New day

Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.’ (Matthew 9:17)

New day

Make me new today, dear Friend. It is not an unusual request. Normal really.

I often need to be made new, to feel the fresh air of morning filled with the awareness of a Great Love that is everywhere … and everywhere eager to greet me to tell me who I am.

So make me new again. Pour the wine of your loving presence into my tired heart. Shatter the shell of old hurts and sadness that haunt me when weariness settles on my shoulders.

Let me drink deeply of the Love you are that I may know, again, that there is nothing to do, nothing more to prove, no need to be anything different or better than this old heart that needs you most of all.

I pray with no fear, no doubt or worry because I know you. You have given me that singular privilege.

With a smile, even now, you pour the inebriating wine of your presence and burst open a tattered, old identity I have carried around much too long. Must is a big word in that old self. Should occupies a large space, too.

But there are no musts and no shoulds with you. There is only this Love that comes and breaks apart the idea that our value, our worth, is determined by our accomplishments, by building an identity around what we have done, as opposed to what happens in us and what flows from us when we know … you.

We are what your love makes in us, awakens in us. We are what we feel and know when inebriated with the Love that is fresh and new as early morning air.

Pr. David L. Miller