Today’s text
Luke 3:1-3
In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar's reign, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judaea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of the territories of Ituraea and Trachonitis, Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, and while the high-priesthood was held by Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah, in the desert. He went through the whole Jordan area proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins ... .
Reflection
So it is, Holy One, while important people go about essential business of state, fulfilling the tedious demands of office, demanding due reverence to their position while making the rest of us aware of their significance to the social order, you come.
You come where and when you will, paying little attention to those to whom the population looks for assurance about what the markets will do or what bill will soon be enacted into law for the benefit, mostly, of those with power.
You pay no attention to power as we know it. You come in the desert places where human power is at its limit, where significance of place and position doesn’t matter, where nature reveals that we are nothing but flesh and blood and need.
You come where we have nothing of which to boast, nothing that lifts us above the common run of humanity, where our mortality is undeniable.
You come where we are most likely to listen, to hear and hunger for a voice beyond the cry of advertisers drumming up false needs and spurious wants. You come where we know our souls are far from the home, where our dis-ease moves us to seek a place, a word, a Presence for which we have longed, but seldom, if ever, entered.
You draw us to desert places where who we think we are and what we have done doesn’t matter, where we can acknowledge that the clothes in which we wrap ourselves, hiding our real faces, are illusory.
There your word comes to us, as to John, revealing again what (on some level) we already knew: that we need, and our need cries from depths we cannot deny.
We need the love you are, if we are ever to be free and full, if ever we are to be our truest selves. So lead us into desert places, and speak to us.
We hunger for your voice to touch the places we hide.
Pr. David L. Miller
http://prayingthemystery.blogspot.com/
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Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Friday, November 27, 2009
Friday, November 27, 2009
Friday, November 27, 2009
Today’s text
1 Thessalonians 3:12-13
May the Lord increase and enrich your love for each other and for all, so that it matches ours for you. And may he so confirm your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless in the sight of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.
Reflection
The only holiness we have is the love that you wring from our stingy souls. And wring is the correct word, as we cling with death grip to our puny self-respect and the carefully tended masks that hide the need we fear to name.
I grow more insular each year, more drawn into myself, protecting my thoughts and anxieties, yet continually more needing the simplicity of connection, accepting friendships where all that matters is transparent humanity.
I long for moments of discovery when the beauty of a human heart shines through the bruises and wounds apathetic life inflicts on our fragile souls. And fragile, they are, easily lost to apathy or anger, to old wounds and suspicious bitterness born of too little love and too much living.
We hunger for the sacrament of safe space, for space in which false faces fade and masks are put away, and we risk needing and being needed. We need to become children again, unashamed of our want.
It is then that joy surprises us as we taste the happy communion for which you made us Holy One, a joy in which the love we know and share streams from the depth of eternity.
Most times we arrive at this grace only after denials of our needs are stripped away, when failed attempts to fill the hole in our hearts have proved futile, when you reveal (again) to our recalcitrance that we cannot be human except through surrender to need and love.
In that surrender we know you; even those who say they don’t believe know you, though they do not know how to name you.
But then neither do I. Who can name you?
For you are the Love that has left this wound, this need for Love in our hearts, and you are the Love that alone can heal us. Every love is a sacrament of the Love you are.
And loving is our only holiness, a share in the mystery of your life.
So let it be.
Pr. David L. Miller
Today’s text
1 Thessalonians 3:12-13
May the Lord increase and enrich your love for each other and for all, so that it matches ours for you. And may he so confirm your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless in the sight of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.
Reflection
The only holiness we have is the love that you wring from our stingy souls. And wring is the correct word, as we cling with death grip to our puny self-respect and the carefully tended masks that hide the need we fear to name.
I grow more insular each year, more drawn into myself, protecting my thoughts and anxieties, yet continually more needing the simplicity of connection, accepting friendships where all that matters is transparent humanity.
I long for moments of discovery when the beauty of a human heart shines through the bruises and wounds apathetic life inflicts on our fragile souls. And fragile, they are, easily lost to apathy or anger, to old wounds and suspicious bitterness born of too little love and too much living.
We hunger for the sacrament of safe space, for space in which false faces fade and masks are put away, and we risk needing and being needed. We need to become children again, unashamed of our want.
It is then that joy surprises us as we taste the happy communion for which you made us Holy One, a joy in which the love we know and share streams from the depth of eternity.
Most times we arrive at this grace only after denials of our needs are stripped away, when failed attempts to fill the hole in our hearts have proved futile, when you reveal (again) to our recalcitrance that we cannot be human except through surrender to need and love.
In that surrender we know you; even those who say they don’t believe know you, though they do not know how to name you.
But then neither do I. Who can name you?
For you are the Love that has left this wound, this need for Love in our hearts, and you are the Love that alone can heal us. Every love is a sacrament of the Love you are.
And loving is our only holiness, a share in the mystery of your life.
So let it be.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Today’s text
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Look, the days are coming, Yahweh declares, when I shall fulfill the promise of happiness I made to the House of Israel and the House of Judah: In those days and at that time, I shall make an upright Branch grow for David, who will do what is just and upright in the country. In those days Judah will triumph and Israel live in safety. And this is the name the city will be called: Yahweh-is-our-Saving-Justice."
Reflection
May the day come soon.
I understand why those who first heard Jeremiah’s words hungered for victory and safety. They lived under the heel of bitter oppression. Past ravages by sworn enemies put their fears on hair-trigger alert. It was a terrible way to live, always watching, anxiously anticipating the worst.
