Saturday, December 6, 2014

Mark 1:1-3

The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is written in the prophet Isaiah: Look, I am going to send my messenger in front of you to prepare your way before you. A voice of one that cries in the desert: Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight.

Prepare Love’s way

What is the Lord’s way, if not that of Love that transforms the heart and sets us free?

We make the path straight by releasing all that blocks the flow of Love between God and ourselves … and between us and others. Sin is all that blocks the flow of self-giving Love that pours from the depth of God’s heart.

We are made to bask and revel, to know …sweetest communion, heart-to-heart, with the One Love who made us, the One who is the Heart of our hearts.

It is this communion that fulfills the human heart. All that stops the flow of grace and goodness is to be cleared away … as much as this is in our power.

Make straight the Lord’s paths. Remove the obstacles to knowing and reveling in the Love, the Life that flows from deepest mystery to the mystery of our hearts.

These obstacles are as diverse and manifold as the human race itself. What keeps us from receiving and giving, from knowing and sharing the Love of Holy One as it flows from secret depths of eternity?

Perhaps our resentments, angers and disappointments prevent the flow of love from penetrating calcified hearts.

Perhaps we are too busy to pray or even to feel what is in our hearts and offer it to God.

Perhaps we fail to see and return to the sacraments of God’s life in our lives, the people and places, the practices and moments that make us truly alive and filled … with the Love which completes us.

Make straight God’s paths. Prepare his way. Remove the negative thoughts that shut down the flow of love in you. Dwell no longer on the disappointments and resentments that sour the heart and turn it from love. Release the festering wounds at which you pick. Let go of the threatened ego’s need to win and be considered important. 

Turn your eyes to the Love who seeks you in every love, every grace and beauty. Run to the places where you know … the Love who comes to make you alive. Go there, and let it draw you into its gravity.

Your heart will open like a flower. Joy will so fill you that you can barely speak. Expectation and unfailing hope will open your eyes to the Love who is, the Love who comes to you again and again … because that’s the way Love is.

Make straight the path for the One who comes.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, December 5, 2014

Mark 1:1,7

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. …[John the Baptist] proclaimed  the one who is more powerful that I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals

Kissing the feet

I wonder if you are truly a human being until you have been so moved that you are eager to bend down and kiss someone’s feet.

This may seem a strange thought, hopelessly out of date. But you don’t really know what is in your heart until you love, admire and even adore someone so much that this act of humility and affection seems natural as breathing, something your heart is eager to do.

Mothers kiss their children’s feet all the time in complete affection and care, an acknowledgement that their heart totally belongs to their little one. They would do anything for them.

In ancient times, taking off someone’s sandals and washing of kissing their feet was an act of abject humility, something slaves would be ordered to do.

But for mothers and John the Baptist … and for those who have been moved to deep love … this is an act of joy. It expresses the heart’s desire to be given away in love and service to the one they kiss.

We become completely human, truly human souls, when the heart is moved to this place of giving and humility, when a slave’s act is a joyous expression of a love that cannot be denied.

Jesus comes. He appears and awakens this kind of love in the John’s heart. It is the beginning of the good news.

Jesus is the good news who moves us beyond our hang-ups and all that hems in our hearts to kiss the feet of the Love who comes to set us free.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, December 1, 2014

Isaiah 40:9

Get you up to a high mountain,
   O Zion, herald of good tidings;
lift up your voice with strength,
   O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,
   lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,
   ‘Here is your God!’

A voice beyond all others

There is a Voice

beyond all others

the heart strains

to hear, for it is life

and joy, bringing

news of the love that

comes anew every

morning awakening

hope for the day when

waiting is done and

fullness comes.

Trained by Love

to want nothing but

the love …Love is,

the heart, finely

tuned, leans forward

to capture every sound

and syllable, every

note and song yearning

for the moment,

word and note make magic

and the wanted news

fills the heart with the

wonder for which

every heart hungers.

Rise up O Voice, and

speak, sing, shout

the morning song that

fills the heart,

strengthens soul

and makes alive

once more.

Pr. David L. Miller