Monday, August 20, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 12:49-51

“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.”

Prayer

The sorrow in these words weaves the texture of your life, Jesus--and ours, if we love you. Did you want the fire you ignited? Did you long for the conflict? Do you come to us itching for a fight? Or is conflict simply unavoidable when unalloyed life and love without limit appears amid the conditions of our bondage?

For we dwell in bondage to our sin and sloth, greed and apathy, while others around your earth scratch for food. Each day they search for a single moment when their life is something other than an intolerable burden. So there is bondage all around.

But your name is freedom. You are liberation from the oppressions of body and spirit that prevent each from supping the sacramental pleasures of earth, eating and drinking, justice and peace, the joy of life graced with your unlimited loving nearness.

This is your desire. The fire you cast is born of that holy desire burning in the heart of God, which you bear. And the divine heart bears you--and us--into conflicts we’d rather avoid. But we cannot avoid them, not if we are to stand with you, Jesus. For you stand as the holy emblem of the desire of God in the face of all that denies or limits the fullness God intends for every child of earth, and earth itself. And you invite us into your struggle.

I have little strength and often no stomach to go where your divine heart takes me, Jesus. So free me from my fear that I might be wholly yours. There is nothing else I really want.

Pr. David L. Miller