For sure

... they are beloved ... for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. (Romans 11:28b-29)

“What do ya’ know for sure?” I still hear the uplift in my father’s voice as he greeted farmers entering Apple River Feed and Seed, our family business.

The most common reply was, “Not much, Lavern; how about you?” With that and a chuckle, business commenced. And why not? Everyone who heard Dad’s voice knew that dusty office was a safe, welcoming space. Not so with much of life.

Threats are real, the future impenetrable, and we cannot fathom the mysteries of what God is working in our world … or in us … at any given moment.

But this you can know ... for sure. God is faithful. Always. God’s loving promises are irrevocable, unbreakable and absolutely certain. Count on it.

With an everlasting love, God claims and calls you beloved. Grace and forgiveness are yours. You are held in a mercy that refuses to turn away. Nothing you do, no trouble that comes will invalidate God’s promise to love, forgive and seek you.

This is the one true thing.

Pr. David L. Miller

The One who hears

Hear my prayer, O God; give ear to the words of my mouth. (Psalm 54:2)

The Holy One hears even when words fail us as so often they do. We sit to speak to God, hoping to express the depth of what is in us. But strands of hope and longing, anxiety and confusion tangle into an inseparable knot impossible to unwind.

We fall silent, restless and without hope of naming what we need, lacking words that speak the ache of our longing.

But do not fear or fall into despair. You are loved beyond all human measure by the One whose compassionate nearness is greater than your heart, more abundant than your need and who smiles at your confusion.

Offer the quagmire of your heart with a single word, “Help.’ Then rest and breathe in the Love who is always with you and always for you.

God’s unfailing love, this alone, unties the kinks in our hearts, breathing peace in our souls. It is then that we find the words we most want and need to speak, “Thank you, dearest God, for hearing my heart and sharing your own."  

Pr. David L. Miller

This moment

 

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. (Philippians 4:4-5)

I despair of saying anything useful, something that will lighten your burden or make our current situation easier to bear. Everything is strange, emotions are frayed and we should not expect life will get easier, more free or fun any time soon.

The president says the pandemic is going around a bend. But if so, it’s because we are going around in a circle that will not be broken until there is a vaccine Americans trust.

So … must we just grit our teeth and bear it? No. There is more. There is always more.

We have this moment, and this moment, however conflicted, burdened or bleak, is more alive and beautiful that we know … or claim.

Yesterday, a disabled woman hobbled across the narthex as we completed a long afternoon of recording an online worship service. Out of breath, she was looking for a place to vote. Hearing there is no early voting at St. Timothy, she sat with a sigh, exhausted, and we talked.

She had no deep story, no tale of woe, just weary frustration that she’d been directed to the wrong place on this dreary, gray day devoid of sunlight.

We sat there, listening, me to her and her to me. Nothing important happened. Nothing memorable was said, just a few words of encouragement and direction to an early voting site. Then, refreshed, she stood and limped toward the door, offering words of thanks for a moment’s respite.

That was that. Nothing important in the world was changed, except for the two of us.

Our paths crossed in a moment we could not have anticipated, a drop in the endless ocean of time, meaningless it seems. But by being there, by paying attention, late afternoon weariness became a moment of grace on a chill autumn day when a stranger became a sacrament of the gentleness and hope for which we ache as these endless days stretch toward the horizon.

Every moment holds exactly this simple, gracious possibility, the opportunity to just … be there … with your heart open … in every present moment … and then the next … and the next.

This is how we get through this time … and every time … and become more human in the process.

So don’t get downhearted. Rejoice in the present moment, for the Lord is near. Closer than you think.

Pr. David L. Miller

 

 

 

Wanted

 

                                                                                                                                           Friday, October 23

‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.’ (John 8:12)

Kernels of whole wheat sweeten my morning toast, slathered, too, with peanut butter which is nature’s perfect food as far as I am concerned.

Each kernel, gathered from Earth’s goodness by some blessed soul, transports the heart to another time and place, Nebraska, at wheat harvest, and a river of kernels flowing between my fingers as I ran my hand through a hopper of harvested wheat.

And this moves the mind to yesterday; rounding a bend through a wood on Naper Blvd., thousands of trees surround and I see just one. Orange and gold, reds afire, autumnal splendor lit from within by a light that seems not of this earth.