They wanted triumph, even revenge on the oppressor. I understand the urge, even as I reject it because it only creates more of the same. The ugly cycle of oppression, struggle, restoration and renewed oppression constantly repeats itself in human history and in our own personal histories.
The struggle draws the best and worst from our souls. The beauty of those who sacrifice for the liberation of others moves tears at the human capacity to give. But the tendency of the liberated to oppress once they have power moves astonishment at our forgetful idiocy: “How quickly we forget. Will we ever learn?”
So the prophet’s words do not move hunger for triumph over enemies far or near, Holy One. There is no blood lust in my soul these days, only sad longing for the day you promise, a day when you will be our saving justice.
So come and save us from ourselves. Save us from our angers, our myopic self-interest, our need to be right, our denunciations of others, our bitterness over slights and rejections and especially our failure to feel in our bones that that all of life, all of humanity, is one intricately connected family.
Transform our hearts so that we t know that the Love you are is life’s only justice, intended for all. May our hearts hunger for your justice and become your salvation, ending the ugly cycle that runs through all history and the depth of our hearts.
Save us from ourselves that we may become as you are.
Pr. David L. Miller
Today’s text
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Look, the days are coming, Yahweh declares, when I shall fulfill the promise of happiness I made to the House of Israel and the House of Judah: In those days and at that time, I shall make an upright Branch grow for David, who will do what is just and upright in the country. In those days Judah will triumph and Israel live in safety. And this is the name the city will be called: Yahweh-is-our-Saving-Justice."
Reflection
May the day come soon.
I understand why those who first heard Jeremiah’s words hungered for victory and safety. They lived under the heel of bitter oppression. Past ravages by sworn enemies put their fears on hair-trigger alert. It was a terrible way to live, always watching, anxiously anticipating the worst.
They wanted triumph, even revenge on the oppressor. I understand the urge, even as I reject it because it only creates more of the same. The ugly cycle of oppression, struggle, restoration and renewed oppression constantly repeats itself in human history and in our own personal histories.
The struggle draws the best and worst from our souls. The beauty of those who sacrifice for the liberation of others moves tears at the human capacity to give. But the tendency of the liberated to oppress once they have power moves astonishment at our forgetful idiocy: “How quickly we forget. Will we ever learn?”
So the prophet’s words do not move hunger for triumph over enemies far or near, Holy One. There is no blood lust in my soul these days, only sad longing for the day you promise, a day when you will be our saving justice.
So come and save us from ourselves. Save us from our angers, our myopic self-interest, our need to be right, our denunciations of others, our bitterness over slights and rejections and especially our failure to feel in our bones that that all of life, all of humanity, is one intricately connected family.
Transform our hearts so that we t know that the Love you are is life’s only justice, intended for all. May our hearts hunger for your justice and become your salvation, ending the ugly cycle that runs through all history and the depth of our hearts.
Save us from ourselves that we may become as you are.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Today’s text
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Look, the days are coming, Yahweh declares, when I shall fulfill the promise of happiness I made to the House of Israel and the House of Judah: In those days and at that time, I shall make an upright Branch grow for David, who will do what is just and upright in the country. In those days Judah will triumph and Israel live in safety. And this is the name the city will be called: Yahweh-is-our-Saving-Justice."
Reflection
Come, Lord Jesus. You are the righteous branch who grows from King David’s line. You are the fulfillment of promise and not of God’s promise alone. You fulfill the longing prophetic words stir in our hearts long centuries after their origin.
And we have such longing. We hunger to see, hear and be blessed by one who wills what you will, Loving Mystery, who loves what you love, who is pure in heart, fully given to your eternal desire.
We long to know Jesus, our brother who is truly your child, given solely to you. Seeing him, we know you and the life and the happiness for which we are intended.
So turn my heart from the distractions in which I delight. Turn my eyes to Jesus that I may see a life always guided by your eternal desire.
Let me see in him the beauty for which I hunger, for it is only in seeing and knowing that beauty also within myself that happiness comes, with truest humanity and the peaceful assurance that, finally, I have arrived home.
Pr. David L. Miller
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Look, the days are coming, Yahweh declares, when I shall fulfill the promise of happiness I made to the House of Israel and the House of Judah: In those days and at that time, I shall make an upright Branch grow for David, who will do what is just and upright in the country. In those days Judah will triumph and Israel live in safety. And this is the name the city will be called: Yahweh-is-our-Saving-Justice."
Reflection
Come, Lord Jesus. You are the righteous branch who grows from King David’s line. You are the fulfillment of promise and not of God’s promise alone. You fulfill the longing prophetic words stir in our hearts long centuries after their origin.
And we have such longing. We hunger to see, hear and be blessed by one who wills what you will, Loving Mystery, who loves what you love, who is pure in heart, fully given to your eternal desire.
We long to know Jesus, our brother who is truly your child, given solely to you. Seeing him, we know you and the life and the happiness for which we are intended.
So turn my heart from the distractions in which I delight. Turn my eyes to Jesus that I may see a life always guided by your eternal desire.
Let me see in him the beauty for which I hunger, for it is only in seeing and knowing that beauty also within myself that happiness comes, with truest humanity and the peaceful assurance that, finally, I have arrived home.
