Monday, July 30, 2007

(Note: For the next several months Praying the Mystery will focus on the Gospel readings from the Revised Common Lectionary, each day taking up a few verses from the reading appointed for the previous Sunday.)

Today’s text

Luke 11:1-2

“[Jesus] was praying in a certain place and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’ He said to them, ‘When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name.”

Prayer

I feel your desire blessed Friend. Your friends come with a request. And your desire tells me there is no appeal nearer to your divine heart, which leaps at their words, “teach us to pray.”

But it is not human hearts but yours that captures my mind moves me to love you, Jesus. I watch you. I see your face. I feel the joy that warms you. I experience your fullness of heart as you turn to share the mystery of divine relationship with souls who do not yet know they have fallen into a well as deep as eternity and as warm as life, where untold suffering and unimaginable love awaits them.

In the flash of this moment, I know you. I know you want to teach them to pray. You want them to enter the mystery the Loving Mystery, the divine I AM, of whom you are the blessed face. You want them to share exquisite intimacy with the Father, in whom you constantly dwell, sharing undiluted unity of heart so that your every word and act is transparent to that Love.

You want them to know this loving unity, which is the heart of your joy and the fountain of your desire that they--that I--should taste the Eternal One who is Love Inexpressible. I know you in this desire. I know a love that will not let me go. Your desire tells me all I need to know to love and trust you, and the One you call Father.

Let me trust your loving desire for me and all you love that I may live with peace and assurance, listening for any the least word of instruction or encouragement you may speak. However small or insignificant, they spring from your desire to bless me with more than I can ask. Amen.

Pr. David L. Miller