the soul and assurance that all is and shall be well?

The disciples heard Jesus and had an intuition. They felt his words flowing from a source beyond any they had ever known.

Jesus voice transported them beyond their fears and daily squabbles for bread and ego. They listened … and heard the Soul of the Universe inviting them to enter a world beyond their daily worries.

They were lifted into Love, feeling love and life bubbling up in them as if from a fountain deep within, a Source they didn’t know was there.

“Abide in me,” Jesus said to them. Come, rest in me. Listen to the silence of my voice. Quiet your struggle for a few minutes and just know what is in me.”

In this knowing, what was in him flowed also through them.

Life from an endless source, love that never runs dry pushed and surged from hidden depths to fill their chest and throat, warming them throughout, giving rest and utter assurance to their minds.

Their hearts then knew all that was needed to live and laugh that they might also pour themselves out for the sake of the startling love that surged within.

They tasted the life of eternity and knew what God had made them to know.

May you know it, too.

Listen to the voice that says, “Rest, my child. Rest, my friend. The Love I am seeks to fill you from within and touch you from without.”

Pr. David L. Miller





Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Today’s text

John 6:63

‘It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh has nothing to offer. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.’

Reflection

Moments of awareness come when you least expect them, but they come more often when you put yourself on the road they travel. Mine travel in books I read sitting on the back patio. So I sit there on sunny Mondays, basking in gentle suns of late summer.

I listen as voices rise from the pages, awakening an inner voice of love that invites me to sink into my deep inner self. There I find an awareness that this love is in me, waiting always for me to come home and know that this is my true being and my home.

This is who I really am, stripped for the moment of any thoughts of history or accomplishment, failures or frustrations. My being is this love, and for the moment I am one with this awareness; … I know this completely.

I know the Love who loves, and there is no doubt and certainly no fear in me. I am well through and through.

I do not know how or why the words on the page elicited this awareness, however fleeting it may be. Perhaps the writer shared an experience so close to my own that I knew I was not strange or alone. Perhaps her embrace of her life experiences, both jubilant and mundane, spoke a love for life that allowed me to love mine, too.

I simply know there is a spirit of love awakened within that heals and makes whole, stirred perhaps by the action of that same spirit in another human heart and mind.

When Jesus spoke his words flowed from his consciousness of oneness with Love. The Spirit of the All-Loving One filled him, inviting all who heard to know what he knew, to feel what he felt so they might enter the land he inhabited--the land of the knowing oneness with Love that can happen on back patios or wherever Spirit catches up with you.

His words offended many. He told them to eat his flesh, drink his blood, and he wasn’t necessarily talking about taking communion at church. He was inviting them to hear the spirit of his words, the Spirit that filled his conscious awareness, so this awareness might fill them, too.

He seeks to give the life of oneness he lived that we, too, might live.

So we listen to love that is in him, the love that loves his own and this broken world and our broken selves, loving them completely, to the end, leaving nothing out.

And maybe, if you go to places where awareness finds you, you may sink deeply into the Spirit that is in him, knowing what he knows, feeling what he feels that wholeness may come, and you may discover who you really are.

Pr. David L. Miller