Friday, November 2, 2007

Today's text

Luke 6:20-21

"Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled."

Prayer

I am filled, and I hunger. My hunger is not that of the myriad whose cries rend your divine heart as they call to you for food and justice. They suffer and die for want of the grace of simple human kindness.

Needs of food and shelter are more than well cared for in my case, and I thank you for the goodness of your earth. But I have another need, connected, I believe, with the need of the multitude for tender mercies.

I long to have my heart filled with you. You, Gracious, Surprising Mystery have opened my heart to “get it,” to know a fullness of soul and love not made by human hands.

You have filled me, and filled, I long for more of you, who are the Infinite More. Nothing else satisfies my heart so that I fall quiet and calm, generous and whole-hearted, even as you are whole hearted, loving good and evil alike.

You invite, indeed, you coax me to know the More you are. You draw this stubborn and timid heart into whole-hearted loving surrender to a world of need, to the soul cries of the many, to the next human heart waiting at the door.

“Look there,” you say. “Surrender to this, and you will be filled. Come and know me.”

Pr. David L. Miller

November 1, 2007 All Saints Day

Today's text

Luke 6:20-21

"Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kigdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled."

Reflection

It happened again, Sunday. The front wall of the sanctuary disappeared. Standing behind the table, the pastor raised her hands lifting the bread, then the cup. Suddenly, the bricks behind her were not there anymore, obscuring my vision of eternity. Instead, I saw those who have gone before and now enjoy clear vision of the One whose name is mercy, the blessed God whom I glimpse but in bits and snatches.

I saw them, and their eyes, too, rose as the pastor lifted the holy gifts of God’s constant giving. A great crowd with smiling eyes and moist cheeks, they looked back at us, the living congregation among whom I stood.

We were not two, but one congregation: Here and there, in time and eternity, living and … well, living. One part shining in glory, the other struggling and confused, yet all sharing “mystic sweet communion” with the One we receive at the Lord’s Table.

I saw Grandma Lavina and my beloved father, as gentle an s ever. I saw strangers and faces I have known in the death camps of Sudan and Somalia, the deserts of Namibia and the hovels of Nicaragua to those I knew and loved on the sun-baked plains of Nebraska, Magdalena and Eilert and all the rest, all of us gathered around the table, receiving God’s inexhaustible, eternally abundant life.

My vision, like the holy table, is not an illusion. It is reality. It is now. And it is the future to which the risen Christ is drawing all things, you and me and the beloved for whom our hearts long.

We gather around God’s eternal table of grace, those in time and eternity, those here and those who gaze upon the beauty of God.

We stand together, with all the hosts of heaven, with saints of every time and place, with all the missing faces for whom we light our candles. With them, we hold out empty hands and taste eternity, even now, even here, at this table.

The body and blood of the One who is life is here for us all.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Today’s text

John 8:31-36

To the Jews who believed in him Jesus said, “If you make my word your home you will indeed be my disciples; you will come to know the truth and the truth will set you free.” They answered, “We are descended from Abraham and we have never been the slaves of anyone; what do you mean ‘You will be set free?’” Jesus replied: “In all truth I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave. Now a slave has no permanent standing in the household, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will indeed be free.”

Prayer

Your freedom is like no other, Dear Friend. Abiding, resting, dwelling in the heart of your love for me, the soul opens up in a generosity of spirit known no where else.

The heart becomes a wide open space with room for many visitors and grace for all who come, a comfortable room where the souls of others may take their rest, a broad oak giving a circle of shade where the heat of rush and the enslavement of ‘have-tos’ and ‘must-dos’ filters away in the breeze.

Resting in the Eternal Love, the divine Word whom you are, the soul comes to such rest and is filled with the awareness that “I belong.” Indeed, for the heart arrives home. Why do we ever leave this space? Why do we imagine there is need for us to labor and earn some kind of self-justifying meaning, when being in your love is the fulfillment of the heart and of all that is?

