Thursday, October 4, 2012

Today’s text

Psalm 8:3-6

I look up at your heavens, shaped by your fingers, at the moon and the stars you set firm- what are human beings that you spare a thought for them, or the child of Adam that you care for him? Yet you have made him little less than a god, you have crowned him with glory and beauty, made him lord of the works of your hands, put all things under his feet.

Reflection

Again I wake into the world filled with wonder that I am, amazed that I breathe and have senses that fill me with delight in every season, and most certainly in autumn splendor.

At the core of faith, at least for me, is amazement at life, at the immensity of the cosmos and my own smallness. Staggered, I gaze into the night sky realizing this is my gift. I get to take in the vast sprinkling of the Milky Way, millions of stars dusting the clear night as loons call to each other across the darkness.

Light from millions of years ago finally touches my eyes after its cold journey through yawning reaches of space, delighting my heart, moving me to wonder what each one is like.

Wonder is closer yet, near as trees electric with golden light in the October morning, moving me to thanks that I might live on this tiny planet, at this place and this time to see this tree that reminds me once more how graced I am to know the colors of a single moment. Any moment, but most certainly this one.

Open your eyes and see. The world is a wonder. Life is a mystery and miracle no words can express. And love, love for this precious life and the loves we are given, who knows how it happens?

Who can point to the moment, to the word, the turn of head, the smile, the understanding glance and laughter that ignites the heart with the joy of knowing oneness with another?

It’s all wonder, our lives, this earth, the universe, the surprising experience of being alive … able to know and feel life within and around us. None of this can be taken for granted by people who did not create themselves or a single molecule of matter.

All that fills my senses on autumn mornings flows from an Infinite Source who loves life … and me. The stars tell me so. The loons’ haunting cries echo my prayer to know the nearness of this Love who speaks in night skies and autumn trees aglow as if lit from within.

This Love wears a face who was even more enamored of golden mornings than am I, the face of the Love Eternal who seeks me every morning, the face of Jesus.

Today, I join him in the wonder of living, knowing, feeling the One who speaks through it all.

Pr. David L. Miller