Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 7:24-28

He left that place and set out for the territory of Tyre. There he went into a house and did not want anyone to know he was there; but he could not pass unrecognized. At once a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him and came and fell at his feet. Now this woman was a gentile, by birth a Syro-Phoenician, and she begged him to drive the devil out of her daughter. And he said to her, 'The children should be fed first, because it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to little dogs.' But she spoke up, 'Ah yes, sir,' she replied, 'but little dogs under the table eat the scraps from the children.'

Reflection

Give me what you will, O Lord. Whatever you give will be enough because it is from you.

I do not seek the gifts or graces others have received from you. I beg no special favors, no great accomplishments, no celebration of my name.

I wanted these when I was young, and I sought them to heal inner wounds of early rejection and judgments that made me cower and feel small and weak.

Now I want to know the grace that fills the heart and heals every inner wound, evaporating all fear. I want you, your loving grace in me.

That’s no scrap, of course, but the true substance of life flowing through the heart so that I feel completely one with you, no separation between my heart the energy of Life and Love.

That’s why I am here once more, like a thousand times before, searching for the just the right words to express what I find within me so I can offer it as prayer to you.

When the right words come, the hidden door of my soul swings open, and you flow in and fill me, and I will feel … and be … fully alive.

This gentile woman--an outsider, considered unclean and unwanted, coming from a despised ethnic group and mothering a defiled daughter--found the words that opened the door of her being.

As she did, the Being of Jesus, the Soul of the Universe, flowed into her and her daughter, living waters of life cooling their fevers and fears and making them alive. The soul of Christ poured into them pushing out all that was not him.

It was just a scrap, of course. They did not yet possess the fullness of all he is that they would know when they entered into the fullness of God’s presence. That day would come for them as it does for all.

They would again feel the rejection of those who despised the color of their skin and the marks of their ethnicity. They would experience the fears and struggles of living like everyone else.

But they had eaten. They’d tasted the scraps of divine life. They found healing, and they knew they had what they needed. It was enough for them.

For us, too.

Pr. David L. Miller