Fall into the Heart

While everyone was amazed at all that he was doing, he said to his disciples, ‘Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into human hands.’ But they did not understand this saying... (Luke 9:43b-45a)

I understand why Jesus’ disciples didn’t understand. They didn’t want to. They didn’t want to consider the goodness they felt when near him could and would be lost. The life radiating from him illumined and warmed their mortal hearts with hope that life could be more than whatever small joys they managed to cram into a precious few years.

They had experienced the Extraordinary. Without Jesus, without his palpable nearness, the touch of his flesh and the sound of his voice, life would again become  ... normal, mundane, ordinary.

Who wants normal when you have known and felt that which exceeds every expectation? And who wants to contemplate the inevitable passing of everything we know and love and are?

All of life is shadowed by death, every loss a little reminder of what cannot be denied. Implicitly knowing this from our earliest days, we anxiously grasp as much as we can hold, a death-grip on whatever good has touched our lives and hearts.

But there is one more thing to know, just one ... that changes everything. The Love who gives life brings Life Extraordinaire from every loss, if we but release our grip on what was ... and trust that Love always has a new day waiting to be born.

This new day ... that can be everyday ...  radiates the Life and Love of being with Jesus, our souls alive with the hope and love he awakened in his first disciples and now in us.

It was necessary for him to suffer and die. Only so could he reveal the fundamental truth of our existence. The Love who holds us all never lets go.

So we ... in every struggle and every loss ... can release our grip and let ourselves fall into the heart of Love at heart of the universe.

David L. Miller

 

 

 

 

In all that is love

 

Then Jesus called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. (Luke 9:1-20)

The kingdom of God is the energy of divine love pouring from the Loving Mystery, drawing all that is into its healing waters.   

To be captured in its flow, even for a moment, transports the heart into the joy-filled freedom of knowing all that we are is welcome, enveloped in the Love who draws us near to heal our hearts and make us whole.

The disciples knew this Love in Jesus’ presence as he sent them out to bless, heal and announce the great tide of God’s energetic love present among them. Their power was the surge of divine love awakened within them, freeing them from their fears to bless, welcome and share the Love inundating their hearts.

The power of the kingdom remains available to us in these latter days.

It is the joy and freedom awakened when our hearts know and are filled with the Love who embraces us despite ourselves, our sins and failures. The energy of divine love is known in all that is love, in the welcome of friends, the beauty of an autumn sun, the compassionate tear that stings our eyes over the suffering of a friend ... or of human souls a thousand miles away.

All of this and so much more is the energy of the Love who is and was and ever shall be embracing our lives, lifting us out of ourselves, out of our funk, that our startled faces may glow with the light of an eternal love, free and filled with the joy God intends.

David L. Miller

How to listen

 

Then pay attention to how you listen; for to those who have, more will be given; and from those who do not have, even what they seem to have will be taken away. (Luke 8:18)

It is not the knowledge of many things that fills the heart but the savor of a few. So listen ... and hear.

Hear the lilt of a voice that awakens hope, renewing confidence and joy. Savor the voice and the emotions stirred. They tell you how to listen to the Voice who speaks within you.

Even more, they are the Voice of Love restoring your wholeness and setting you free to live beyond the bondage of failures, sad memories and anxious preoccupations.

The human heart more easily dwells on what is wrong, what may go wrong, what is lost, what we no longer or could never have.

But the Voice of Love draws us forward, out of our internal quagmire into the lightness of being, out of isolation into the communion of mutual love and regard, out of ourselves into the wholeness of relationships that awaken gratitude for the goodness of life and the sacred beauty of loving laughter.

So listen to the moments that awaken life in your mortal being. Pay attention, not once in a while but every hour. Recall and retell moments that freed your heart to breathe. Turn them over. Examine them from every direction lest they be lost. 

And give thanks that the Voice of Love found you ... exactly where you are.

David L. Miller