Pr. David L. Miller
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:8-9
You have not seen him, yet you love him; and still without seeing him you believe in him and so are already filled with a joy so glorious that it cannot be described; and you are sure of the goal of your faith, that is, the salvation of your souls.
Reflection
The soul seems like such an inconsequential reality. Some doubt that it is a reality at all. It’s an illusion, a puff of smoke, a fleeting intuition that one is more than mere molecules that chemistry and biology can explain.
But I often come to my day badly in need of being saved. My soul is sour, not hopeful; my orientation is towards things small and petty, the every day wrangling of getting a few things done before surrendering to the clock. Nothing in me soars, hopes or expects to taste the greatness of being alive, of knowing wonder, of feeling moved by love, beauty, laughter or tears.
Cynicism reigns on such days. Life fades to gray. Happiness is a mere diversion from the conflicts, disappointments and the anxieties that rush through consciousness at warp speed, soon to be replaced by others, too many of which set up shop and stay for a while, souring the spirit.
But salvation does appear, sometimes from out of nowhere, when I least expect. It is then that all this fades, and life takes on color and again. Consolation fills gray desolate places, and vision lifts to see life and possibilities not there moments before.
The heart, the soul grows full of gratitude and rich with generosity. It is then that I know the goal of my faith, your goal Holy One, to bring all that is and all of me--all the time--into this wholeness of life where grace reigns and the heart is sure that this salvation, once tasted, will come full come.
I wake this day again in need of being saved. I suppose that’s pretty much true everyday. When one learns a melancholy spirit as a child, the notion of soul, this inevitable orientation toward life that shapes and colors all one sees, seems natural as breathing.
What is less automatic is living in the love that lifts the soul to song. That one must receive as a gift you can never control but only look for and be ready to receive when it appears.
So today I look and wait to taste again the salvation I need.
Come quickly, Lord Jesus.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Peter 1:8-9
You have not seen him, yet you love him; and still without seeing him you believe in him and so are already filled with a joy so glorious that it cannot be described; and you are sure of the goal of your faith, that is, the salvation of your souls.
Reflection
The soul seems like such an inconsequential reality. Some doubt that it is a reality at all. It’s an illusion, a puff of smoke, a fleeting intuition that one is more than mere molecules that chemistry and biology can explain.
But I often come to my day badly in need of being saved. My soul is sour, not hopeful; my orientation is towards things small and petty, the every day wrangling of getting a few things done before surrendering to the clock. Nothing in me soars, hopes or expects to taste the greatness of being alive, of knowing wonder, of feeling moved by love, beauty, laughter or tears.
Cynicism reigns on such days. Life fades to gray. Happiness is a mere diversion from the conflicts, disappointments and the anxieties that rush through consciousness at warp speed, soon to be replaced by others, too many of which set up shop and stay for a while, souring the spirit.
But salvation does appear, sometimes from out of nowhere, when I least expect. It is then that all this fades, and life takes on color and again. Consolation fills gray desolate places, and vision lifts to see life and possibilities not there moments before.
The heart, the soul grows full of gratitude and rich with generosity. It is then that I know the goal of my faith, your goal Holy One, to bring all that is and all of me--all the time--into this wholeness of life where grace reigns and the heart is sure that this salvation, once tasted, will come full come.
I wake this day again in need of being saved. I suppose that’s pretty much true everyday. When one learns a melancholy spirit as a child, the notion of soul, this inevitable orientation toward life that shapes and colors all one sees, seems natural as breathing.
What is less automatic is living in the love that lifts the soul to song. That one must receive as a gift you can never control but only look for and be ready to receive when it appears.
So today I look and wait to taste again the salvation I need.
Come quickly, Lord Jesus.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:8-9
You have not seen him, yet you love him; and still without seeing him you believe in him and so are already filled with a joy so glorious that it cannot be described; and you are sure of the goal of your faith, that is, the salvation of your souls.
Reflection
But I have seen you, Jesus.
I live in 21st century North America, not first century Palestine. I have not walked down dusty roads as did the privileged and fearful few who were your friends and followers.
I have not touched the literal flesh of your hand, watched the contour of your cheek when you smiled or reacted to the familiar timbre of your voice when happy or sad, angry or determined.
None of that lies within my experience.
But my stomach turns at the sound of these words, for I believe I have seen. I cannot read these words about not seeing without feeling false.
The scenes of your ministry are vivid enough in my imagination to provide moments of awareness in which I know, however partially, what it was like to walk with you, to be frightened by and for you, to bask in the warmth of your welcome and even to be corrected for my foolish fears and lack of care.
I have also seen your soul in the souls of people from more than one or two places and cultures, and I marvel at the vision, the willingness to bear pain, the hope and joy I have witnessed.
I believe you live because I have seen how you stir life and care even in souls who aren’t quite sure what to make of you.
You are not absent. You are not separate from the souls of men and women but dwell at depths unsearchable, and your presence streams out of us when the dams that block your way wear down.
I have seen your beauty, and it saves my soul each time I see it. It stirs your life in me, and I become a little more alive.
So I don’t want to hear about not seeing you. That is neither my perspective nor experience.
Instead, I will simply thank you for giving me enough vision to see what I need to see, and to know that it is you whom I see amid the faces.
Pr. David L. Miller
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:8-9
You have not seen him, yet you love him; and still without seeing him you believe in him and so are already filled with a joy so glorious that it cannot be described; and you are sure of the goal of your faith, that is, the salvation of your souls.
Reflection
But I have seen you, Jesus.