This is the freedom you give, and which you allow me to enter even as I write these few words. The words themselves bear me into you, my home, where sin is replaced by sonship, enslavement by freedom, and the heart wants only to know and be the love that makes free.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Today’s text

John 8:31-24

To the Jews who believed in him Jesus said, “If you make my word your home you will indeed be my disciples; you will come to know the truth and the truth will set you free.” They answered, “We are descended from Abraham and we have never been the slaves of anyone; what do you mean ‘You will be set free?”

Prayer

In your word, your substance, the delight of your giving, we know you, Dearest Friend. We know you and are free. And it is you I want to know beyond all else. If I do not know you, I lack the one needful thing, the secret substance that transforms all other knowledge and learning into praise and joy.

Without you my soul languishes in sorrows of my own making. But resting in you, in the words of beauty and belovedness that you constantly whisper in my soul (if I would only stop and hear), all is well, no matter what is, no matter the outward circumstance.

For I dwell in you, this geography of grace, an open space where light floods the soul and life’s duties become blessed play in meadows of freedom, where the sheer delight of being alive lifts the heart beyond all drudgery.

I am at home in you, walking in the atmosphere of divine delight, in the joy you take in loving and giving your own heart to me. This is freedom, anything less is the drudgery of labor east of Eden. So I give you thanks, and I pray let me not wander this day from this holy space where I know you.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, October 29, 2007

Today’s text

John 8:31-24

To the Jews who believed in him Jesus said, “If you make my word your home you will indeed be my disciples; you will come to know the truth and the truth will set you free.” They answered, “We are descended from Abraham and we have never been the slaves of anyone; what do you mean ‘You will be set free?”

Prayer

This is not my question, Holy One. I know what it is to be enslaved to fears and questions for which I have no answers. I know the shame that I can no more slip than I can shed my own skin. But I also know you, and you are freedom.

I do not know how you unloose my soul that I enter sweet liberty. But it happens. My soul enters a broad and open space when I look at your face and see eternal compassion looking wordlessly upon me. It happens as I listen to all you say and are, Jesus. It happens when I sing the mystery of your love for me.

“Enter my freedom, enter my freedom,” you say. But how can I do that? My soul is tied to earth, held fast by anxieties and internal conflicts that have haunted me since the earliest days of my memory.

But not when I am with you. I sit with you, see your face and hear your words. I come near and see myself walking with you, and my fears fade into illusion. Anxiety and shame flee the scene and the landscape of soul opens into green fields of play, where joy and release chase off all constriction of thought, emotion and imagination.

Only in awareness of your nearness do I enter freedom. Only there do I discover the Spirit of freedom that you bear percolates also in my soul, awaiting its release that I may be, finally, human, that self that appears only in the atmosphere of your presence.

So let me dwell near your heart this day that I may see your face, hear your voice, and walk in the open fields of blessed liberty.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, October 26, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 18:1-8

Then Jesus told them a parable about the need to pray continually and never lose heart. “There was a judge in a certain town,” he said, “who had neither fear of God nor respect for anyone. In the same town there was also a widow who kept on coming to him and saying, ‘I want justice from you against my enemy!’ For a long time he refused, but at last he said to himself, ‘Even though I have neither fear of God nor respect for any human person, I must give this widow her just rights since she keeps pestering me, or she will come and slap me in the face.’” And the Lord said, “You notice what the unjust judge has to say? Now, will not God see justice done to his elect if they keep calling to him day and night even though he still delays to help them? I promise you, he will see justice done to them, and done speedily. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find any faith on earth?”

Prayer

Two words turn my heart again to you, O God: “his elect.” They speak a grace and consolation sufficient for the day, for every day. For I know: I belong to your elect, to you.

The words speak of ownership, and that is just fine with me. I want to be owned by you, for you are Great Mercy and Holy Passion. Such are the names my faltering mind assigns to your unspeakable glory. But these, inadequate as they are, speak the zeal and fervor you have for those that are yours, the elect, the chosen, the claimed, the beloved, … me.

