Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Today’s text

John 17:1-3

After saying this, Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said: Father, the hour has come: glorify your Son so that your Son may glorify you; so that, just as you have given him power over all humanity, he may give eternal life to all those you have entrusted to him. And eternal life is this: to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

Prayer

Grant us your greatest treasure, O God. Pour out your riches and lift us above our poverty of soul. Give us the immensity of your enormity that we may longer scrape by.

For I do. I have ample wealth for food and clothing and shelter. But I scrape through many situations with my soul no longer intact. My actions and words are barren and poor of Spirit. They lack generosity and depth, and fail to voice the joy that marks true knowledge of you.

And all because my mind and heart dwell far from the places where I know you. I dwell in the land of my insufficiency, the territory of anxiety over unfinished tasks and too little time.

I scrape by but fail to thrive and bless. Conversations wind to an end without a word of joy and generosity passing my lips to enrich the poverty of another.

For my soul is poor. I am bedeviled by the next thing I must do, not on sharing the love that gives true knowledge of you and builds community of heart and mind.

This I confess. But much more: I seek to drink the fullness of your Fullness. My great joy is to brim with the elation of this love that fills me as I am here with you. It fills and spills from my soul, running over, a current of life and joy.

So keep me mindful of you and of the love you are. Fill me with knowledge of you that I may live with largess. Give us this, your greatest treasure, and we will be poor of soul no longer.

We shall live, and all we touch will be more alive for the treasure we bear.

Pr. David L. Miller