Tuesday, August 4, 2015

John 6:35 

Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

Soul food

I know a food beyond my daily bread. I have tasted it, and I know … it satisfies every longing in your heart. It quiets every doubt and fear. It stills the restless yearning for more. It opens a hidden Source of love and joy in my startled soul.

It awakens such joy that sometime I cannot speak. I try, but words won’t come because what I know is beyond words.

How can one speak when you find yourself inside Love, a Love that engulfs every part of you and fills your heart beyond its capacity to hold? What words will do?

But no words are needed, not when you are carried away in a flood of knowing the Love Who Is … and who is in every love.

This is my food, my drink, the sustenance of my soul. Without it, the heart hungers and thirsts, it withers and grows cold, cramped and sad; the fruit of love it should bear dies and dries on the vine, half formed.

So I come here, Jesus. I come to know you. I come to savor, too, so many memories of being in the presence of those whose hearts are open to the Love that fills you, each shining with a rare beauty all their own, yet transparent to you.

Being with you, with them, feeling the Mystery, awakens the Love you are in me.

I become myself, the self I always was, the self I always am, the self that fills and spills out of me if only I eat the food and drink the wine of the Love who is present in you and in all who shine with the beauty you are.

For it is true, as you are, so are we.

We, too, are an incarnation of divine love and life, a unity of Spirit and flesh, but we forget. We lose touch with our soul, thinking we are merely what we do or how others see us.

Being here with you now, sitting, too, in the presence of those who bear this same Love, is soul food, my food and drink, awakening the startling beauty and love, the life and joy that is your life, your love and joy in us.

Is it any wonder… that I come here wanting more?

Pr. David L. Miller