Monday, September 17, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 15:1-5

“Now all the tax- collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to [Jesus] And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So he told them this parable: “Which of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the other ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it. When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices.”

Prayer

Cool autumn days descend. I return home in summer’s fading light and see him. A grey stone figure keeps watch by the fireplace where he has waited all summer long, watching for my return. His stands on the coarse red brick near the hearth: a small shepherd, his eyes turned down, bearing a lamb across his shoulders, heading home, I suppose, with the lost that has been found. And his face, Jesus, is yours.

With fall in my senses bearing a threat of early frost, the whiteness of my head signals that winter will come soon, too soon, to me too. And I light a votive candle at the shepherd’s feet. My heart swells with sweetest desire, an exquisite simple yeaning for you, Jesus.

I want the shepherd. I want the one who bears the world’s weight in loving embrace and carries it all the way home. For I want to come home, all of me wants to come home. A lost piece of my heart hungers to be carried to a place of final arrival where there is no need to look for another, for hoping has become healing.

There’s a word for this, Jesus: human. We yearn to rest in that love that draws us on until, at last, we arrive home, possessing whole the sweet substance of our yeaning. And it shall be. For our yearning is the resonance of your own.

At the heart of the universe, stands a shepherd whose desire carries us to that eternal belonging where all glows with belovedness and the shepherd’s joy is full. So we light our candles and hope.

Pr. David L. Miller