Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 12:13-15

Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge and arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.

Prayer

In what does our life consist, dear Friend? You do not answer the question you beg, Jesus. You stand there, and the message is clear enough. Our life consists in you, in loving you but first in knowing you as the love of the Father’s heart made clear and mine.

You are my life. Apart from you I do not live, for I do not dwell that land of dreams where I know love eternal and uncreated filling and surrounding me, engulfing all that is in a wash of divine mercy. I do not dwell in a world where you, blessed Christ, are already Lord, where there is nothing to fear for I rest in a love I cannot comprehend.

I want to live in this world, daily, constantly, always, for this alone is life. All else is stumbling in the fog of fear and the confusion of illusion where I fail to know that life is being in the love you are. I live in exile too many days, feeling my way through a self-created grayness outside the circle of your light. I try to find a way to fill my emptiness when all I need is to see you standing there, not answering your own question.

Seeing you, Jesus, a love not my own fills me, teaching me again what I thought I knew. My life lies not in my unsteady accomplishments or the lack of them but in knowing you as the face of Loving Mystery.

Life, real life consists in daily, tiny episodes of knowing you at the heart of my heart, loving and being loved. In those moments, there is no confusion. I know what life is. Thank you.

Pr. David L. Miller