Saturday, September 08, 2012

Saturday September 8, 2012


Today’s text

Mark 7:34-37

Then looking up to heaven he [Jesus] sighed; and he said to him, 'Ephphatha,' that is, 'Be opened.' And his ears were opened, and at once the impediment of his tongue was loosened and he spoke clearly. And Jesus ordered them to tell no one about it, but the more he insisted, the more widely they proclaimed it. Their admiration was unbounded, and they said, 'Everything he does is good, he makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak.'

Reflection

Open our ears to the deep hunger of our souls that we may seek the fullness of your heart each day and find the healing and peace we so badly need. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Open our ears to the needs of the world and the hearts of friend and foe that we may hear with love and grace, as you hear us. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Open our mouths to bless and encourage others that hearts may be lifted and your church may grow into an ever-widening community of blessing. Bless all who teach and learn your gospel, all who witness and worship. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Open our eyes to the wonder of the heavens and the earth, the seas, and all that is in them, to forests, mountains and lakes and the gentle beauty of fawn and flower, that we may be moved praise you and care for the well-being of all you have made. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Open our hearts to the hungry and those who wither in poverty and want. Move us to share with those in need and seek your justice for those oppressed. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Open the gates of your healing compassion to all who are sick or in any need. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Open our arms to love our neighbors as ourselves. Open our hearts to care for the stranger and welcome every soul into your assembly with honor and dignity. Lord, in your mercy,
hear our prayer.

Open our souls to the loving witness of those who have gone before us that we, too, may inherit the kingdom you promise to whose who love you. Grant comfort and healing to all who mourn. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Hear our hearts, faithful God, and pour out your Spirit from the ever-flowing depths of your divine heart that filled with the love you are we may joyfully love and serve you and one another, through Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, September 07, 2012

Friday, September 7, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 7:34-37

Then looking up to heaven he [Jesus] sighed; and he said to him, 'Ephphatha,' that is, 'Be opened.' And his ears were opened, and at once the impediment of his tongue was loosened and he spoke clearly. And Jesus ordered them to tell no one about it, but the more he insisted, the more widely they proclaimed it. Their admiration was unbounded, and they said, 'Everything he does is good, he makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak.'

Reflection

No, it is not good. It is life. He is life, and they are missing it. Don’t miss life.

Let your heart be taken in by the life he is. Be captured by the wonder of what you see and feel in him. Your ears will open and you will hear and speak as never before.

How do you hear? How do you speak?

Jesus hears the world with grace, in all its sorrow, hunger and joy. Captured by his life, the life of the one who sighs with care and loving mercy, you will hear your life and life around you with this same grace.

He doesn’t want your admiration or approval. They mean nothing to him. What he wants is for you to see and hear as he sees, as he sees and hears you.

He hungers for you to be as he is. That is his purpose and joy, the fulfillment of his life and yours.

He sees you through eyes of penetrating grace, knowing all of you and loving all of it because it is you, because all of it shapes a soul so unique no other soul is quite like it or ever will be.

Your soul, your life can shine with grace and understanding, blessing and hope like no other that has or ever will exist.

You are a special vessel of life and grace intended for your time and place. Your words can bless and encourage, grace and gentle the heart of people no one else can reach.

Your ears can listen and hear people who hunger to be known and understood for what they are in all their beauty and woundedness. Your ears can hear and heal the soul that hides beneath surface words and actions.

You can listen with grace and share the joy and sorrows of human hearts, as Jesus knows and shares the depth of your heart.

You can speak words of blessing that link hearts-to-hearts and minds-to-minds, as Jesus blesses you and pours the elixir of his gracious life into yours, opening your ears to hear and your mouth to speak.

You can heal the discord of cliques and family rifts, of party spirit and political polarization, of racial and national divides.

You need only allow your heart to be taken in, held, captured and conquered by the one who hears your heart and loves all of you, … the one whose sighs speak volumes about what is in the heart of God … for you.

