Thursday, September 12, 2013

 Today’s text

Luke 15:1-6

The tax collectors and sinners, however, were all crowding round to listen to him, and the Pharisees and scribes complained saying, 'This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.' So he told them this parable: 'Which one of you with a hundred sheep, if he lost one, would fail to leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the missing one till he found it? And when he found it, would he not joyfully take it on his shoulders and then, when he got home, call together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, "Rejoice with me, I have found my sheep that was lost." 

Reflection

I want to be found. I want to share in the joy. I want the lost parts of me--the places that get lost from grace and love--to be sought and found by this searching God who wants to find and carry me home.

I know home. Home is this Love who made me. When I know and feel it within, filling me, I am strong and know I have all I need. Home is joy. Home is confidence, not in the strength of my mind or hand but in the completeness of the One who is Love. This is home.

But I spend too much time away from home, weary or worried about work undone, about efforts that fail, about the perceived or real rejection of others. My soul languishes, lost, alone, longing for Love to find and fill me once more and tell me what I need to know, the only thing I need to know.

So I want to found by the Great Seeker who is known in every love that is, the One who hungers to find me when I am lost, to fill me when I am empty, to raise me when my spirit withers.

What shall I do? Where shall go I that I might be found?

Nothing? No where? Every where.

I shall go here and be quiet. I shall pour out the lostness of my soul, the weakness of my heart, the hunger to know, and in the midst of it all you will be there. You will find me once more amid my tears and fatigue.

You will find me. Even as you just have, here and now, as I pour out my heart and realize … once more … that it is not my heart I feel, but your heart, O Great Seeker, your love.

Once more, you have found me. Once more you fill me. Once more I know the consoling Presence of the Love so far beyond and so much greater than anything else.

Once more, I am ready to live, really live this day, knowing what I need to know, filled … once more … with the wondrous substance of grace, the Love for which you made me, a vessel to know and carry you to others.

Pr. David L. Miller