I live in 21st century North America, not first century Palestine. I have not walked down dusty roads as did the privileged and fearful few who were your friends and followers.
I have not touched the literal flesh of your hand, watched the contour of your cheek when you smiled or reacted to the familiar timbre of your voice when happy or sad, angry or determined.
None of that lies within my experience.
But my stomach turns at the sound of these words, for I believe I have seen. I cannot read these words about not seeing without feeling false.
The scenes of your ministry are vivid enough in my imagination to provide moments of awareness in which I know, however partially, what it was like to walk with you, to be frightened by and for you, to bask in the warmth of your welcome and even to be corrected for my foolish fears and lack of care.
I have also seen your soul in the souls of people from more than one or two places and cultures, and I marvel at the vision, the willingness to bear pain, the hope and joy I have witnessed.
I believe you live because I have seen how you stir life and care even in souls who aren’t quite sure what to make of you.
You are not absent. You are not separate from the souls of men and women but dwell at depths unsearchable, and your presence streams out of us when the dams that block your way wear down.
I have seen your beauty, and it saves my soul each time I see it. It stirs your life in me, and I become a little more alive.
So I don’t want to hear about not seeing you. That is neither my perspective nor experience.
Instead, I will simply thank you for giving me enough vision to see what I need to see, and to know that it is you whom I see amid the faces.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:6-7
This is a great joy to you, even though for a short time yet you must bear all sorts of trials; so that the worth of your faith, more valuable than gold, which is perishable even if it has been tested by fire, may be proved -- to your praise and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Reflection
What is the worth of our faith? What proves its value and praises you, dear Friend?
I have often seen the faith of souls who did not crumble under hardship. They kept hoping and looking for signs of your redeeming presence well beyond the limits of normal human patience.
Perhaps this is a primary proof of faith’s great value. We hope when no one and nothing else gives reason for hope. We look for the enduring presence of love when grief, loss or threat fill our senses.
Our souls lift to the future’s unseen, unknown hills, trusting that something, someone--You--will be there and we will know it, even though your nearness is not felt in the here and now.
Our faith brings with it an endurance, buoyancy, a sly wait-and-see smile that intuitively knows you are God, and you are not done.
It stands ready to break out in joy, with a heart that “knew all along” that you would answer with a love that constantly labors beyond the limits of our vision.
Today, well everyday, I need this faith, my Lord. It awakens in me a giddy joy quick to laugh and willing to wait and see what you yet will do.
That laughter is prayer of greatest praise for you, Loving Mystery. So today, let me laugh.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Peter 1:6-7
This is a great joy to you, even though for a short time yet you must bear all sorts of trials; so that the worth of your faith, more valuable than gold, which is perishable even if it has been tested by fire, may be proved -- to your praise and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Reflection
What is the worth of our faith? What proves its value and praises you, dear Friend?
I have often seen the faith of souls who did not crumble under hardship. They kept hoping and looking for signs of your redeeming presence well beyond the limits of normal human patience.
Perhaps this is a primary proof of faith’s great value. We hope when no one and nothing else gives reason for hope. We look for the enduring presence of love when grief, loss or threat fill our senses.
Our souls lift to the future’s unseen, unknown hills, trusting that something, someone--You--will be there and we will know it, even though your nearness is not felt in the here and now.
Our faith brings with it an endurance, buoyancy, a sly wait-and-see smile that intuitively knows you are God, and you are not done.
It stands ready to break out in joy, with a heart that “knew all along” that you would answer with a love that constantly labors beyond the limits of our vision.
Today, well everyday, I need this faith, my Lord. It awakens in me a giddy joy quick to laugh and willing to wait and see what you yet will do.
That laughter is prayer of greatest praise for you, Loving Mystery. So today, let me laugh.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:6-7
This is a great joy to you, even though for a short time yet you must bear all sorts of trials; so that the worth of your faith, more valuable than gold, which is perishable even if it has been tested by fire, may be proved -- to your praise and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Reflection
The fire that tests our faith burns more slowly and secretly today. Generations before us bore scars of rejection and bitter persecution. This still happens, though usually not in Western countries.
Those who endured such trials knew that faith is perishable. It must be struggled for or one soon sinks into the great mass of mediocrity, indistinguishable from the surrounding culture. Faith no longer shapes one’s words and acts. It devolves into meaningless belief without power to shape choices or determine who we are.
Consumerism may be the most dangerous fire for North Americans. Slowly, secretly and inevitably, it erodes awareness that we are beloved children of the Beloved One, called to live the love we receive.
Consumers know the world exists for them, and they demand their way, to get what they want when and where they want it. Our culture does an excellent job forming consumers. From an early age we learn life is about consuming things, finding happiness there.
For us, the earth, other people and even the Christ’s holy Church easily become commodities to be used for one’s one purposes. We come to each situation with the attitude that it exists for me, to deliver what I want, and when it doesn’t deliver frustration and anger quickly appear.
Consumerism is the bitter enemy of communion, and it is to communion that we are called.
Christ brings us into a communion of love, life and mission, communion in his life, shared with others. Our souls are made for this. It is holy, bringing consolation and joy.
Consumerism brings anxiety and unrest. It is never truly satisfied. It worships its whims and ability to satisfy them, often at the expense of others close at hand or the great mass of humanity far away who labor for near nothing to make our lives possible. It constantly justifies its anger and frustration, and it tears at the fabric of communion in Christ’s church, treating human souls as mere objects.