But it is, as is my prayer. ‘ Thank you for letting me be alive, right here, right now, to see this light that ignites something warm and true in my heart,’ a heart sullen and heavy but a moment ago.

But not now.  Now I know a light from beyond that is within this heart of mine, utter gift of a Love who lights the earth and this soul with a love that goes where it wants … because for reasons beyond us … it wants us, and wants us to know.

Pr. David L. Miller

Peace awaits you

 

Monday, October 11

Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. (Philippians 4:5)

Stress is pandemic in this time of COVID-19. The bitterest election in recent U.S. history draws near. Various news outlets and websites are making millions marketing fear. Schools struggle to gather students … or not. Zoom meetings weary the heart.

Everything we do from getting groceries, doing our jobs and caring for our families seems to be harder … because it is harder than in those times we label ‘normal.’

Nothing new or insightful in any of these statements as much as we would like some insight or perspective that would make it all, well, easier.

Is there anything to heal, to comfort, to provide peace or at least balance amid the flood that, at least from time-to time, washes all peace and balance from our hearts, leaving a churning quagmire of mixed and anxious emotions impossible to sort out?

One thing helps … at least me, and it should surprise no one who is a person of faith. Abiding.

Peace is an inside job. Nothing from without can give it to you or restore your ability to live above the churning issues of the day that threaten to turn your heart into a restless sea.

Retreat into your soul and find love there. Recall moments of loving; relive them. Savor them. Feel the desire for this love to fill you … and to fill everything.

You were created in the image of Love. That is why love restores you, calms you, satisfies and completes you. The further you live from love the more anxious and troubled you will be.

The Lord who is Love is near. In fact, the Love the Lord is … lives in you. This is your deepest and truest self. Find silence under a golden tree or in a melody (or anything) that transports you to that inner room where you feel and know the love you are. And abide. Rest there.

The churning seas that threaten to throw us overboard will quiet and you will meet the One who is always there … waiting.

Pr. David L. Miller

 

Food & drink

 Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. (John 6:53-57)

Eat my flesh? Drink my blood? Really? These are metaphors, of course. Flesh and blood are a way of saying the whole person, everything they are.

And we do, in fact, eat Jesus, so that everything he is may be ours—his life, his love, his strength, his suffering and especially the intimacy he shares with the “living Father.”

We were never intended to be outsiders, looking in at this mystery. Our fulfillment is to be inside, participating in the unfailing current of love that flows between the heart of God and Jesus’ own heart.

So we eat his words and savor his actions. We hold them in the inner eye of imagination and turn them over in our minds, not so much to understand things about him as to experience his presence awakening within us, illumining mind and heart.

Then, we can sink into our hearts and abide with him, resting in the love we share. Do this, and after a while, your life, too, becomes food and drink for a famished world.

Pr. David L. Miller

Let it flow

Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ (John 4:13-14)

Jesus was tired when he got to the well at Sychar, but the woman he met there was in worse shape.

She lugged water from the well every day, week after week, a daily slog without end. But this barely scratches the depth of her fatigue. She was also on her fifth or sixth husband or boyfriend or whatever they were.

World-weary is a term that comes to mind for her; burnt out is another, and we’ve all felt it.

Whatever you call it, it is not living. Life, eternal life as Jesus calls it, is about connection with the Love from whom all things come, the Love who is source of your soul.

Living is the experience of divine love flowing like a fountain in your own heart, bubbling up, filling every cold and empty place and busting forth in your smile, your grace and in the beauty hidden within, waiting for you to cast aside your fears and let it shine.

That beauty, of course, is the presence of Christ, a living stream of love that never runs dry.

Pr. David L. Miller

Always more

Which of you desires life,
   and covets many days to enjoy good?
Keep your tongue from evil,
   and your lips from speaking deceit. (Psalm 34:12-13)

Scratch a typical human being and you quickly find a burning desire for life, a passion to feel the exhilaration of being fully alive. We hunger for more life and more moments when “it can’t get better than this.”

No matter our age, we want more years to have and hold our beloved. We want to watch the generations unfold and bless those who carry our blood for their journeys into years and adventures we will not see and cannot imagine. We long to be blessed by their smiles one more time … and to celebrate every success that awakens their joy.

Wanting this, how shall we live, except with gratitude for the gift of life and the privilege of loving and being loved?

So live with honest hearts, blessing as we have been blessed, thanking our amazing God, ever strong and ever true, who is the mysterious source of all that is good—our hope when threat is near and our joy when the sun shines warm on our shoulders.

