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Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28).
It is just an
empty chair, a gray and white rocker on the balcony. I wiped it down from the rains
that soaked the earth for the third night running and folded a towel on the
seat, ready for Dixie to join me.
That won’t be
for a while. She is able to sleep later than my body allows, a grace of which I
am jealous. But it gives me time to sing my morning songs of praise, awakening
my heart so I can settle in and read of Jesus, listening for his voice in my
heart.
‘Come to me,’
he says, and I immediately see St. Teresa’s vision and borrow it for my use. In
the vision, I am walking through the interior castle of my soul, making my way
through the outer rooms toward the center where Christ dwells, his light
flowing outward to the more distanced regions where I make my way.
Seeing the great
distance between the beauty of his heart and the reality of my own, there is no
discouragement, only hope. The light of the all-penetrating love of Christ stretches
out to encompass me where I am, always a beginner in this life, never as close
to him as I long to be.
The pain of this
longing is never far away, sometimes muted, sometimes acute, a thirst only he
can quench.
But even in
the distant places, far from the center where Christ dwells, the light of his love
and the warmth of his delight draw me onward that my heart might be saturated, absorbed
in his beauty, joy and love.
With Teresa’s
vision in my own heart, I see and feel your smile, Jesus, as you watch me continue
my way, encompassed in the rays of the light emanating from your face.
You beckon me,
all of us, to come to you and rest from the burden of our exile, separated as
we are from the Love who is our true and final home.
There are
days the warmth of your love sweeps me away, stilling every other thought and
emotion, a foretaste of the final rest that awaits the end of our journey.
But that is
not today. Today, the empty chair across from me stirs longing for my beloved to
come and share this holy space with me. It awakens an inner emptiness, a longing
for love’s presence that echoes the great longing for love’s completion of all
things—a hunger for love to fill the earth as the waters cover the sea.
I had only to
wait. Soon enough, she came, her smile shimmering with the beauty of the loving
heart grace has long wrought in her. ‘Christ plays in ten thousand places,’ G.M.
Hopkins wrote, ‘lovely in eyes not his.’ And surely here, to lighten the burden
of exile, as we journey home, together.
David L. Miller
