Saturday, May 09, 2015

Saturday, May 9. 2015

Colossians 3:12

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.

Lilly’s dance

Lilly dances with delight as we sing“Glory to God in the Highest.” She steps into the aisle with a little girl twirl when the choir sings and the congregation lifts praise, “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Her feet are made for joy and her soul for delight.

But greater still is the delight I see and feel as I watch her and coax her to come toward the Lord’s Table where I stand, hoping the congregation will see her and feel what I feel.

Tell me, Jesus, is this what you want me to know and feel, this delight of love, this joy in knowing and praising you?

You want me to feel the love and compassion that fills you, the kindness and humility in which you give yourself to me, the patience and care that flows from the beauty of your heart. You ache for me to know this beauty that I see in this girl, barely three.

Delight fills me as I watch her, and I am clothed with the life you want for me, this joy, this delight from which love and compassion flow as naturally as laughter from the lips of a loved child.

You do not ask anything of me that you do not give.You do not command but invite me to be clothed in the life you are, O Christ, the life you give. For all that you are ... you give to me, to us, and I see what you are in Lilly’s dance.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, May 07, 2015

Thursday, May 7, 2015

Colossians 3:11

In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!

One Love

Jennifer and Jennifer recently came to our church. They are married, and they came seeking baptism for their two children.

They had experienced little openness in other congregations. Now, they came seeking a community of grace, a question rising from deep within, Can we find you here, Lord?

We laughed when one of them asked if she should cover her tattoos the day of the service. The serenity prayer are tattooed on her ankle; her infant's feet are inked on her arm.

She didn't want to suffer further rejection or distract attention from the baptism of her precious children.

I doubt the tattoos will trouble anyone, though some may be distressed by their marriage. But what a gift they are, Gracious God. They are a flesh and blood expression of who you are and what you are doing among us and in all creation.

You are the Love who transcends every human boundary. You are the hunger in our hearts to be joined in one love—the Love you are—beyond all that separates.

Lesbian couples and their children … and even those barely civilized Sythians in southern Russia the Colossians wanted no part of—you join us as one that your love may be all in all, a communion of grace.


Make us one, Lord, joined at the heart with your heart, sharing the Love you are.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, May 05, 2015

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Colossians 3:9-10

Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.

Rain

I love the rain, especially at night. I lie in bed and hear it steady on the roof. Sometimes there is only a few intermittent drops, and I will it, pray for it to fall in a steady pulse that calms my heart.

I feel peace within as the house covers me and the waters surround me. I am part of this great thing called … life.

I am one with it all--the falling waters, the rhythm of the drops, the earth and trees and all that is washed fresh, drinking in life; the street, too, rinsed clean, the tires I hear on highway 355. All of it and more encompassed in the rain’s embrace.

Sometimes, Holy One, my best times, I feel and know myself within you. I am not separate, but somehow inside of you, being bathed and washed, cleansed and renewed by the Love that is your Life. I am me, distinct but not separate, inside of you, part of you, knowing you not as one who looks on from outside, but who is part of the Love and Life you are.

I am wanted, welcome, belonging, treasured, cared for and immersed like a drop of water in an unimaginable sea. My life is encompassed in Love that surrounds and seeks to freshen and fill me and everything.


This is what it is like to know you, Holy One, and to know myself. For I am not what I do, what I think and what I have accomplished. These are but the clothes in which I hide my nakedness. I am a drop of rain, part of the Love falling to earth to make each day new.  

Pr. David L. Miller