Thursday, March 19, 2009

Today’s text

John 3:18-21

And the judgment is this: though the light has come into the world people have preferred darkness to the light because their deeds were evil. And indeed, everybody who does wrong hates the light and avoids it, to prevent his actions from being shown up; but whoever does the truth comes out into the light, so that what he is doing may plainly appear as done in God.

Reflection

What is the light we flee, Jesus? Or the darkness we prefer?

You appear in the world as a gift of love from the Holy Mystery who can’t stand to watch the world destroy itself. God loves and that love appears most fully, in pristine clarity, in you who welcome and forgive and reveal the darkness of our souls.

For it is the light of holiness, the glow of ultimate goodness that reveals how curved in we are upon ourselves, seeing little of and caring less for that which does not directly touch our flesh.

You love and you love to the end of your breath Jesus, giving yourself for the friends you gather. In this light so much of who we are and what we do appears as the pettiness that it is.

But you mince no words: You call it darkness. And on a deep level we prefer our darkness. Maybe it is easier. Maybe we have been so self-centric for so long it is hard to imagine even the possibility of changing, let alone actually doing so.

Maybe we see our lives as little fortresses that must be tended and carefully protected; hence we protect and tend our little gardens, hiding beyond high walls of ego defenses, making sure we are well, but avoiding the vulnerability of loving relationships for which you made us.

And maybe we just don’t think anyone or anything can be trusted with anything as precious as ‘my life.’

Whatever words capture the truth, it is true that we dwell in darkness and self-protection, avoiding the voices in our soul that beg us to open our hearts and give, and love and be vulnerable.

Being exposed to that much light is scary.

Still, you invite us into the light, there to know of ourselves what you know: that we are loved, completely, and in that love we could truly live, if we could only creep from our darkness.

Pr. David L. Miller