As you see so shall you be

A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ (Mark 1:40-41)

I have reached the point in recent years where (on good days) I realize that getting the point is not the point.

Hard as it is to let go of wringing an idea or some takeaway from my morning meditation, it is refreshing, if a bit unsettling, to settle into a moment of awareness, realizing that what I seek is already in me … and I am in it.

The unsettling part is letting go of the need to make something of the time, to walk away with an idea I can share or write about, which, ironically, is exactly what I am doing.

But to write about what happened today, last night and several days running seems impossible because it is so nebulous—tangible, yes, and assuredly real, but elusive as the air of love I was breathing, or better, that was breathing through me.

The story is simple, a leper, an outcast in the grip of gross disfiguration physically, emotionally and socially. And then, an outstretched hand and Jesus’ voice: I choose. I choose you. I choose this moment to touch and heal and love and give you back your life.

The words are barely necessary. The hand is enough. If all I ever knew of Jesus was this moment, this outstretched hand, it would be enough for me to love him and want to be with him, just to feel him near.

But there’s more. For the superlative gift is not seeing him and knowing he is compassion, divine and real, human and present right there before my eyes. The greater gift is finding that same love alive and breathing from some secret source hidden in the depth of your being.

And greater still is silently knowing that the Love breathing in him and in you surrounds and envelopes us and everything we can imagine in an invisible ocean of Presence, Love’s boundless sea.

The non-point of all this is that we pray and meditate not (or surely less) to get something, find answers or reach an insight. We come and look at Jesus to savor Love’s truth until it awakens within us the Love we truly are, and in whom we live, though we knew it not.

We come to see and savor Love’s own soul, for as we see so shall we be.

David L. Miller