Friday, March 7, 2008

Today's text

John 11:38-46

Sighing again, Jesus reached the tomb: it was a cave with a stone to close the opening. Jesus said, 'Take the stone away.' Martha, the dead man's sister, said to him, 'Lord, by now he will smell; this is the fourth day since he died.' Jesus replied, 'Have I not told you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?' So they took the stone away. Then Jesus lifted up his eyes and said: Father, I thank you for hearing my prayer. I myself knew that you hear me always, but I speak for the sake of all these who are standing around me, so that they may believe it was you who sent me. When he had said this, he cried in a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come out!' The dead man came out, his feet and hands bound with strips of material, and a cloth over his face. Jesus said to them, 'Unbind him, let him go free.' Many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what he did, believed in him, but some of them went to the Pharisees to tell them what Jesus had done.

Prayer

You are freedom, the unbinding of the body, the loosening of the soul. You are freedom, Jesus. In you there is no desire to bind the hearts of humankind, except to you, the one in whom we find perfect liberty.

You roll away stones of oppression from our hearts and bodies. Your name is life and peace. Your heart is given to release the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve from marauding death, the final enemy of our freedom.

In you we are free, called from tombs of isolation and fear by a love the grave cannot hold. In you we find the liberation of hope. Our souls fly open and free into a broad space wider than the sky, crystal blue and expansive as the love you are.

Surrounded, enveloped, lifted, encompassed by you on all sides, loving your beauty and seeing the beauty of you in all that is: This is freedom.

Speak to us, Liberator of Life. Speak to us from the depths of your eternal desire, and we, too, shall come out, stumbling from our tombs, our hearts finally free to know and be the love you are. Then we shall know the joy you have always intended for us.

You are freedom. May we live today in the perfect liberty of your love.

Pr. David L. Miller