I name you Lord, for I am not my own. I am yours, part of that people your Beloved won for you in the pains of bitter woundedness. This not always a comfortable place to be. You lead me to places I do not want to go and refuse to be content with my resistance to the call of your love. You, who are roundly rejected, seek to be visible in my flesh, and I know what that means.

But every day I struggle with my finitude, my limits, my fears, and every day you tell me that I belong to an everlasting love who has loved me everlastingly. I belong to a Lord who holds fast to the elect with a holy zeal and fervent ardor that refuses to let me to face my life alone. And that’s good news, Dear Friend. I learned long ago that independence is overrated.

And you won’t have it. Again and again you whisper: “You are mine. Nothing and no one else can have you.” I am father and a grandfather; I understand such love, even if mine is but finite.

Thank you.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 18:1-8

Then Jesus told them a parable about the need to pray continually and never lose heart. “There was a judge in a certain town,” he said, “who had neither fear of God nor respect for anyone. In the same town there was also a widow who kept on coming to him and saying, ‘I want justice from you against my enemy!’ For a long time he refused, but at last he said to himself, ‘Even though I have neither fear of God nor respect for any human person, I must give this widow her just rights since she keeps pestering me, or she will come and slap me in the face.’” And the Lord said, “You notice what the unjust judge has to say? Now, will not God see justice done to his elect if they keep calling to him day and night even though he still delays to help them? I promise you, he will see justice done to them, and done speedily. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find any faith on earth?”

Prayer

It is for your sadness that I love you today, Dearest Friend. The image of your face is cut into the rock face of my mind, and I read the sorrow engraved there as you ask: will I find faith on earth? Grief drips from every word. Each drop glistens with the fullness of the divine heart, longing for blessed communion with all who have yet to arrive home.

If there is no faith to greet you, Jesus, human souls miss the mercy of divine embrace and indwelling. And your heart does not find completion in that holy communion for which the Loving Mystery has hungered through all eternity, soul to soul, divinity to humanity, Creator to all creation, a blessed circle of love in which your fullness fills all that we are and all you have made.

Until then your divine heart mourns and longs for the lost, including the lost regions of this troubled soul, looking for the faith, the desire that welcomes your nearness so you may bring the healing of love immeasurable.

I see your sadness, Jesus, and I taste the sweet sorrow of eternity. I hear your voice, and I know without any doubt what lies at the heart of the cosmos: the sorrow of a wounded heart, yearning for the beloved, for one such as me.

I love you for your sadness, Jesus. It speaks to depths of heart nothing else can reach and heals me as little else can. May the faith you awaken in me assuage your beloved sorrow.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, October 23, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 18:1-8

Then Jesus told them a parable about the need to pray continually and never lose heart. “There was a judge in a certain town,” he said, “who had neither fear of God nor respect for anyone. In the same town there was also a widow who kept on coming to him and saying, ‘I want justice from you against my enemy!’ For a long time he refused, but at last he said to himself, ‘Even though I have neither fear of God nor respect for any human person, I must give this widow her just rights since she keeps pestering me, or she will come and slap me in the face.’” And the Lord said, “You notice what the unjust judge has to say? Now, will not God see justice done to his elect if they keep calling to him day and night even though he still delays to help them? I promise you, he will see justice done to them, and done speedily. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find any faith on earth?”

Prayer

You make me smile so early on a Monday, Jesus. Your words conjure a bag lady chasing a self-satisfied soul in a three-piece suit down the street. He trips along quickly as he can, looking over his shoulder, distress in his eyes, while she wields a brown paper bag of clothes and aluminum cans. She strains to catch up and bop him across the head, seeking to gain justice for herself.

The reversal of power and powerless is as ironic as it is pointed. Surely, I have no more power over you than the widow has over the judge, less in fact. But surely, God does not refuse mercy until I pound on heaven’s door to wake the divine majesty from underachieving lethargy.

For the Loving Mystery is as far removed from the self-serving judge as your heart is from mine, holy Jesus. Your mercy and justice soar to heights unknown by the wings of my imagination.

