Thursday, December 12, 2019

Love’s secret


And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.
 (Luke 1:31)

Love labors in the silent darkness, far from garish lights that blind our eyes to all that is truly holy. Love toils secretly where no one can see, working out its holy purpose that the wonder of every age may appear according to the inscrutable timing of the divine heart.

What was it, Holy One, that you should think, “Here and now, in this girl, I will fulfill my heart’s desire to live among human hearts with a human heart all my own, feeling everything life holds and every fear death stirs?

Your life stirred in the secret darkness of Mary’s young womb—she of no renown, living in a place the world would have forgotten long ago, if not for the child she birthed.

You chose Mary, which should spark a flame of hope in every human breast, especially when we wonder if our lives have mattered … or if they still can.

For in an out-of-the way place, in this peasant girl, eternity entered time. Through Mary, you blessed the world and every moment of history with a light that has never gone out … and never will.

And we who need the light of this child to shine in us, hunger to hear the divine promise to Mary ringing also in our ears.

You will conceive.” Sounds strange, but each of us is pregnant with the light of God, eager to fill us and be born, bursting out in a love that fills our eyes with tears and our words with blessing for every broken heart and troubled space we encounter.

Sit in the silence and know … the Holy One, the Loving Mystery whom we will never understand, toils in the darkness of your soul, hidden, unknown, until those moments when you feel new life, Love, that is … stirring within for this weary old world, and oh-so blessedly for our own weathered hearts.

Pr. David L. Miller



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