Pr. David L. Miller





Thursday, September 06, 2012

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 7:32-37

And they brought him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they asked him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside to be by themselves, away from the crowd, put his fingers into the man's ears and touched his tongue with spittle. Then looking up to heaven he sighed; and he said to him, 'Ephphatha,' that is, 'Be opened.' And his ears were opened, and at once the impediment of his tongue was loosened and he spoke clearly. And Jesus ordered them to tell no one about it, but the more he insisted, the more widely they proclaimed it. Their admiration was unbounded, and they said, 'Everything he does is good, he makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak.'

Reflection

We can hear these words on two levels. One is incomplete and shallow; the other reflects understanding and wisdom.

The crowd saw Jesus touch the deaf man and sigh. They were amazed that he was soon able to hear and speak. Their understanding was shallow. It never penetrated the surface of what happened right in front of them.

They spread the story, raising eyebrows and curiosity to be sure. But were their souls stirred to crave union with the one who sighs in wounded love for the world?

Do they want what is in him? Do they hunger to know his great soul in the depth of their own? Do they seek this transformation so that they, too, with sighs of love and sorrow, might touch and make the world more whole for their presence?

To want this is to possess Jesus, to have his soul flowing through your own, for his soul hungers for the world and broken hearts to be made whole.

Wholeness is not primarily physical but spiritual and emotional. There are those with fully-able bodies who will never be whole, and there are those who are losing their battles with cancer and disease, who are more whole than they have ever been.

It’s about connection. Those who are whole feel and know connection with the Great Life who does not die. Their bodies tingle in awareness that the Life and Love of God is in them, filling them with that otherwise elusive feeling that they are well, that all is well. They know all they are and all that is rests in Love and always will.

They know: Love works … constantly, in all, through all, with all. It always has the final word, and that word is life and peace, unity with the Loving Wonder for whom our hearts long.

Wholeness is the life that flows in us when we know and feel the truth: You dwell in the atmosphere of God who is love, the One who sighs out, “Be opened.

“Be opened, so you may know and be filled with the Spirit of Life and Love that I am. Be opened, and you will live.”

Pr. David L. Miller





Wednesday, September 05, 2012

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 7:32-35

And they brought him [Jesus] a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they asked him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside to be by themselves, away from the crowd, put his fingers into the man's ears and touched his tongue with spittle. Then looking up to heaven he sighed; and he said to him, 'Ephphatha,' that is, 'Be opened.' And his ears were opened, and at once the impediment of his tongue was loosened and he spoke clearly.

Reflection

Be open. To what? To whom?

To the love that is in Jesus, to the Wonder whom he bears. Then, we will be united with inward center of his soul, through which flows the Soul of the Universe, the heart of divine creativity and joy, yes, joy.

Be open and receive from the divine source of whom your life is a physical expression. Your heart will soften, its emptiness will experience fullness and you will speak from your spiritual center, your inmost being.

Your words will truly ring with an authenticity and depth you have never known, bearing a love beyond your own.

It begins with being open. This does not come easily, and for some it never comes.

Jesus opens the man’s ears with a sigh, the sign of a great effort of soul. He seeks to pour out what is in his heart.

He surrenders to the need of the other, as he always does. He gives his heart to the deaf man, not knowing if he will hear, receive or even want what his soul hungers to give.

He sighs in vulnerability, risking rejection willing to make a fool of himself for the sake of the love within him, so willing is he to bless and give away what he has and knows.

Jesus knows utter intimacy, undivided unity with the Eternal Wonder who is love, the One from whom all creation flows, dazzling and perplexing our senses.

He truly knows the Infinite Source of all our bodies and souls need and crave. Divine hunger to give it all away stirs his soul beyond himself to reach and touch the souls of need that surround him at every hand.

He sighs and that which is in him passes to such a soul, a soul like mine and yours. He sighs, hoping our hearts might open so the total gift that is in him might fill our souls, too.

And when it does, in those graced moments of wonder, we, too, know intimate unity with the Unspeakable Love for which, for whom … even Jesus struggles for words. Sometimes only sighs say enough.

In this unity of soul with Soul, ours hearts with the boundless Heart, words of blessing and peace come to our lips without our usual stammer and struggle.