It constantly misses the truth: by love and for love we are made, and in loving communion we find ourselves and God. This faith is surrendered to the logic of the marketplace that makes everything an it and nothing is a thou.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Peter 1:6-7
This is a great joy to you, even though for a short time yet you must bear all sorts of trials; so that the worth of your faith, more valuable than gold, which is perishable even if it has been tested by fire, may be proved -- to your praise and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Reflection
The fire that tests our faith burns more slowly and secretly today. Generations before us bore scars of rejection and bitter persecution. This still happens, though usually not in Western countries.
Those who endured such trials knew that faith is perishable. It must be struggled for or one soon sinks into the great mass of mediocrity, indistinguishable from the surrounding culture. Faith no longer shapes one’s words and acts. It devolves into meaningless belief without power to shape choices or determine who we are.
Consumerism may be the most dangerous fire for North Americans. Slowly, secretly and inevitably, it erodes awareness that we are beloved children of the Beloved One, called to live the love we receive.
Consumers know the world exists for them, and they demand their way, to get what they want when and where they want it. Our culture does an excellent job forming consumers. From an early age we learn life is about consuming things, finding happiness there.
For us, the earth, other people and even the Christ’s holy Church easily become commodities to be used for one’s one purposes. We come to each situation with the attitude that it exists for me, to deliver what I want, and when it doesn’t deliver frustration and anger quickly appear.
Consumerism is the bitter enemy of communion, and it is to communion that we are called.
Christ brings us into a communion of love, life and mission, communion in his life, shared with others. Our souls are made for this. It is holy, bringing consolation and joy.
Consumerism brings anxiety and unrest. It is never truly satisfied. It worships its whims and ability to satisfy them, often at the expense of others close at hand or the great mass of humanity far away who labor for near nothing to make our lives possible. It constantly justifies its anger and frustration, and it tears at the fabric of communion in Christ’s church, treating human souls as mere objects.
It constantly misses the truth: by love and for love we are made, and in loving communion we find ourselves and God. This faith is surrendered to the logic of the marketplace that makes everything an it and nothing is a thou.
Pr. David L. Miller
Friday, November 06, 2009
Thursday, November 6, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:6-7
This is a great joy to you, even though for a short time yet you must bear all sorts of trials; so that the worth of your faith, more valuable than gold, which is perishable even if it has been tested by fire, may be proved -- to your praise and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Reflection
Trials come with the sunrise. Sleep is blessed respite for those who can, but anxiety and pain flood the conscious mind of the burdened before slumber leaves their eyes.
It is so for many, and certainly for those who fill my mind as quickly as I choke the alarm’s infernal buzzing. Their faces bring no new questions, only old unanswered ones.
Why this suffering? Why do those who already have too much on their plate get second and third helpings? Why do even the young suffer so much illness, depression, abuse and untimely death?
This is so gloomy compared to the joy you speak to my heart, Lord. Your words penetrate and clear away my questions without offering an answer.
“You must bear all sorts of trials.” Yes, we know. You need not tell us. But the hope we hold is “a great joy.”
Now that we most often don’t know. Hope gets hidden in the cloud of trial, and its joy is lost to us. We must struggle for it.
We must remind each other that You are not silent. Love speaks. It is near as the trembling flesh and quavering voice of those who know neither what to do or say to end our trials, but who come near, bearing the weight of their own humanity.
There will come a day when the separation of our mortality and your immortality is gone, when our ceaseless need and your constant love fully find each other at last.
I believe this not because words on a page tell me so, but because every experience of love and loss, trial and struggle reveals an objection and a hope written on my soul. Each trial awakens awareness that we hunger for more, for freedom from all that disfigures life and snatches it away.
This comes from you and is flagged into flame by the resurrection of Jesus. So that on days like today, I look at the present circumstance knowing, “this, too, will find redemption.”
I don’t know how, where or when. But it will, and I will fight to make it happen even if I don’t get to see it until the day you make all things new.
It is your fight, Holy One. Let me fight it with joyous hope, for I want to honor you.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Peter 1:6-7
This is a great joy to you, even though for a short time yet you must bear all sorts of trials; so that the worth of your faith, more valuable than gold, which is perishable even if it has been tested by fire, may be proved -- to your praise and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Reflection
Trials come with the sunrise. Sleep is blessed respite for those who can, but anxiety and pain flood the conscious mind of the burdened before slumber leaves their eyes.
It is so for many, and certainly for those who fill my mind as quickly as I choke the alarm’s infernal buzzing. Their faces bring no new questions, only old unanswered ones.
Why this suffering? Why do those who already have too much on their plate get second and third helpings? Why do even the young suffer so much illness, depression, abuse and untimely death?
This is so gloomy compared to the joy you speak to my heart, Lord. Your words penetrate and clear away my questions without offering an answer.
“You must bear all sorts of trials.” Yes, we know. You need not tell us. But the hope we hold is “a great joy.”
Now that we most often don’t know. Hope gets hidden in the cloud of trial, and its joy is lost to us. We must struggle for it.
We must remind each other that You are not silent. Love speaks. It is near as the trembling flesh and quavering voice of those who know neither what to do or say to end our trials, but who come near, bearing the weight of their own humanity.
There will come a day when the separation of our mortality and your immortality is gone, when our ceaseless need and your constant love fully find each other at last.
