Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 12:49-51

“From now on, five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law and her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

Prayer

No! Don’t separate me from my family, Jesus. Don’t cut me off from my children, my grandchildren, my beloved. For I crave the presence of their faces. They are a most holy gift for which I thank you with my tears.

Our families have far too much division already, Jesus. We want … we need our relationships to be sacramental of the great Loving Mystery you are, bearing the welcome and love we crave. We wander the earth looking for soft places to land where we may be what we are without worry or pretense, no longer wondering if we shall ever know home. God knows, that journey has been long in my life, and in some ways it continues still.

And here you are, stirring up trouble, right where we most need and have reason to expect the comfort of arms that welcome and hearts that interlock with our own. Do you really need to do this? Is it necessary?

It seems so, Jesus. You have been an undeniable breaking point through the centuries, tearing at families and moving the misguided to take up arms in your name without a clue of the irony they commit.

But I keep coming back to you, Jesus. Despite the division, despite the fact that you are the distance I feel between myself and friends and family members who may never accept or grasp the deep places and commitments where you dwell in this soul of mine.

I pray for them to know the joy of knowing you, but my prayers echo and my careful words of witness fall flat, failing to speak the wonder you are and the beauty of the kingdom you desire. How I can I explain this attraction to them when I have such trouble understanding it myself?

Keep calling to me Jesus that I may never be alien to you, counted among those who do not know you. For knowing you is life. May I live as an emblem of your life even when divisions come and distance troubles.

Pr. David L. Miller