October 27, 2014

Today’s text
 

1 John 3:1-2

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.

As you see …

I am glad I was born in a rural place where fields roll among hills carved by ancient glaciers, where golden trees follow valleys, crowding near rivulets that run when the rains come, seeking the water of life … just like me.

The trees, I see, are my brothers and sisters, teaching me what I tend to forget.

Autumn colors are all around, not only in rural landscapes. But seeing the hills roll before your eyes from the top of a ridge, hazy mounds purple in far distance, awakens the awareness of beauty in a young child, or at least in the child that I was … and in many ways still am.

But as the years pass a blessed awareness appeared: Somehow, mysteriously, the beauty you see resides also within you, or you wouldn’t be able to see it at all.

The hills whisper that the beauty you see is the beauty you are.

We become … more and more what we see, more of the beauty … or, sadly, the ugliness or distractions or whatever it is on which our eyes most linger.  

You are the Great Beauty shining in the hills of childhood memory and in the eyes and hearts of so many, in so many places where I sat and listened--and looked into the glow of eyes and hearts where shined your Love and Beauty … and was made more alive than I had ever been.

I saw you then … and now, and you continue to make me feel truly alive, moving me to hunger for more … of  You. Whatever goodness and beauty lies within this soul was brought to life by seeing you where you appeared, or at wherever I had eyes to see and know you.

As we see, so we become, so let me see you that as you are so I may be.

Pr.  David L. Miller