Thursday, September 27, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 9:43

And if your hand should be your downfall, cut it off; it is better for you to enter into life crippled, than to have two hands and go to hell, into the fire that can never be put out.

Reflection

I wonder if any of us is capable of this kind or urgency. I have seen it, but it has been while, for it comes only in circumstances where all distractions are stripped away and matters of life and death take central place.

I think that is Jesus’ point. Life is all that matters, and all other matters are distraction from what should always be central.

And life, … life is to know God, to serve God’s kingdom, to give your heart and hand to knowing and living the Love that is the heart of God.

All that distracts must fall away.

This is our problem. Everything distracts so that life no longer has a center that pulls us back when we wander amid the myriad details of living that draw us from what really is and gives life.

I know people who know they are dying, and I love them.

The distractions of living fall away from their souls, and they are left with a single question: What do I need to pass from this life with peace and dignity?

What is necessary for me to know and do?

The answer, of course, is love. They need to share the love that is in them while they can, and receive the same grace from those most precious.

They want and need to flow in the currents of love that flows through their being from the Eternal Heart of the Universe. Everything else, all that occupied and preoccupied their days and years fades to the background, and the center of existence appears in clear relief.

Perhaps, then, it is predictable that more than one spiritual master of our faith advises us to take each important decision, each day’s duties to the point of our death.

Imagine you are at the point of death, they say. Seeing yourself there, what would you like to have done with this day? What would you like to have chosen with this decision, indeed, with your whole crazy, precious life?

The center of life appears more clearly at that point, answers, too. And they have to do with loving as best we are able.

Pr. David L. Miller