Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Today’s text

Luke 13:31-32

Just at this time some Pharisees came up. 'Go away,' they said. 'Leave this place, because Herod means to kill you.' He replied, 'You may go and give that fox this message: Look! Today and tomorrow I drive out devils and heal, and on the third day I attain my end.

Reflection

I admire your self-possession, Jesus. I envy and want it.

Faced with threat, it is not threat that determines your course. Your path is set by your own internal compass, not the decisions of others about you, not even when they seek your life.

You go your own way, your heart set to true north. There is work to do, a purpose to fulfill, a commitment to complete, a mystery to reveal.

Nothing deters you, not even the machinations of tin-pot despots whose hands drip with blood.

It is not your courage that most moves me, but your abiding sense of self, of identity. You know who you are, what you are to do and what must be done for your life to have served the purpose for which it is appointed.

How do you manage such singular focus? How is it that external events fail to bump you off course? Did you wake each day and claim again the Father’s purpose for you? Did you grit your teeth and steel yourself for whatever might come?

I don’t think so.

But my experience of waffling makes me wonder how you stayed on true north when resistance, rejection and threat blocked your path.

For you always walked true north, deeper with each step into the holy purpose of revealing a world ruled by mercy alone. My end will take care of itself, you said, and reaching that end was all that mattered to you.

I am moved by such single-hearted dedication to mercy’s deed. Always have been, always will.

What I notice when I look most closely is the lack of jut-jawed defiance in your words and bearing. I see a measure of humor--“that fox,” indeed! And I sense the conviction of mercy, of love, of compassion for every last and lost corner of earth.

The conviction of mercy moves you. That is true north, and you live joyously aware that this singular truth requires that your feet move always and only in one direction.

For mercy will come. Mercy will be all in all, and all you do must show this.

Accept my amazement and thanks, and hear my hope that perhaps, I, too, may walk as you.

Pr. David L. Miller