Friday, April 26, 2013

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





Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Wednesday, April 24, 2013



Today’s text

John 13:34

I give you a new commandment: love one another; you must love one another just as I have loved you.

Reflection

Jesus calls us to ourselves. He calls us to our joy, the joy God intends for every human soul, a joy that is known only in loving.

Creation, life and our precious lives are expression of God, who is Love--the One who creates us out of the fullness of divine being. All that is--and each of us--is an expression of divine being, an extraversion of the substance of God’s soul, a soul that is all love and nothing but loving.

Love creates for the joy of giving and seeing its own joy in the face of that which it creates.

Love hungers to see the smile that lights our eyes when we wake up once more and realize the wonder and sheer gratuity of being alive, of coming to a new day and feeling fresh spring breeze on our flesh.

Love smiles on the startled face of our amazement when we realize we were called from nothingness into existence solely that we might know ourselves loved.

We are children of this Love, extraversions of Love’s inner heart, incarnations of the One Love from all creation comes.

The call to love as Jesus loves is a call home, a call to be ourselves, a call to share the joy of the One who made us.

We come to one more day, one more opportunity to tremble with joy at the gift of our existence, one more chance to laugh and sing, to witness beauty and to give the beauty of grace and love to Love’s other children that they, too, might be themselves.

We have now, this moment. Tomorrow is not ours and may never be. But today is ours, and we can pour out whatever love as is in us--and share God’s own smile.

It’s what we are made for.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Today’s text

John 13:34

I give you a new commandment: love one another; you must love one another just as I have loved you.

Reflection

These are words for a community seeking to keep alive the presence and intuition of Jesus among them.

How shall we know him when he is physically gone from us? How can the divine and the material be joined--as they were in him--so our present moments are transformed into the joy of eternity?

Fear of absence and a burning hunger to experience Jesus lies behind these words.

But there is no need for fear. We need only begin again, each day, to pour out our hearts in love within the community who knows and remembers Jesus--and we will know him. He will be there.

The church, the community of holy remembrance, gathers each week to remember him and place broken bread in empty hands to remember God’s love for the empty, the needy, the hurting, the happy, the dying, the confused, the frightened, the smug, for sinners old and young.

The broken bread tells us everything we need to know about the heart of God, broken and given to the deserving and undeserving alike.

But really, who deserves the complete, unmitigated love that poured from Jesus’ heart, letting us know that he was … and is … divine in more ways than we can possibly understand?

Once having tasted this love you can never get enough. You want it again and again until it fills you.

Jesus tells us not to stand staring at heaven and hoping. Look at each other, he says. Look into each others’ eyes and need. See their hopes and sorrows, Share your hearts and learn to give what is in your heart and hands to each other. I will be there, and you will know me.

His command to love one another is not a command but an invitation to meet him where he is--in the midst of a community hungry for his love and in our own surprising hearts that are more divine than we know.

Pr. David L. Miller