We speak, for once, the truth of the love that hungers for us, the love that can’t and won’t let go.

Pr. David L. Miller



Tuesday, September 04, 2012

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 7:24-28

He left that place and set out for the territory of Tyre. There he went into a house and did not want anyone to know he was there; but he could not pass unrecognized. At once a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him and came and fell at his feet. Now this woman was a gentile, by birth a Syro-Phoenician, and she begged him to drive the devil out of her daughter. And he said to her, 'The children should be fed first, because it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to little dogs.' But she spoke up, 'Ah yes, sir,' she replied, 'but little dogs under the table eat the scraps from the children.'

Reflection

Give me what you will, O Lord. Whatever you give will be enough because it is from you.

I do not seek the gifts or graces others have received from you. I beg no special favors, no great accomplishments, no celebration of my name.

I wanted these when I was young, and I sought them to heal inner wounds of early rejection and judgments that made me cower and feel small and weak.

Now I want to know the grace that fills the heart and heals every inner wound, evaporating all fear. I want you, your loving grace in me.

That’s no scrap, of course, but the true substance of life flowing through the heart so that I feel completely one with you, no separation between my heart the energy of Life and Love.

That’s why I am here once more, like a thousand times before, searching for the just the right words to express what I find within me so I can offer it as prayer to you.

When the right words come, the hidden door of my soul swings open, and you flow in and fill me, and I will feel … and be … fully alive.

This gentile woman--an outsider, considered unclean and unwanted, coming from a despised ethnic group and mothering a defiled daughter--found the words that opened the door of her being.

As she did, the Being of Jesus, the Soul of the Universe, flowed into her and her daughter, living waters of life cooling their fevers and fears and making them alive. The soul of Christ poured into them pushing out all that was not him.

It was just a scrap, of course. They did not yet possess the fullness of all he is that they would know when they entered into the fullness of God’s presence. That day would come for them as it does for all.

They would again feel the rejection of those who despised the color of their skin and the marks of their ethnicity. They would experience the fears and struggles of living like everyone else.

But they had eaten. They’d tasted the scraps of divine life. They found healing, and they knew they had what they needed. It was enough for them.

For us, too.

Pr. David L. Miller









Monday, September 03, 2012

Monday, September 3, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 7:24-25

He [Jesus] left that place and set out for the territory of Tyre. There he went into a house and did not want anyone to know he was there; but he could not pass unrecognized. At once a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him and came and fell at his feet.

Reflection

Our pains and burning need have two opposite effects. Either they isolate us as we shun human contact, or they move us beyond the narrow circle of self into a wider world of souls where the love that is God can pour from them into us.

Isolation is the soul’s great enemy. In our aloneness, we believe lies and imagine healing is impossible. Only in the appreciative gaze of love do we find ourselves and the healing for which we hunger.

None of us was created to be alone, cut off from others by illness or need, shame or despair, prejudice or angers. The devilish thing (truly evil) is that all these pains and so many others move us to hide and shun the light of human contact.

It often happens at the point of our greatest need. A loved one dies, a relationship injures, illness or depression saps our strength, and we think we are not fit to be out in public. We stop seeing, talking and touching even those we have known for years.

Alone, pain magnifies and isolates. I have seen it a thousand times following a death, a disappointment, a wounding incident.

We desperately need each other, for God intends us to be sacraments of the Love who is God, bearing healing grace and the oil of kindness. It flows in normal human exchange as we flee our aloneness to touch and listen, to speak and laugh, to be blessedly human with each other.

Healing begins as the Love who is God--and our deepest, truest selves--flows in common conversation and daily care.

It was need that moved the woman beyond the prison of her fears to seek healing for her daughter. In isolation, disease and dread of the future were her closest companions. They are soul-killing company, but she fled them for the sake of life.

Just so, the pains that imprison human hearts are either barriers to wholeness or the bridge into the land of grace and healing.

She moved from isolation to the feet of Jesus, to the soul of all healing and grace. No longer was she alone, no longer a prisoner, no longer limited to her own resources. Her pain and need brought her to the place where Love might do its holy work.

Pr. David L. Miller