Yet, you urge me to pray and pray again, to enter the intimate relationship of holy longing with you who are Mercy Unbounded. You invite me to bring all that I am, not to win your attention or favor but simply that I might know you, who are the secret desire of every prayer.

So I come to you again and again, pounding on your door, not to wake you from slumber, for you neither slumber nor sleep. I return that the desire of my heart may find its final answer in you who are the fullness of the Fullness.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 17:11-19

Now it happened that on the way to Jerusalem Jesus was traveling in the borderlands of Samaria and Galilee. As he entered one of the villages, ten men suffering from a virulent skin disease came to meet him. They stood some way off and called to him, “Jesus! Master! Take pity on us.” When he saw them he said, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” Now as they were going away they were cleansed. Finding himself cured, one of them turned back praising God at the top of his voice and threw himself prostrate at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. The man was a Samaritan. This led Jesus to say, “Were not all ten made clean? The other nine, where are they? It seems that no one has come back to give praise to God, except this foreigner.” And he said to the man, “Stand up and go on your way. Your faith has saved you.”

Prayer

Salvation happens when our desire and yours meet, Dearest Friend. You want all to return to give thanks, to know you, to hear your blessing. Your heart is not complete, not at rest, until the missing nine appear. Only then is the primal connection of life complete, the divine intention fulfilled.

Your desire for us and our desire for you meet and dwell together in mutual harmony, completing the divine circle into which you draw all creation. Until then creation remains unfinished, human hearts unfilled.

So your heart rises as a bird, circling upon currents of Spirit, whispering to every heart, “Come close. Come close. Stand not far off. Fly to the heart of the universe. Love Itself eagerly awaits your return, ever watching for the other nine.”

You hunger for our nearness, and we die without yours. Your desire and ours, not two, but the voice of a single Spirit.

And the faith that saves? Is it not following the desire that brings us to you?

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 17:11-19

Now it happened that on the way to Jerusalem Jesus was traveling in the borderlands of Samaria and Galilee. As he entered one of the villages, ten men suffering from a virulent skin disease came to meet him. They stood some way off and called to him, “Jesus! Master! Take pity on us.” When he saw them he said, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” Now as they were going away they were cleansed. Finding himself cured, one of them turned back praising God at the top of his voice and threw himself prostrate at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. The man was a Samaritan. This led Jesus to say, “Were not all ten made clean? The other nine, where are they? It seems that no one has come back to give praise to God, except this foreigner.” And he said to the man, “Stand up and go on your way. Your faith has saved you.”

Prayer

“Don’t be surprised,” you say to me this morning. “Don’t be surprised when you find hearts that believe and souls open to my great giving. You will find gracious hearts in unexpected places where I have been working long before you arrived. Open your eyes; look. Don’t imagine you are alone. Many love me more than you can though they know and have far less than you.”

Your words are not harsh in my ears, Jesus. They humble me, and that is grace. You keep me from imagining that my faith, my way of thinking, believing and serving is somehow privileged above others. Your words remind me that I stand among millions, billions who bear your call, your mark of wounded love on their hearts.

And many of them are people I consider beneath me in experience or intelligence, in insight or sophistication. Many I might find uncouth or simple, holding the wrong opinions or politics, bearing such flaws of character and neuroses that make it easy to dismiss them, imagining I am superior.

But I am not. I am one more needy soul who cries to you in the morning for mercy, weary of my perennial sins, sick to death of the cracks in my character through which vitality and joy seep away.

I stand among the immense throng who need and call upon you. There are no foreigners in this crowd, no aliens, just people who, at their best, know the great truth: your grace crosses every boundary we establish. Try as we might, we can’t keep you from going where love pleases. Thank you for such gracious disrespect.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 17:11-19

Now it happened that on the way to Jerusalem Jesus was traveling in the borderlands of Samaria and Galilee. As he entered one of the villages, ten men suffering from a virulent skin disease came to meet him. They stood some way off and called to him, “Jesus! Master! Take pity on us.” When he saw them he said, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” Now as they were going away they were cleansed. Finding himself cured, one of them turned back praising God at the top of his voice and threw himself prostrate at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. The man was a Samaritan. This led Jesus to say, “Were not all ten made clean? The other nine, where are they? It seems that no one has come back to give praise to God, except this foreigner.” And he said to the man, “Stand up and go on your way. Your faith has saved you.”

