Friday, April 26, 2013

Today’s text

John 13:35

It is by your love for one another, that everyone will recognize you as my disciples.

Reflection

Visions are fleeting. Moments of illumination come and go. They appear and quickly pass, fading in the mind’s eye before you are barely aware of them.

Yet, the images sometimes stick, enduring in the mind for decades, perhaps even for a lifetime, continuing to tell you everything you need to know.

They come at odd moments, like sitting in a coffee shop talking to a student, explaining stories you have visited a hundred times, only this time is different for reasons you will never understand.

One story was the tiny episode (three or four verses) of Jesus welcoming and blessing children others sought to shoo away. The other was the healing of a blind man who had nothing to offer Jesus but his blindness and his desire to see.

The stories were about open hearts eager to receive--and about one heart eager to give.

But they transported my mind and heart far beyond ancient times and biblical pages to deep recesses of the mind where a vision appeared and stopped me in mid-sentence, not once but several times, as tears clouded my eyes.

I saw faces, faces with million-watt smiles, wiped free of every anxiety and fear, of all suffering and threat. Nothing clouded their eyes.

I saw smiles on people known to me, people who endure trials and live with intractable situations, all of them whole and well, complete and happy, shining like sun, for the sun was shining … in them.

They were lit up from within with a joy and life that brought tears to my eyes and peace to my heart. They were enclosed beneath a grand arc that covered them. It arched high above them and all that is, holding everything together in a great protective shield.

I saw no sun, only the light in their eyes and the glory of their joy.

What does one make of such a moment, for a moment is all it was although it endures vividly in the mind? An illusion? Wishful thinking? A prayer for what I want?

Or is it an illumination, a vision of how things ultimately are?

How one answers depends on whether you are a skeptic, agnostic or seized by faith and hope. I am the latter, and I receive my coffee shop vision as a gift that tells me everything I need to know, a gift moved by ancient stories of a Loving Mystery more eager to bless than I am to receive.

All things, all I love, all that this Loving One loves will shine like the sun--and even now dwell under the protective arc of Love Itself.

So smile, be at peace and love all you do and see this day. It is the only fitting service of the One who gives vision.

Pr. David L. Miller