Thursday, October 18, 2012

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 10:35-37

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, approached him. 'Master,' they said to him, 'We want you to do us a favor.' He said to them, 'What is it you want me to do for you?' They said to him, 'Allow us to sit one at your right hand and the other at your left in your glory.' But Jesus said to them, 'You do not know what you are asking.

Reflection

Adele came to me last night. She showed up sometime after 3 p.m. amid my sleeplessness with a message, “It’s all in Love’s hands. All of it.”

She was a great spirit among us, a great light that has gone out.

At the age of 96, her irrepressible spirit was taken from us two weeks ago. She is gone, except she’s not really gone. She has gone into that Great Light that shines from Eternity for all eternity into the darkness of our little lives.

So she’s ever here, in that radiance that warms and lights our way until we join her in the Loving Mystery for whom no words will do.

But her words came in an anxious night when the fevers of life and the press of deadlines kept sleep at bay. Her words were simple, “It’s all in Love’s hands.”

Hearing, my anxieties slowly began to release their grip. The endless loop running through my head-- unfinished tasks and unkept promises--slowed and finally fell silent, until I too, rested in the Love’s hands, and sleep returned.

And I knew: I rest in Love’s hands, as does all that kept me awake in the night.

Somehow, my obsessive spirit heard and was convinced there was no need to enumerate all that must be done this day. The fevered agitation over failing and falling short departed into the darkness. It is gone.

But Adele’s words remain, “It’s all in Love’s hands. All of it.”

And I know who Love is, Holy One, so now in the still dark of early fall morning I trust and rest, at peace once more, thankful for your messenger.

She reminds me again to trust and believe, even as she spoke to so many from the black narthex chair she always occupied following worship. Her words, as now, laced with faith in the unfailing love you are.

So her light has not passed from us at all. She has joined the great fullness of your light that comes to us in the night and the day, illuming our anxious hearts with the truth our souls need to know, lest our demons overtake us, stealing away the peace of Christ.

I know why Jesus disciples secretly asked to sit one at his right hand and the other at his left in glory. They were as anxious and insecure as me when the night demons torment my heart.

The disciples knew they could not secure their life by their own work and effort. Sooner or later, we know that is not enough. We know that we are no enough.

We feel our finitude, our limits, our humanity, our fragility, and we need to hear a voice in the night telling us the truth.

“It’s all in Love’s hands. All of it.”

So come to us all Adele, and tell us the truth our hearts need to hear.

And thanks … for your nighttime visit.

Pr. David L. Miller



Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 10:35-38

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, approached him. 'Master,' they said to him, 'We want you to do us a favor.' He said to them, 'What is it you want me to do for you?' They said to him, 'Allow us to sit one at your right hand and the other at your left in your glory.' But Jesus said to them, 'You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I shall drink, or be baptized with the baptism with which I shall be baptized?'

Reflection

There come times of cross bearing, moments when decisions face us, and we must decide: Who are we?

Do we believe that we are fitted to bear the cross of Christ, or do we surrender to modern wisdom about self-care and not giving away too much of yourself to needs of another, whether mother or father, child or spouse?

Sometimes I get to see people who understand the truth of the cross. They willingly take up the burden of caring for a family member or a friend in sickness or struggle because, as one recently told me, “I cannot not do this.”

I was moved, and I knew I was looking into the face of someone who knew what it was to take up one’s cross and follow.

The future stretches out before him, and he has no way of knowing how long the burden of caring will last, what it may require of him before it is done or how much of his life will be surrendered in the process of loving someone he must love … to the end of her days.

He knows only that he must walk the path before him and that it won’t be easy.

His is that ongoing baptism into the life of Jesus, which does not look glorious. To some, it may even appear foolish, a waste of life.

But not to eyes of faith, who see the beauty of God in every act costly love … freely given.

And in every loving surrender we see re-birth into the beauty we shall become.

Pr. David L. Miller





Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 10:35-37

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, approached him [Jesus]. 'Master,' they said to him, 'We want you to do us a favor.' He said to them, 'What is it you want me to do for you?' They said to him, 'Allow us to sit one at your right hand and the other at your left in your glory.'

Reflection

And it is glory that they want. Why?

Is the ego’s drive for admiration and power an inevitable part of being human? Or is this only a ‘male’ thing?

When my daughter, Rachel, was a small child she would take my face and her hands and insist that I focus directly on her, not on her and my book, the newspaper or another conversation.

Rachel wanted me to let her know she was utterly important to me, important enough to give her my undivided attention, my mind and heart.

But these two, James and John, want to sit beside the seat of power, assuming (and completely misunderstanding) Jesus is about to become some kind of king or ruler to whom others bow down.

They did not seek the undivided attention of one who loves them. They wanted to share in Jesus’ power so that those ‘below’ them would show them deference.

Of course, this angered Jesus’ other followers …because they didn’t want these two to be higher, greater, more important than they were.

They were tripping over their egos, too.

The ego is a heavy burden. We want to feel important, respected. Good enough, but ego always likes to compare, so that with self-satisfaction we can say, “I am more than others … smarter, more important, better at what I do,” … fill in the blank.

Ego loves to distance itself from others and then admire that vertical distance because it establishes that we are somehow superior and can prance a bit. It’s a subtle game, and most of us fall into it at various points in an average day.

I think I escape it best when I can lose myself in someone else’s needs and story, or perhaps when there is work I enjoy. Sometimes it happens when I sit with someone who allows me to be totally human or fragile … whatever I am at the moment.

I sink into such times, forgetting how I am doing or how I appear, and I just savor the moment of work or conversation.

There is great freedom in such moments because somewhere in the process I drop the heavy burden of ego that distracts me from being simply there, present to whomever and what ever I am doing.

I can give myself to something or someone and, strangely, finding myself and my freedom at the same time.

This is a small taste of the freedom of Jesus, the freedom his friends and followers failed to taste most of the time.

He had the freedom to surrender himself in utter grace to the needs of another. This was his power and his glory, a glory that is still little understood and even less desired.

But it is the way of freedom, the path of peace for our hearts and the heart of a conflicted world.

Pr. David L. Miller