Prayer

Is it praise that saves us from ourselves, Holy Darkness? Does praise push us to our knees and lift us to the heights of humanity? Is adoration the central mark of a faith that dwells in gratitude, knowing life and breath, freedom and joy are gifts flowing from the impenetrable depths of your goodness?

If so, let my morning praise rise to you that, I too, may be the human soul, the heart of flesh, you intend. Thank you for the gratitude of my unseeing eyes. I cannot penetrate your mystery. I understand nothing of what you must be. Yet at the break of day I stand before you wanting to be no nowhere else, knowing you are love, my silent lips giving praise for the wonder of that singular awareness.

Thank you, I say again. I have nothing else to bring.

Blessed Jesus, you are the face of the Impenetrable Darkness no eye can behold. In your joy in healing, in your hope that all will draw close to receive what you would give, I perceive the love no heart can contain. The beauty of your face casts me into the dirt and lifts me that truest humanity known only by hearts filled with gratitude. Thank you for making me a human … being.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, October 15, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 17:11-14

Now it happened that on the way to Jerusalem Jesus was traveling in the borderlands of Samaria and Galilee. As he entered one of the villages, ten men suffering from a virulent skin disease came to meet him. They stood some way off and called to him, “Jesus! Master! Take pity on us.” When he saw them he said, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” Now as they were going away they were cleansed.

Prayer

I notice the immediacy your care, Jesus, and of my neediness--though I try hard to deny it.

I, too, stand far off. But unlike those bereft of self and its resources, I soldier on, keeping the necessities of life adequately together. But all the while I hope for something more, something far beyond the soul numbing routines required just to get by.

Not so with the ten who, seeing you, called immediately for mercy. They have nothing of their own to commend them, nothing to make them acceptable to the powers that be. I, on the other hand, live with the illusion that self justification is possible. I remain enrapt in the fantasy that I can create the depth of heart and peace that I crave, birthing the soul that whispers in my depths.

So I do not immediately fly into the arms of your mercy. I trust the strength of human mind and heart: “If I could work a bit harder, try this, do that, be more serious about my disciplines … then I would enter the home for which my heart hungers.”

But I never enter until, disgusted with myself, I surrender. Giving up my illusions and efforts, I plea for the mercy brimming in your divine heart: Take pity, dear Friend. Take pity on a fool who forgets the truth of his own soul.

I am made for you. I come to life only in the presence of a love I can neither control nor summon. Today, may I seek with all my heart that which your heart is so eager to give.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 17:7-10

[Jesus said,] “Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table?’ Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink?’ Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves, we have done only what we ought to have done!’”

Prayer

The words of slaves fill me: “we have done only what we ought to have done.” I sink into the space they create, and peace floods my being. Why, Jesus?

I know; it’s simple: I crave their freedom.

In graced moments, I taste the sweet liberty of expecting nothing, no thanks or praise, no special recognition or reward. It matters not if any one notices or speaks words of respect or appreciation.

None are needed, for I have you. And it is sufficient to know you in the invisible graces of daily duty, even if all that comes is criticism.

This is a strange freedom, one that you alone grant, Jesus. It is the liberty of the flowers that bloom whether or not anyone stops to notice. They do what you fashioned them to do, content to strew your prodigal beauty along the way, unbothered by human passions for significance.

They reveal a way beyond the frustrated cravings of human souls for recognition or affirmation. I long to dwell in this land always, not just make occasional visits.

For there the rare clarity of air fresh and free fills my lungs, even as you fill my heart.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 17:5-6

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, “be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”

Prayer

What do you mean, Jesus? I want to see your face. Do you say this as if your friends--and I--have no faith at all? Or is that a wry grin that flashes across your lips, suggesting that we should stop worrying, since we have what we need?

