Saturday, April 26, 2014

Today's text

Ephesians 1:13-14

In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance towards redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.

Reflection

I reached over the hospital bed and marked Simon’s forehead with the sign of the cross. Never before had I been privileged to serve someone so distinguished. A Nobel Prize for physics graced his office for a lifetime of work I will never understand.

That did not matter now. He was dying, and what he most wanted was the blessing I came to speak. “Simon, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.”

It’s more than a formula. It is truth spoken to human souls at moments of greatest fear and need. It tells them to whom they belong at the very moment they realize they have no grip on life and never really did.

There is One who holds you, One who claims you, One to whom you belong every moment of your living and dying, for you are in Christ … and he is in you.

This assurance, first pronounced in our baptism, is a truth to be claimed every day.

“I am yours, and you are mine … and you will always be,” the Spirit whispers to our souls. “The breath of hope within you, the warmth of love flowing through your heart--these all tell you the Spirit you hold and the Wonder who holds you.”

And all this is but a pledge of what will be.

Pr. David L. Miller