October 11, 2013

Today’s text

Colossians 1:26-29

The mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil and struggle with all the energy that he powerfully inspires within me. 

Autumn night mystery

I wake up after a short night’s sleep hungry for healing. I want to see what no eyes can reveal and feel what no one can give but this Mystery who haunts my heart and all time.

I want to know the Love who is, who was and always will be, the Love who wants and treasures me, the inescapable Love who envelops all life and time, all places and people, the Love who destroys every doubt and evaporates every fear.

I want to know you this day, Loving Mystery. There is no life for me without you.

Years ago a reader paid me the highest compliment a writer (at least this one) can ever receive. “I want to see what you see,” she said. She wanted to see a world infused with love and mystery, beauty and holiness, and grace and humanity.

She wanted to see a world lit up from within by the Loving Mystery of God, shining with the Eternal Love and know the Love reaching out to her, drawing her home and all things home.

Moments come when we see, when mystery reveals its lovely self to our blinkered eyes, blinded by busy routine and the illusion that God is somewhere else, not here and now, in the depth of our souls and at work in the intricate web of all matter throughout this staggering universe.

Mystery is not a puzzle to be solved, a problem our science has not yet explained or crime detectives have yet to crack. It is the reality that cannot be fathomed or explained even when Spirit-kissed moments reveal its beauty. And moments come when you see… and know.

I leave the church and turn left on Ogden Avenue on an autumn evening. The road bends and a harvest moon, glorious, yellow and huge hangs among the tree branches. I pull my car to the side of the street and bask in the glow.

The glow is less from the moon than from some place within my soul. I am aware only of love, love for this crazy, troubled, insane and often bloody planet, love for my life, love for the people I see and work with each day, love for life itself and its mysterious Source.

Moments before sadness filled me from struggles of the day, depression over disappointments, and then appears this light, this moon, this awakened heart bearing a mystery greater than any mind can know.

Everything changes in an instant. Illumined, I am on my phone telling friends to go outside, look at the moon and let the healing light work on their souls. I want to share the moment … and the awareness of a Love mysteriously present in all things.

The mystery is the wonder of Christ, the Love who is God, deep in my flesh, suddenly appearing, totally unbidden, filling and moving me to reach out in glorious gratitude, telling me once more what is always true and real about who God is and freeing me to be who I am as I feel and know the hope of God for all that is.

Mystery is not a word much used in Lutheran circles, but I have come to love it because it captures the experience of knowing … through experiencing … something profoundly real for which words are inadequate, something that can never be explained or understood but which changes your entire outlook.

It captures the wonder of the Love who is God, filling one’s being and laboring in all of life so that Spirit and matter are joined in glorious harmony.

The mystery is Christ in you (Colossians 1:26).

My moment in the moonlight awakened my heart … one more time … to this mystery, awakening life in my soul and filling my heart with inexplicable love and gratitude. In a moment I knew: All that I am, all that has been and will be is encompassed and held by the Love who holds all of life and is drawing all things into the One Love who is God.

In an instant, I was saved from myself, released from sadness over personal failings and the depressing state of the world, released from prison walls of anxiety and doubt that shut up the heart.

I was alive again, brimming with love from a source within but so far beyond me.

There was no separation between God and me, or between God and the far-flung corners of the universe. There was only this Mysterious Love infusing all that is, making all that is a sacrament waiting to be seen and received, loved as the holy gift of the Divine Lover, hungry to meet us wherever we are … and everywhere we go.

Pr. David L. Miller.