We read your word and encounter your otherness, often unable to make comfortable sense of you and what you are saying. But most often I cannot hear your heart because I am in the way. I read through eyes clouded with self-concern. I hear through my anxieties about my acceptability, my unlovliness, my intuitive awareness that I am not much.

And that’s just the problem, isn’t it Jesus? I am so busy seeing myself I fail to see you. I am so preoccupied with my paucity that I can’t perceive your immensity. You would soak me to the soul in your boundless ocean of love and grace were I not captive in this capsule of self.

My faith is small, but that is not your concern, is it? Nor is it the point. You would have me see you, know you, allowing my tiny heart to be loved into self-forgetfulness by your great heart. You care not a wit for the size of my faith but with joy and laughter would enlarge my heart to hold more of you, if only: if only I will look at you and not at myself.

So let me look, and looking see, and seeing love, and loving know … you, who are so much larger than my heart.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, October 8, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 17:5-6

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, “be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”

Prayer

The morning comes too early, Jesus. The restless night of tossing fogs my mind with fatigue. Each thought comes encased in cloud. It is Monday, and my body cries for sleep.

If I had faith as a grain of mustard seed, would sleep so easily evade me? Would I quietly rest when I lay my head on the pillow? Would my soul release its obsessive frets, assured that your abundance will amply supply no matter what awaits me? Would my sleep then be an act of worship, offering holy praise of your goodness?

Yet, I know, Holy One: I face nothing alone, for even such small faith as mine bears a treasure—You. What is faith but your presence, your Spirit, in the soul turning my eyes toward Home?

You, whom all the world cannot contain, dwell in this anxious soul. Even on my tired days, You grant such faith that I may hear it whisper, “I am enough for you. You have what you need to know me, to love me, to serve me, to rest in my immensity.”

So I will not pray, increase my faith, Dearest One. No, let me attend such faith as dwells in this soul that I may hear you and know that you are always sufficient to the day.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, October 5, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 16:27-31

So he said, “Father, I beg you then to send Lazarus to my father’s house, since I have five brothers, to give them warning so that they do not come to this place of torment too.” Abraham said, “They have Moses and the prophets, let them listen to them.” The rich man replied, “Ah, no, father Abraham, but if someone comes to them from the dead, they will repent.” Then Abraham said to him, “If they will not listen either to Moses or to the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead”

Prayer

Not even from the dead? What does it take before our hearts will listen to the voice that speaks life and mercy? The answer is clear enough. We know it well in our personal histories, Jesus: pain. We listen when torments of body and soul attack our flesh, turning over our tidy plans, revealing again that little of life is at our command.

We reach for good things for ourselves and families. We build foundations for living upon what we are given by circumstances of birth, talent and our good work. We celebrate our occasions--birthdays and anniversaries, new babies, graduations and promotions, seldom thinking that the next day, the next hour, the taste of our salty tears may turn bitter.

Then we are ready to listen to a voice far beyond ours to learn life again, or for the first time. Jesus, I am forever learning life again … and again. How many times must I relearn what makes for life?

And what, Jesus, would the dead tell us if we had ears to hear? Would they remind that all flesh is grass? Would they say that the Holy One created time and space as an arena for mercy? Or maybe they’d tell us, “Listen to the pain of your heart, and you will know every heart. Your pain separates life from the illusions you try to live. It frees you to hear the One you most need.”

That’s the way the dead speak to me, Jesus, as do you, who are the living and the dead and the risen again.

So let me not move far from the pains of my failures and weaknesses, Jesus. Let me live in gratitude for each of them, for they are the wings that fly me to you.

Great Mercy, hear my prayer.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 16:23-29

In Hades, where [the rich man] was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.” But Abraham said, “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us. He said, “Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.” Abraham replied, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.”

Prayer

Where, Merciful One, do prophets cry out, calling us beyond prudence to passion for your holy reign? Your voice is present in all the Earth. You never leave us without voices that love you and your blessed future far more than personal victory, far beyond the fading joys fashioned by human hands.

