Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 12:49-51

[Jesus] also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain;’ and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat;’ and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?"

Prayer

What time is it Jesus? It is the time of your presence, the time of your in-breaking, the time when the sturdy links that inexorably bind past to present and future in continuous flow fail to hold time together. They pull apart and clatter on the floor, freeing mind and soul for a future no past can predict or control.

This is now, every now, eternally now, where ever you are present now. And you are the Eternal always present. Your nearness bears an invitation to leave what we have been and known for a mysterious future we cannot make, hold or guarantee. We can only let it unfold or refuse it altogether.

Your nearness is a constantly open door to realities undreamed, Jesus, except by that mysterious love-struck intuition whose only words are tears of awareness that there is a something more the soul must have. And, joy! That hovering awareness knows also a Giver who is pleased to pour that liquid grace into the dark corridors of soul that long for the light of day. My soul, Jesus.

With more of this life behind me than ahead, I awaken hungry for a future unlike any past I have known or lived. Freed, I would be, from the half-life I have lived, caged by my firm grasp of an empty self that is not love. And I have the audacity or naiveté to believe, more than ever, that such life is a breath away, and the secret is surrender to that hovering awareness of Spirit that is the now of your nearness, inviting me to freedom. Eternity begins now.

Pr. David L. Miller