Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Today’s text

John 14:23

Jesus replied: ‘Anyone who loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make a home in him.’

Reflection

Tuesday comes. The day off ends, not that it was devoid of work anyway. Responsibilities and care intrude even on the most protected days.

But with the morning light, the unending to-do list asserts itself with unrelenting vigor. I suppose I should be thankful for good work to do, but I am not.

Insistent anxiety compels me to rush by these quiet, daybreak minutes and rush headlong into the fray. I’m driven to silence the nagging voice that hectors my mind until I can cross a clutch of neglected tasks off the list.

Peace of mind, I am certain, depends upon getting things done. Only then can the heart rest.

It’s a lie, of course. It isn’t true. The list will always be there. Faces and phone calls, administration and neglected conversations you will always have with you. (Didn’t you say something like that, Jesus?)

I cannot meet all the needs on the list, let alone do all that I demand of myself. Not even close.

This awareness splinters consciousness at the very point--now--when I want (and badly need) to dissolve all self-consciousness in you, so that there’s awareness only of Presence, so that I know that I am with and in you, so that I feel my being encompassed in divine immensity; so that this awareness fills every internal space, and the peace of oneness floods the mind.

A divided mind cannot have this awareness, only a mind that turns again and again from habitual lies to singular truth.

I love the awareness of oneness with you, so I keep your word, which, I believe, means waiting here, refusing the urge to throw myself into the day before my soul has had time to be with you and receive its freedom.

The word I keep is the truth that I am made by and for you. You hunger to dwell in me, even as I yearn to dwell in you. So being here, with you, must be the day’s first business, a quiet keeping of the truth in the face of noisy lies.

Pr. David L. Miller