Fall into the Heart

While everyone was amazed at all that he was doing, he said to his disciples, ‘Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into human hands.’ But they did not understand this saying... (Luke 9:43b-45a)

I understand why Jesus’ disciples didn’t understand. They didn’t want to. They didn’t want to consider the goodness they felt when near him could and would be lost. The life radiating from him illumined and warmed their mortal hearts with hope that life could be more than whatever small joys they managed to cram into a precious few years.

They had experienced the Extraordinary. Without Jesus, without his palpable nearness, the touch of his flesh and the sound of his voice, life would again become  ... normal, mundane, ordinary.

Who wants normal when you have known and felt that which exceeds every expectation? And who wants to contemplate the inevitable passing of everything we know and love and are?

All of life is shadowed by death, every loss a little reminder of what cannot be denied. Implicitly knowing this from our earliest days, we anxiously grasp as much as we can hold, a death-grip on whatever good has touched our lives and hearts.

But there is one more thing to know, just one ... that changes everything. The Love who gives life brings Life Extraordinaire from every loss, if we but release our grip on what was ... and trust that Love always has a new day waiting to be born.

This new day ... that can be everyday ...  radiates the Life and Love of being with Jesus, our souls alive with the hope and love he awakened in his first disciples and now in us.

It was necessary for him to suffer and die. Only so could he reveal the fundamental truth of our existence. The Love who holds us all never lets go.

So we ... in every struggle and every loss ... can release our grip and let ourselves fall into the heart of Love at heart of the universe.

David L. Miller