Saturday, February 22, 2014

Today’s text

Matthew 5:46-47

For if you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Do not even the tax collectors do as much? And if you save your greetings for your brothers, are you doing anything exceptional?

Reflection

Stay open, you say to me. Do not let wounds or worries close your heart. Stay open to the world, to every moment. Do not let sadness or troubles shut you down.

Greet each day, each moment, each person and encounter with the anticipation of newness.

Each day is new. Each moment is unique and complete. Each person and encounter is unrepeatable and replete with promise and blessing.

Open- hearted greeting is not reserved only for that which we know or for those who are familiar and favorable to us. Such a life is a self-imposed prison, isolation from the dance of grace in this unpredictable world.

Greeting each person, each fresh day and moment is the attitude of the disciple who knows … there is love within that needs to flow out in welcome to each face we meet.

It is the manner of those who know … grace resides in the being of those we meet in the routine places of our days, a grace that, once released, makes smiles and laughter as it is freed from the dam of fear that holds it back. 

Open-hearted welcome of life and the lives we meet is the posture of those who know … you, Loving Mystery.

It is the faith of those who know you are Love--and who know that you abide in every place and are the promise of every moment.

Our open-hearted welcome of each day, each person and moment welcomes you, all the Love you are, into our little lives.

So open my heart, my hands and eyes, my ears and senses to receive whatever this day brings, for whatever it brings, it brings you, … and you give me life.

And then, tomorrow will be a new day, once more.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, February 21, 2014

Today’s text

Matthew 5:48

You must therefore be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Reflection

Perfection is not about arriving. It is about moving toward wholeness, which is what the word actually means, moving … toward completion of what you are.

And what are we? We are individual expressions of the Being of the Creator, the One, the heavenly Father who is love.

We are individual expressions of Love in flesh and bone, heart and mind, each one unique, each one different.

Perfection is not a static state of arrival at a final destination. It is not purity measured by a standard outside our own being and identity.

Perfection, movement toward completion, is walking deeper into that unique expression of Love that we each are.

The patterns of our lives, who are friends are, the work we do, the people we love and treasure might faithfully be assessed by asking, do they allow and empower me to be the deepest truest expression of the Love the Spirit is shaping in me through genetics, my history and experiences?

Do they give me wings and allow my spirit to soar, or do they tie me to the earth so that I am less that God intends?

God seeks to love the world to greater life through each of us. When we fail to take seriously the call to perfection, the Love God is … is less known. The world is less loved. And we are less ourselves, our joy erodes, our beauty fades.

So we seek and find the sacraments that feed our souls, the places, the graces and faces that move us further along the road to the beauty of perfection in love.

That is our life’s task. It is the Spirit’s work. It is difficult, sometimes painful, but nothing else much matters or gives quite so much joy.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Today’s text

Matthew 5:46-48

For if you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Do not even the tax collectors do as much? And if you save your greetings for your brothers, are you doing anything exceptional? Do not even the gentiles do as much? You must therefore be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Reflection

What do you ask of us, Holy One, except that we become ourselves. And what are we, if not love?

Our true self is love, the wholehearted generosity of the One, the heavenly Father in whose image we are made.

Made in the image of Love, made by Love, made for Love, made to know and to become the Love we are.

You call us to perfection, to completion so that we may know who we are … and know you, whose image we are, whose Being we share.

This is not something beyond us, but something already within us that our fears and wounds keep us from seeing and knowing and feeling.

That is why I keep returning to this place again and again.

I come to light a candle and listen to depths of myself lost amid manifold thoughts, ideas, emotions and demands that clutter my mind each day.

I come to the quiet, to the simple light of a flame that burns not only on my desk but in me, the candle of divine presence that is my true self, the breath of being, the fire of love that appears from my depths in these moments.

And in these moments I know. I know who I am, and I know who you are, Holy One.

I know, too, the souls of everyone I meet, many of them lost in the rush of the day, the demands of life and wounds that hide their truth from them, the truth that is your truth.

They, too, are love, the breath of being; the inner flame of love is their essential nature, an awareness hidden from most of them until moments when your presence in others and in this wondrous world we share awakens their hearts to the truth.

Thank you for those moments of awareness that bring us back to ourselves. Thank you for those souls who awaken our hearts to the divine flame within. Through them, you make us more alive, more ourselves than we have ever been.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Today’s text

Matthew 5:43-45

You have heard how it was said, You will love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say this to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you; so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he causes his sun to rise on the bad as well as the good, and sends down rain to fall on the upright and the wicked alike.

Reflection

This day, Holy One, let me stay in the current of love flowing from your divine heart. That is what these difficult words are about, are they not?

Our brother, Jesus, tells us what you want for us, and yes, for the world, too.

The sweet light of morning, the dawning of newness on fresh-fallen snow, glows gold and blinding crystal on powdery white so recently fallen from winter skies.

Light streams over the earth, a new day, a fresh start.

Nothing stops the light. Nothing stops the day from coming. It is a flow of grace, of love and wonder from you who are Infinite Source.

It does not select or choose. It just flows, on and on, seeking every cold corner to warm and make alive.

This is your nature, ever flowing light embracing the earth and warming our hearts with the hope that life might be as bright and wondrous as the scene outside my window.

I look and see, but you invite me to more, to come out and play in the morning light and be warmed through so that I am one with the light that delights my senses and awakens my heart.

“Be one with me,” you say. “Let the light I am fill you so that you may become light amid winter’s chill and be like the sun’s streaming rays, ever flowing, embracing the earth and each moment like sun rays from my eternal store.

“This is joy, and everything that stops the flow is pain.

“So flow, dearest one, flow, even as I flow into you on this new winter’s day.”

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, February 17, 2014

Today’s text

Matthew 5:38-39

You have heard how it was said: Eye for eye and tooth for tooth. But I say this to you: offer no resistance to the wicked. On the contrary, if anyone hits you on the right cheek, offer him the other as well … .

Reflection

I know irony when I hear it … usually. And it is clear this is irony, since Jesus himself resisted evil everyday, not with violence but with words and the power within him.

He did not back down in the face of evil or oppressors who stole the lives and substance of the weak. His voice was for them and against those who took advantage.

And he certainly did not encourage people to go back to where they could be abused again and again, like some doormat.

Even this turning of the cheek is an act of resistance, an act that says you do not control me or determine my worth. You cannot touch what is deep and most precious in me.

Truth is the slap described here is most likely a backhand. The right hand can backhand a right cheek easily, but the left? That it cannot reach.

It was as if to say there is something in me you cannot touch, something your insult and injury cannot touch. I am a person, who at depth of soul knows my very breathing is the breath of the One who dwells within me and who delights in my very existence.

It is only those who know, who truly know and have felt this delight who can overcome circumstances and remain the strength and beauty they are in troubled moments.

It is only they who they are not defined by others anger or evil, who can lift up their heads without shame when insults, demands or sorrows come.

They are your true children, dearest God, the brothers and sisters of Jesus who know who they are. 

They are your divine breath given form and substance, body and heart, that your beauty may breathe in the world and grace all of us.

So breathe peace and know who you are.

Pr. David L. Miller