I believe this not because words on a page tell me so, but because every experience of love and loss, trial and struggle reveals an objection and a hope written on my soul. Each trial awakens awareness that we hunger for more, for freedom from all that disfigures life and snatches it away.
This comes from you and is flagged into flame by the resurrection of Jesus. So that on days like today, I look at the present circumstance knowing, “this, too, will find redemption.”
I don’t know how, where or when. But it will, and I will fight to make it happen even if I don’t get to see it until the day you make all things new.
It is your fight, Holy One. Let me fight it with joyous hope, for I want to honor you.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:3-5
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into a heritage that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away. It is reserved in heaven for you who are being kept safe by God's power through faith until the salvation which has been prepared is revealed at the final point of time.
Reflection
At the heart of our lives, Holy One, is a yearning for a great love, a love for which we stretch and grasp but which lies always beyond our reach. We hunger to unite as one with that love to fulfill this longing, an ache we did not choose but find within ourselves.
We yearn and stir with anxious agitation, hungry for final satisfaction of soul that can come only as we and that love are one love, abiding in each other so closely that we find that love within ourselves and find ourselves within that love, walls of separation finally gone.
I feel this better than I describe it, My Lord, for I know it within myself. And I know what it is that I describe--salvation, the final wholeness for which our human frame is made.
The word … salvation … has grown so trite and meaningless in our world. It is used for those who have made some kind of decision about who you are, those intended for heaven, those who will escape final punishment. It’s all so disconnected with what is most deeply rooted in us that you seem so intent on saving.
You would save our inmost being, that hunger for love (for you!) that you fashioned in us, a salvation that comes not from some decision of ours but only as we find and see and surrender to the presence of Love within our own being.
There are moments when your love and ours seem one, when your joy and mine are shared, when your struggle and my labor beat in time, singing a single tune. The heart falls quiet, at rest, and I realize I am possessed, indwelt by a Love I did not fashion. I find myself (yes, finally) in a space where your love surrounds and envelops me and all that is.
This is salvation, and the joy it brings need not be forced or even requested. It is just there before any asking can occur.
I suppose something like this is what you have prepared and laid up in heaven for us. But great as this will be, I think I might recognize it. For, I have known it here and now, kneeling and lighting a candle and discovering a joy within that spills from your heart and into my own, sensing that we are not two, but one.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Peter 1:3-5
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into a heritage that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away. It is reserved in heaven for you who are being kept safe by God's power through faith until the salvation which has been prepared is revealed at the final point of time.
Reflection
At the heart of our lives, Holy One, is a yearning for a great love, a love for which we stretch and grasp but which lies always beyond our reach. We hunger to unite as one with that love to fulfill this longing, an ache we did not choose but find within ourselves.
We yearn and stir with anxious agitation, hungry for final satisfaction of soul that can come only as we and that love are one love, abiding in each other so closely that we find that love within ourselves and find ourselves within that love, walls of separation finally gone.
I feel this better than I describe it, My Lord, for I know it within myself. And I know what it is that I describe--salvation, the final wholeness for which our human frame is made.
The word … salvation … has grown so trite and meaningless in our world. It is used for those who have made some kind of decision about who you are, those intended for heaven, those who will escape final punishment. It’s all so disconnected with what is most deeply rooted in us that you seem so intent on saving.
You would save our inmost being, that hunger for love (for you!) that you fashioned in us, a salvation that comes not from some decision of ours but only as we find and see and surrender to the presence of Love within our own being.
There are moments when your love and ours seem one, when your joy and mine are shared, when your struggle and my labor beat in time, singing a single tune. The heart falls quiet, at rest, and I realize I am possessed, indwelt by a Love I did not fashion. I find myself (yes, finally) in a space where your love surrounds and envelops me and all that is.
This is salvation, and the joy it brings need not be forced or even requested. It is just there before any asking can occur.
I suppose something like this is what you have prepared and laid up in heaven for us. But great as this will be, I think I might recognize it. For, I have known it here and now, kneeling and lighting a candle and discovering a joy within that spills from your heart and into my own, sensing that we are not two, but one.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:3-5
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into a heritage that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away. It is reserved in heaven for you who are being kept safe by God's power through faith until the salvation which has been prepared is revealed at the final point of time.
Reflection
How might I be different if I consistently believed that I am “kept safe” by your power? My mind would entertain far fewer anxious thoughts. My anxious heart would find rest even when threat is near, for you, Holy One, are here, always holding us.
The things that happen to all human beings can and will happen to me. I expect no special protection from the pains of mortality and finitude. The last day provides ample evidence that those nearest me possess no special exemption.
For one, insidious decline brings greater confinement. She must be tied down lest she hurt herself, while those who love her best look on, helpless to do anything for the person who most taught them how to be human.
For others, financial and housing set-backs reveal that they have less influence over what happens to them and their families than they want, need or imagined they had. The weakness of the flesh is their daily bread.
Undeniable threat and inevitable loss loom near. And for some, the only assurance is greater grief.
Safety is not the condition for any of those who faces appear in my morning mind.
But even these, you tell me, are kept safe in your power. Even now, even these rest in the hand of grace from which they will not be snatched. Even in unsafest condition, the power and grace you are can and will be known.
Trust, you say. Have faith. Tears are laced with grace. Threat has its moment. Sorrow endures an evening, but grace will have its say, and its final day holds no setting of the sun. It will not fade once begun.
