Thursday, April 2, 2015

 Revelation 12:1-2

A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth.

Pregnant with life

With each morning a challenge comes. Shall I rise above the lethargy that longs only for my bed, or shall I come here and seek you, Holy One? Shall I descend the stairs once more that my fingers may find the keys and my mind the words that open my heart?

Shall I come to this candle-lit space that I might know you and be raised from sleep once more?

Resurrection is not only an event but a practice to be renewed each day. Our souls are pregnant with life.

The One who is Love waits to be born again in us that we may know the exhilaration of love that is Love passing from the womb of our souls, through our lips and fingertips to speak and touch this world.

We give birth again to you whose birth within brings joy that shines in our eyes and spills from our hearts.  

These seem strange thoughts, but they are true to your people in every age. We, your people, are the woman clothed with the sun, pregnant with you.

Will is required for the new to be born and raise us to life, the will to pray or sing, to listen or see, to serve or to just keep trying to do the good when it is easier to quit. Such is the labor that delivers life.

For me, it requires the will to get out of bed listen again to your word (even strange passages like this one). I listen to you, to life and to my heart, and the birth of Spirit within my spirit comes.

You are born again in me, and I am alive with life that does not die. Resurrection comes once more with joy and hope so much brighter than my candles. 

That’s the way it works. It’s why I come here.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

1 Corinthians 5:7-8

Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch, as you really are unleavened. For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

As you are

Who are we?

We are not a people bound by the past, stuck in old sins and patterns that hold us fast in the mire of soulless living.

Resurrection power lives in our souls. Christ stirs within, raising our hopes and vision, transforming us into more than we ever thought we could be.

We are people of the resurrection, souls in whom the light of day casts out night. The joy of hope drives out despair and the presence of love awakens peace … and the passion to be the love we know.

Christ has broken death’s grip. He lives not far off but within the processes of history, in the fabric of life and in movements of our hearts.

He is the whisper reminding us anew, “You are more than you think. You bear the life who is life, the love who is Love.

“Lift yourself above the passion to pay evil for evil, beyond surrender to petty angers and grudges, above the anxious need to prove you are important. 

“And do not diminish yourself or what you can do. For you are a vessel of my life with the power to bless and lift others into the fullness of who they are as my blessed children.”

“The festival of life has come. All things are new, including you.”

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, March 30, 2015

March 30, 2015

Luke 24:1-3

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body.

It’s dawn

It was dawn when they went to the tomb to care for their friend’s body. It was dawn when they discovered he was not there.

It was dawn. But they didn't know it was a new day when the promise of life was fulfilled.

Now every new dawn is new. The weight of yesterday need not encumber the freshness of morning. Fear of tomorrow need not cloud the horizon.

Each day is new. Each is laced with hope for the fullness of the One who always was and will be is present and can be known in every love, every beauty and every grace that touches our flesh.

Every morning glimmers with the dawn of eternal light, of everlasting day because the One who is Life and Love lives.

Today … whatever it is and brings … can be embraced in hope with love for we know that whatever else it holds … it holds you, Holy One, and you hold us.

Amazed, Peter ran to the empty tomb. But amazement is not enough and not nearly what you want for us. Amazement is not joy. It is not trust and anticipation that the Risen Love you are will meet us on the way, making each day new not just a weary repetition of what was.

You rise to make us new, transformed by Love into the Love that rises anew every day.

It is dawn. Tomorrow has come. The future has dawned. Eternity appears now in the crazy, complicated mess of living.

It is dawn. The promise of life shines fresh.  Give us the eyes to see and the heart to know you, the morning light of eternal Love in each new day.

Pr. David L. Miller