Saturday, June 13, 2015

Psalm 13

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
   How long will you hide your face from me? 
How long must I bear pain in my soul,
   and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? 
Consider and answer me, O Lord my God!
   Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death, 
and my enemy will say, ‘I have prevailed’;
   my foes will rejoice because I am shaken. 
But I trusted in your steadfast love;
   my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. 
I will sing to the Lord,
   because he has dealt bountifully with me.

For J

Abandoned and alone, the voice said, forgotten and cut off from the face of God. Days of sunshine had passed, leaving only the shadow of not knowing what hope can be had from an uncertain future.

So many walk this road. And the voice little knew in what blessed company he walks, for he is not and never alone. He walks with all who are stripped of the false certainties once imagined to be true.

He walks with those who know what life is, a path where hard-won wisdom leads either to despair or to the Love which is the foundation of all real hope.

He walks with those whose hearts are being made loving and beautiful by what they suffer.

He walks with those whose words ring true because they have endured the valley and know what remains when illusion is stripped away.

What remains is you, Holy One, just you, and that’s enough. You are enough for us.

When suffering comes, when the illusion that we are in control disappears, what remains is the Love that leaks through the crust of this earth— through chemotherapy and radiation, through CT scans and ultrasounds, through to-the-bone weariness and doctors frowns.

What remains is the Love who streams through every love and beauty, through the light of every dawn, through the rain that waters the earth, through the sweetness of sound and melody that cut through our darkness to the sensitive soul assuring us again that Love is, Love is, Love is.

You are the Love who remains, Holy One, the Love on which we lay on days when we cannot stand. You are the Love to whom we call when forgotten and alone, far from healing light, we cry to feel the light of your face shining on us nevertheless.

We cry out, our voice one with the sorrow of our brother, Jesus. Forgotten and alone, cast out and rejected he wanted only one thing—You. He longed for the light of the Love that remains when every illusion shatters.

You are the healing for which the soul longs, the rock solid beneath our feet when life and disease shake our foundations. The light of your love is the hope cancer and uncertainty cannot kill, the light that pierces the darkness of the valley that must be walked.

You are Love, and You are here … even now … always. Nothing can change that. So pour through the dark of difficult days. Give light to our eyes that our hearts may see and sing your beauty.

Pr. David L. Miller