And know, there is always more.

Pr. David L. Miller

 

Unnameable

 Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. (John 6: 35)

Understanding your own soul—let alone someone else’s—is a lifelong project. Even Jesus searched for words to name the Mystery in his soul.

I am the light. I am the gate. I am the good shepherd, the true vine, the resurrection, the way, the truth, the life. None of them says enough, and if you think long about anyone of them your head begins to spin until your mind collapses in an uncomprehending heap.

 At their root is something Moses heard when he took off his shoes and hid his eyes from a burning bush. “I AM,” the divine voice said from the fire. “I am who I am.” Moses pushed, but got no further explanation and there was none he likely would have understood anyway.

Jesus puts a face on this Mystery whom no eye has seen so that seeing him we might know there is nothing to fear, ever. Look at him long enough and you begin to see that the great I AM loves us beyond all reason for reasons we will never understand. This love is soul food, a taste of eternity that makes the heart bold.

The other words—vine, gate, shepherd, etc.—offer a few ideas that feed our illusion that we actually understand him. But ultimately, no name will do.

Pr. David L. Miller

Just listen

I hear a voice I had not known: ‘I relieved your shoulder of the burden ... .' (Psalm 81:6)

Stop. For one moment, just stop and listen. Listen to nature. Listen to your breath. Listen to the voices within you. Listen to the person who just happens by. Listen to the world as it stumbles through another day.

You may hear a voice you barely recognize … or one that is so familiar, so near and dear you cannot imagine a day without it.

God speaks in all things. There is no speech, no words, but the voice of Love speaks every moment, begging you to feel and know Love’s holy gift in your every breath.

The divine voice coaxes you to delight in every beauty and to relish every love, to savor every grace that frees and fills you with joy, and to give yourself to every situation that cries for your love.

God is always present, working, speaking in the depth and dynamics of every situation to heal and bless, to guide and give life, abundantly, to every soul and all creation.

Don’t believe the lie that God is far off or silent. Just listen.

Pr. David L. Miller

Live your joy

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us (Ephesians 5:1-2)

Imitate God? How can one ever imitate the inimitable?

The idea overwhelms the mind and shatters the heart. We cannot imagine the majesty and mystery of God who commands the morning, rides on the wings of the wind and yet is closer than our breath.

And we know all-too-well the things we cannot forget--our betrayals and falsehoods, the words and memories that attack in the night, the aching regret over not being the person you could have been, the sin you tell no one except God alone.

Knowing all this, know one thing more: You are God’s beloved, treasured from all eternity, chosen before the birth of time, destined to be one with the One who is Love and nothing but.

So release every shame, every guilt. You are just as beloved as Jesus when he stood dripping wet in his baptismal waters and heard the voice, “You are my Beloved.”

Breathe that in every morning. Make it your mantra through the day. Then, dearly beloved, go live your joy.

Pr. David L. Miller

Living bread

 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’  (John 6:51)

You are what you eat, which is true of both body and soul. So do not consume the anger and negativity that flows so freely in society. It poisons the heart and kills the soul. You are made for living bread.

“So take me to your soul,” Jesus pleads. “My life, my words, the Love that takes flesh in my every act is bread for your soul. Take it in. All that I am is yours. Savor it all until your sleeping soul awakens, and you become the love that I am.

“My flesh will become yours, and yours will become mine. We will live in heart-to-heart communion, you in me and I in you, one, sharing the everlasting love of God. You will taste eternity, knowing how dear you are to God and the forever that awaits you.

“You spend so much of your life on that which you imagine will make you happy. But only the bread of my soul satisfies the hunger in your heart for that something more you cannot give yourself.

“I am that more. I am bread, and I freely give.”

Pr. David L. Miller

Taste and see

I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth. ... O taste and see that the Lord is good. (Psalm 34:1,7)

Words transport the soul to distant times and places. Combine them with melody, and they can carry you into a Love unlike any other.

Take these words, “taste and see the goodness of the Lord.” A cantor sang this chorus, his voice warm with faith, joy radiating from his face, as he stood near the casket of a man who blessed me without ever knowing me.

His life was so transparent to divine love that his face glowed with peace, even as cancer drained him of life. Looking at him, you knew all was well because of the Love who filled him.