For I am. And I am love unbounded. Morning will come … and stay. Even in grief, grace will mark your cheeks, and the hope held in your heart will hold you.
As do I.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Peter 1:3-5
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into a heritage that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away. It is reserved in heaven for you who are being kept safe by God's power through faith until the salvation which has been prepared is revealed at the final point of time.
Reflection
How might I be different if I consistently believed that I am “kept safe” by your power? My mind would entertain far fewer anxious thoughts. My anxious heart would find rest even when threat is near, for you, Holy One, are here, always holding us.
The things that happen to all human beings can and will happen to me. I expect no special protection from the pains of mortality and finitude. The last day provides ample evidence that those nearest me possess no special exemption.
For one, insidious decline brings greater confinement. She must be tied down lest she hurt herself, while those who love her best look on, helpless to do anything for the person who most taught them how to be human.
For others, financial and housing set-backs reveal that they have less influence over what happens to them and their families than they want, need or imagined they had. The weakness of the flesh is their daily bread.
Undeniable threat and inevitable loss loom near. And for some, the only assurance is greater grief.
Safety is not the condition for any of those who faces appear in my morning mind.
But even these, you tell me, are kept safe in your power. Even now, even these rest in the hand of grace from which they will not be snatched. Even in unsafest condition, the power and grace you are can and will be known.
Trust, you say. Have faith. Tears are laced with grace. Threat has its moment. Sorrow endures an evening, but grace will have its say, and its final day holds no setting of the sun. It will not fade once begun.
For I am. And I am love unbounded. Morning will come … and stay. Even in grief, grace will mark your cheeks, and the hope held in your heart will hold you.
As do I.
Pr. David L. Miller
Friday, October 30, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:3-5
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into a heritage that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away. It is reserved in heaven for you … .
Reflection
I don’t think much about heaven, my Lord, except at funerals when I must stand and speak … or listen myself for words of hope.
The rest of the time the idea seldom enters my mind, although I am more sure of it as the years pass. Perhaps it is because I am closer to the time when I, too, will be gathered to the parade of generations who have gone before, who have dwelt this earth, lived their lives and fallen away. I, too, will take my place.
When I think of this a strange love appears in my heart for that great multitude and especially for those whose faces quickly come to mind, especially my father. I miss him at this time of year as All Saints approaches; he is one of my saints.
I think he would be surprised to think that I hold him responsible for the faith that burns today in my heart. He faced his end with a doubting faith, and I could not take his doubts away. I could only love him, telling him that he should rest and let me believe for him. I wanted him to have utter assurance, but I doubt I was able to provide that at the end.
Still, he believed and hoped, and he knew, truly knew, the beauty of eternity, the treasure that doesn’t fade shining through this translucent world. He had few words for this. It fell to me to name that beauty for him, the beauty of sunrise and set, of hills and green, of cattle and living things scattered on hills beneath an everlasting blue sky of wonder.
And he gave this wonder to me, along with the intuition of a Heart from which such glory springs. That would be your heart, Dearest Friend.
You are that Heart of infinte generosity and love that shines through and stirs hope even in old dying men … and me.
So when I think of a heritage laid up for me I can imagine it only in terms of the love and hope I know here and now because of faces like my father’s and what they gave me, often without even knowing it.
What awaits is completion of what already is, and I have tasted enough to know there are some things for which I have no words.
So let my silence praise you.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Peter 1:3-5
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into a heritage that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away. It is reserved in heaven for you … .
Reflection
I don’t think much about heaven, my Lord, except at funerals when I must stand and speak … or listen myself for words of hope.
The rest of the time the idea seldom enters my mind, although I am more sure of it as the years pass. Perhaps it is because I am closer to the time when I, too, will be gathered to the parade of generations who have gone before, who have dwelt this earth, lived their lives and fallen away. I, too, will take my place.
When I think of this a strange love appears in my heart for that great multitude and especially for those whose faces quickly come to mind, especially my father. I miss him at this time of year as All Saints approaches; he is one of my saints.
I think he would be surprised to think that I hold him responsible for the faith that burns today in my heart. He faced his end with a doubting faith, and I could not take his doubts away. I could only love him, telling him that he should rest and let me believe for him. I wanted him to have utter assurance, but I doubt I was able to provide that at the end.
Still, he believed and hoped, and he knew, truly knew, the beauty of eternity, the treasure that doesn’t fade shining through this translucent world. He had few words for this. It fell to me to name that beauty for him, the beauty of sunrise and set, of hills and green, of cattle and living things scattered on hills beneath an everlasting blue sky of wonder.
And he gave this wonder to me, along with the intuition of a Heart from which such glory springs. That would be your heart, Dearest Friend.
You are that Heart of infinte generosity and love that shines through and stirs hope even in old dying men … and me.
So when I think of a heritage laid up for me I can imagine it only in terms of the love and hope I know here and now because of faces like my father’s and what they gave me, often without even knowing it.
What awaits is completion of what already is, and I have tasted enough to know there are some things for which I have no words.
So let my silence praise you.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:3-4
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into a heritage that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away.
Reflection
What is this lightness of being, this unbidden appearance of joy? It comes when I expected nothing, creeping unheard into my being. No signal marked its approach. I could not run to welcome the sunrise amid the night of soul of recent weeks.
Nothing sudden occurs, no great and shining moment, no reversal of fortune or deliverance from challenge. Nothing. But joy comes, welling within, lifting and filling the heart that it becomes, again, an engine of energy and gracious good will.