Helps us to hear the voices of your prophets, the abused child or spouse, the hungry deprived of bread and simplest human decency, the souls who invite us beyond every violence of hand and speech into which so much of our conversation degenerates.

Even the cries of our own souls are your prophets, Inescapable One. They whisper deep truth in our unguarded moments, telling us … again … that all we consume cannot fill the empty ache that is your insistent voice. You call to us at that unreachable point of our souls where your holy desire and our deepest need for real bread speak with a single voice.

You never leave yourself without a voice, Holy One. Moses and a multitude of prophets speak what your love gives and requires. Close my busy lips that I may hear. I make too much noise. I fear losing you amid the clamor. Call to me in silence.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 16:23-26

In Hades, where [the rich man] was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.” But Abraham said, “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.”

Prayer

Is there never a passing over, Jesus? Did you not pass from Earth to Hell before entering the Sublime, descending first to crush death and eternal bondage, freeing our first parents that all the daughters and sons of Eve might dwell with you? The icon on the wall shows you tramping death under foot, trashing the front gate of Hell and revealing it for the rickety shanty that it is.

I want even the rich man to know salvation, to pass over from eternal separation to dwell with you, making humble repentance for failing to love Lazarus at the gate. Can it yet be? Or will the divisions that torture earth do so through eternity? Is it impossible even for you to cross the chasm?

My faith says, ‘no.’

There is no place where you are not. There is no darkness beyond your reach; nowhere you will not bring eternal freedom that all that is restless may rest in you. Lazarus and the rich man may yet find reconciliation in a love larger than human apathy and more exquisite than human pain. They, too, shall celebrate the unfathomable. You.

But the celebration need not wait. For today we may enter, again, that larger love you are and ever shall be, a love that opens eyes to know the places you invite us to join the dance of your loving in time and space. Today, Lord Jesus, let me join your dance with Lazarus at the gate.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 16:19-25

There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died, and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.”

Prayer

When do we see, Jesus? What opens our eyes? And to what?

Our blinkered eyes see with crystal clarity when we are consumed by distress, Jesus. Pain and desire sharpen our vision. Quickly, we focus on what we need--or want--to assuage our discomfort. We view surrounding faces through lenses that perceive only what they can do to quell the pulsing insistence of anguish or greed. We see what they can for us.

But do we see the other, the throbbing bundle of needs and fears, hopes and humanity they are? Can we imagine that we may be your answer the unspoken cries of their heart? Can we value them not for what they do for us but for the circle of compassion into which we may enter with them, giving and receiving, sharing the profundity of human neediness and making flesh the miracle of mercy?

How do I see, Jesus? Do the souls of women and men exist only to cool the flames of my body and soul? Or do I see my need and theirs as a holy invitation through which you draw me into common heart, where we might share a common mercy and yearning for the peace of God, your peace, Jesus?

Help me to see beyond my needs to your hope, Jesus. In the needs of others, help us to hear your invitation to a world of mercy.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, October 1, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 16:19-22

There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died, and was buried.

Prayer

They both died, Jesus. Filthy rich or dirt poor—the same end claims both.

How shall we live when everywhere we turn we look into the eyes of the dying? Regardless of our circumstances, we carry the seeds of Adam’s disease so deep in our flesh no medicine of ours can hunt it down and kill the death that kills us.

From the earliest days of our breathing, we know the time is short. We know the clock ticks without pause or care, inexorably counting out our moments. So we must get on with it; much is missed if we dally. The day must be lived to the fullest lest we face our end bearing a mountain of regret.

So what shall we do, Jesus? Make sure we get ours? Or might we remind ourselves that every person we meet today will come to the same end as we? Will such sobriety remind us that anything less than mercy is profanity? That anything other than compassion disfigures time and poisons the day?

Help me remember, Jesus. I forget so quickly when passions of anger and fear drive me. Help me remember that all are flesh, like me. And my may heart dwell in compassion … for the dying. Just like your heart, Jesus.

Pr. David L. Miller