Decades later, the sound of that song carries me to that moment so that it is no longer past, but a living sacrament of Christ’s love filling my heart in the present moment.

God‘s love and light still shine in this world. Darkness and hate, suffering and sorrow cannot obscure the beauty of faces and gentle graces that come to carry you into the heart of God and deliver you from every fear. Taste and see.

Pr. David L. Miller

The awakened heart

My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. (Galatians 6:1-2)

 

No law can compel us to love. Love is the molten flow rising warm within, filling the heart, revealing who we really are. It is the fulfillment of our nature.

For we are the love Christ is. This is our nature, our deepest truth, the brilliant spark, the dazzling diamond at the center of our souls.

 Made in the image of the One who is Love, love rises and floods the heart’s inmost chamber when awakened by a word, an image, a moment of beauty, a single breath of morning air … and most certainly by the beauty of Christ.

 Jesus blesses a child, touches a miserable soul begging for mercy or is moved to tears by a restless crowd hungry for something much more than bread. In these, the heart sees the Spirit of divine gentleness and love awakens within.

So gaze at him, savor beauty, be moved by suffering, linger over moments that awaken your heart. You will know the love you are and the Love who cherishes you, free at last to be gentle and fulfill the law of Christ.

Pr. David L. Miller

 

On and on

Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters (v.1)

It’s a 10 mile hike around the loop trail at Waterfall Glen, time enough to hear your heart. Approaching the falls, you can also hear the heart of all humanity. Distant voices and laughter rise from the ravine, echoing among the oaks over the shush of flowing water.

There are always people here on summer days, wading or watching the stream as it runs from an unknown source to its destination in a far off sea. The flow is magnetic and mesmerizing, satisfying a mysterious something in the soul while carrying the heart to a place of peace.

The water just flows; we do nothing to make it happen. It goes where it wants to go. Try to stop it, and it finds a way around the obstacle. Put in your hand, and it caresses your flesh. And it continues, on and on, day and night, year after year, century after century.

A better symbol for the love flowing from God’s heart is hard to find. Maybe that is why people come here, thirsty for a love that has no end.

Pr. David L. Miller

Twice blessed

 

Remember the long way the Lord your God has led you (Deuteronomy 8:2)

Twice blessed

Little do we know what memories will appear in the length of a day. Today, it is Mrs. Moll, the pastor’s wife, long since gone to be with the Lord.

It’s nearly 60 years since I’ve seen her, except in my heart where she is as present as my fingers on these keys.

She stood at the head of the pews in our little church and taught us to sing, a gift for which I will be grateful all my days. Even now one of her songs comes back, hardly sophisticated or in a theology I fully endorse, but there it is, evoking a tear.

“Living for Jesus, a life that is true,” the song starts, and even now, after all the years and miles traveled, it reminds me what and whose I am. I belong to a Lord who loves me and whose Spirit pleads in my heart to never forget it.

Remember, the scripture says. Don’t forget all the ways the Lord in greatest love has claimed and blessed you along your journey. It’s a gracious command. The things you remember return and bless you again.

Pr. David L. Miller

Carried away

 O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever. The upright will see it and are glad (Psalm 107:1, 42)

Carried away

 

O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever. The upright will see it and are glad (Psalm 107:1, 42)

 The slightest breeze embraces early morning on the deck, so faint it is, yet effortlessly transporting the heart to a different place.

The mind falls silent. Consciousness descends to a deeper realm, an awareness of heart for the preciousness of this moment. Resting there, the heart sees what the eyes cannot perceive. It knows what the mind cannot discern.

 There is love, make that Love, at the heart of things, at their Source, who dwells also in the heart’s own depth. Only so can such moments come when we experience spontaneous oneness with God and with life itself, filling us with joy and love for the simple gift and sheer miracle of being alive.  

 The steadfast love of God endures forever, which includes this moment and the next and the next. If we keep looking, eyes peeled and eager to see, moments come when something common—a morning breeze, a child’s smile, a cloud mounting against a cobalt sky—will carry us away to see what is always there.

 Pr. David L. Miller

 

Walk humbly, speak slowly

 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, ‘The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. They do all their deeds to be seen by others (Mathew 23:1-5a).

Walk humbly, speak slowly

Something remarkable occurs in Jesus’ perception. He recognizes truth in the words of those who oppose him, something almost unheard of in our current social and political environment.

