Thursday, May 27, 2010

Today’s text

John 16:13-14

However, when the Spirit of truth comes he will lead you to the complete truth, since he will not be speaking of his own accord, but will say only what he has been told; and he will reveal to you the things to come. He will glorify me, since all he reveals to you will be taken from what is mine.

Reflection

I shy away from any notion that I can possess “complete truth.” How can my finite mind and heart grasp that which is total, complete, leaving nothing out?

And how would I ever be aware of it even if, for a moment, I knew such truth? With what measure would I judge it to be true and real, let alone complete?

Yet, isn’t this your outrageous promise, Jesus, that I will be led into complete truth?

And this is to say … into you, for you are complete truth.

This is our crazy confession. You are the ultimately real, the solid, the lasting, the unerring and unchanging.

Looking into your face, perceiving the reality that you are is to gaze into the Truth which is before time, the Truth which will remain when our old earth is frozen stone-cold and gray, rotating silent and lifeless for countless millennia around a burnt-out sun, collapsing beneath its own dying weight.

But we will not end in such lifeless futility. For you send your Spirit, the Spirit of truth who lives and breathes your present Presence, encompassing my little existence.

Your Spirit’s hungry desire is to lead me--and all--into complete Truth--into you, so that the life that I am--and the life that is in all--is taken into the fullness of the loving intimacy and eternal life that you share with the One you call Father.

And there, in this intimacy, we shall live where life is complete, where there is nothing but life.

I cannot imagine this, except in rare moments, moments even now. For moments come when some sweet Spirit transports me into a ‘space,’ into a moment of truest being in which I know complete love--and recognize it as truth unchanging and unassailable.

And I know: this is not a truth I possess, but the Truth who possesses me.

Pr. David L. Miller