Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Wednesday, February 28, 2018

John 2:18-21

The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. 

The place

Some places are holy. They are like temples, where heaven and earth are one and we taste the grace of God.

Some holy places are not places at all, but a person … or a group of people … in whose presence we feel and know God’s presence touching and filling our hearts.

We should hurry back to these places of presence … and to these people, look into their eyes and listen to their laughter. It revives us and breathes joy into our hearts. The life of God comes alive in us.

God is and can be known everywhere for God is an everywhere God. True, but this everywhere God is known in special places, and the temple was central for the Jewish people. The temple was ‘the place of meeting.’

Jesus says that central place of meeting was being replaced by his body. Knowing him, seeing him, praying to and with him, listening to him, being with those who know and love him … this has become the place where God is known.

Everyone and everything and every place where the Spirit of his grace and mercy breathes is the place of meeting.  

I recently heard someone described as a ‘safe place’ for the troubled people he served. He was not very religious, I was told. But listening, I knew, his life was a holy place, a temple of grace.

Pr. David L. Miller


Sunday, February 25, 2018

Sunday, February 25, 2018

Mark 8: 34-35

He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.

Be large

Come into a larger world. See it. Feel it. Let it full your heart. It is right there ... where you are.

The world of Jesus is the community of love, the kingdom of God revealed in his every touch and healing, every time he blesses the broken, in his invitation to see every moment as a gift and every human soul as God’s beloved.

Give yourself to this, he says. Set aside your narrow ego, step beyond what it good only for you and seek this world of communal grace. Enter the struggle of living the truth of this world, and you will find yourself.

You will discover your truest heart and the love you were created to know and live. You will find the joy of hearts more beautiful and alive than any you have ever known.

And you will know me, your highest joy.

Life is not getting what you think you want or achieving the goal you imagine will make you important ... or happy.

You were made for this larger world where the Love breaks every boundary and makes your heart as wide as the sky. Anything less is beneath you.

You are Love’s precious child.

Pr. David L. Miller