Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Today’s text

Luke 4:18-19

The spirit of the Lord is on me, for he has anointed me to bring the good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free to proclaim a year of favor from the Lord.

Reflection

Listening to your words, Jesus, I no longer see you in ancient Palestine. I see a hilltop in Haiti with a crowd seeking you, flowing, scrambling up the steep side to get close.

They are the afflicted, and like the afflicted of every age their hearts--to say nothing of their stomachs--move them to seek food that fills the anxiety of emptiness, the emptiness of body and spirit.

Empty they are, lacking food and medicine for broken bodies and balm for souls that may well live out their earthly lives in perpetual grief for the destruction of their city, the death of loved ones and the obliteration of hope.

They want what I want: to feel alive. They want to know the exhilaration of truly living, no longer weighted to earth by sorrow and fear.

They want to feel the surge of joy and love in their depths that makes them eager for the day.

They want to live beyond the grief of today and the dread of tomorrow, knowing that Love is near, that Love will come, that Love surrounds and enfolds even the horrors of devastated cities and the cry of broken children. And I believe that you do, Holy One.

I don’t know why the earth shudders and kills a multitude in a moment. I don’t know why the sun doesn’t grow dark and weep in abject sorrow at the destruction of human life that happens every day on this planet.

I have no adequate answers for my own questions, let alone those of others.

I simply know the lilt of heart that happens when I hear you, Jesus, telling me that you come to set captive hearts free, liberating us from all that binds us from living in hope and joy.

That’s why crowds sought you. They wanted to live. Me, too.

I want this life for those whose lives are unimaginable to me, lives that must stumble amid the rubble of places like Port au Prince. Let love and the passion of care surround them all, Lord Jesus. Release their souls from the anxiety of emptiness and the dread of tomorrow.

Free their captive souls--and mine, that we all might live. We all want to live, which is why we seek you, Jesus, from ancient times to hilltops in Haiti.

Pr. David L. Miller