Today, complex issues are reduced to binary formulas. You are either with Black Lives Matter or you support the police. You are either a Democrat or a Republican, a progressive or someone who deserves to be ‘cancelled.’

Sides form, opinions harden; one side (one’s own) is considered is good, wise and just while the other gets dismissed as wrongheaded, self-serving and evil.

Public discourse is reduced to sloganeering and accusations, which means there is no discourse, no exchange at all.

Unfortunately, so many Christians and churches in our society are little or no better. Their … make that our … spiritual convictions and commitments get eclipsed by political and social ideologies, conservative and liberal, which overwhelm the wisdom of our faith and the presence of the love of Christ in our souls. Today, the attitudes, opinions and behaviors of most American Christians are little more than a mirror of the political and social divides in our society, and all because we fail to ask, what is the call of Christ in our time and place?

The call of Christ, to walk as Jesus walked, can seldom, if ever, be wholly identified with any ideology, political opinion or association because these are all self-aggrandizing and demand the kind of total loyalty no Christian can or should give anyone or anything, except Jesus the Christ.

And Jesus walks in the humility of knowing only God is ultimate good, and the truth of God and how to walk with God appears in many places and people, even in those who opposed, hated, rejected and reviled him.

Listen and do as they say, Jesus says about those teachers who taught people to honor God, but do not do as they do, he added, for they are all about themselves and have no compassion in their hearts.

If we are to follow Jesus, if we are to stand with him, we must avoid the shouting and listen, humbly, for voices that speak compassion and truth, which is always more subtle and nuanced than slogans and placards allow.

We might start by listening to that voice within ourselves.

Pr. David L. Miller

 

 

Freedom road

 Jesus said to him, ‘If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions. (Matthew 19:21-22)

Freedom road

Start talking about demon possession and your friends will quickly remember an errand they need to run. Truth is, human beings are regularly possessed by all kinds of spirits: Greed, sloth, lust, anger, regret, vanity, gluttony, pride … not to mention spirits available in various bottles at your local grocery.

Large parts of modern economies are dependent on keeping us addicted, which is to say possessed by all kinds of things that distract us from the deep crying need at the center of our being.

Our hearts ache for something more, something we cannot name, and in rushes a host of products, activities, distractions and relationships of all kinds that that promise to still the ache, fill the emptiness and satisfy the heart.

And when one thing doesn’t work we may try another, avoiding the nagging truth engraved in our being that tells us we are made for something more.

This explains the downcast face of the rich young man who comes to Jesus … and it explains a great deal of our sadness, too. We give our hearts to that which does not satisfy the heart.

The rich man owned nothing because he was possessed by everything he imagined belonged to him. Unable to open his hands and heart, he could not receive the one thing for which his heart cried, the Love that satisfies.

He went away sad, but equally sad was Jesus who wills our freedom, freedom that comes only when we quit chasing and grasping our own private cures for what ails us, and let his Love fill us. It’s the road to freedom.

Pr. David L. Miller

 

 

 

Little things

 August, 8, 2020

[A] bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!’ When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Get up and do not be afraid.’ And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone. (Matthew 17:5-8)

Little things

My daughter’s yellow lab, Bailey, knows the meaning of life. Her most frequent pose is to roll from side to back and expose her stomach so the rest of us can fulfill the meaning of our lives, which is to rub her belly.

She knows that we exist for her comfort, and this little thing assures her that all is well with the world. Scratch her belly, and she’ll never forget you.

Small gestures speak volumes in her world, really, in any world. A nod, a glance, a whispered word or even slightest touch can shout great love and care in ways that only a beloved can see and understand.

So I am drawn to the moment Jesus walks to his frightened friend and touches them—on the head, I suppose, since they crouched on the ground hiding their eyes from what, to them, was a fearful vision.

It’s a little thing, so small one wonders why the story teller bothered to record it, especially in his account of a powerful vision where the voice of God is heard. But it is this touch, not the voice or the vision, that I find most, well, touching.

It exudes care, gentleness, affection, tenderness, understanding—things we crave as much or more than Bailey likes her belly rubs.

Jesus doesn’t walk by his frightened friends. He touches them and in doing so touches me, touches all of us with the Love our souls long have craved.

“Get up. Do not be afraid,” Jesus said to the disciples with him. I’m thankful for those words, but I can barely hear them over the sound of his silent touch, telling me exactly what I need to know.

Pr. David L. Miller