Hectoring inner voices fall silent. Their ghosts disappear, leaving no fear of their return.
Hope fills their place, and promise colors the day and each new encounter. Anticipation lives were avoidance and dread cast their dreary shadow.
There will be joy. There will be grace. This I know without knowing how I know.
Surely, I am deluded. But this freshness is as undeniable as the unrelenting sadness that had turned all days gray. I choose to deny neither. Honesty requires this much.
Strangely, there is no need in me to grasp this new birth that quietly appears from the grace of your Mystery. This is new.
I feel no desire to hold it fast lest it escape me, and I fall again into the darkness. My soul knows only rest and confidence. I have no idea what the day will bring. I know only the unwavering assurance that you will abide my being, unshakable and sure.
Darkness comes and darkness goes, but you abide, Holy One. New birth will come out of the darkness, and I cannot command its time.
“Patience,” you whisper. “The day will come.”
I can only await the sunrise, oppressed by the darkness, yes, but knowing the freshness of unspoilt morning will again be born in a time of your choosing.
Wait, trust, the day will come. Even now.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Peter 1:3-4
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into a heritage that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away.
Reflection
What is this lightness of being, this unbidden appearance of joy? It comes when I expected nothing, creeping unheard into my being. No signal marked its approach. I could not run to welcome the sunrise amid the night of soul of recent weeks.
Nothing sudden occurs, no great and shining moment, no reversal of fortune or deliverance from challenge. Nothing. But joy comes, welling within, lifting and filling the heart that it becomes, again, an engine of energy and gracious good will.
Hectoring inner voices fall silent. Their ghosts disappear, leaving no fear of their return.
Hope fills their place, and promise colors the day and each new encounter. Anticipation lives were avoidance and dread cast their dreary shadow.
There will be joy. There will be grace. This I know without knowing how I know.
Surely, I am deluded. But this freshness is as undeniable as the unrelenting sadness that had turned all days gray. I choose to deny neither. Honesty requires this much.
Strangely, there is no need in me to grasp this new birth that quietly appears from the grace of your Mystery. This is new.
I feel no desire to hold it fast lest it escape me, and I fall again into the darkness. My soul knows only rest and confidence. I have no idea what the day will bring. I know only the unwavering assurance that you will abide my being, unshakable and sure.
Darkness comes and darkness goes, but you abide, Holy One. New birth will come out of the darkness, and I cannot command its time.
“Patience,” you whisper. “The day will come.”
I can only await the sunrise, oppressed by the darkness, yes, but knowing the freshness of unspoilt morning will again be born in a time of your choosing.
Wait, trust, the day will come. Even now.
Pr. David L. Miller
Thursday, October 22, 2009
October 22, 2009
Reflection
The color of paradise
The trees grow bright with praise, lit from within by colors no hand can produce, except yours, Loving Mystery.
Fall comes demanding poetry to capture the colors. But our flat souls lie content with mere prose, words that tear and strain to describe the beauty our eyes caress--and this feeling that arises from a place we cannot name, except that it is in us.
Awaking, I open the door and smell the earth, moist and fresh. My heart rises for reasons it refuses to tell me, but I know: all is well and will be so.
This lightness of being … and hope is the greatest I have known in days, and it comes at the end of things.
Summer is gone. Autumn comes reminding me again that all things end. The warm sun wanes, and winter (too soon to come) must be endured … again, until I am no more.
But the colors speak, an impressionist’s palette of burnished red and gold constantly remixed, shimmering fire and translucent gold, falling by the millions in piles school children shuffle through on their way to more mundane concerns.
Gold leaf covers the back patio inches deep awakening a quiet joy I can neither bid nor stop. Its source is as mysterious as the hand who paints the earth on this October morning.
Too soon it will all be gone. The colors will fade to brown and be swept into gutters. Cold rains will turn the decaying mass to thick dark sludge as we enter winter’s trudge.
But today I have seen the brilliance, the colors lit from within by the uncreated light of the One who is Being itself. I have seen, and having seen I cannot be the same.
Eternity appeared on Janes Avenue, and I was there. And more: the Spirit who paints cool fall days gave me eyes to see the fire that burns in the Heart of Love for whom I most hunger.
That Mystery paints the day with brilliance and wonder, so that with eyes of the heart, we may see the beauty of the One who treasures and holds us, who decorates fall days with the light of eternity that we may know we are made for more than just trudging through our days.
We are made to know more love, more beauty, more wonder than we can imagine. We are made for the More that shines through autumn days and in the beauty of our brother Jesus, who is lit from within by the Love that will not let us fall into the gutter and be swept away.
Some say the life of faith is about avoiding sin and being righteous … that this most glorifies God. But the glory of fall days suggests otherwise.
Maybe our life is about seeing and knowing the More that shines through every beauty, every love, every caring word--and every fresh, moist Autumn morning that awakens the awareness that all is, indeed, well.
And it is, for we rest in the hands of the Maker of the Morning, who decorates the day with the color of paradise.
And in seeing this, our little lives are colored with the beauty we see, alight with a glory beyond all time.
Pr. David L. Miller
The color of paradise
The trees grow bright with praise, lit from within by colors no hand can produce, except yours, Loving Mystery.
Fall comes demanding poetry to capture the colors. But our flat souls lie content with mere prose, words that tear and strain to describe the beauty our eyes caress--and this feeling that arises from a place we cannot name, except that it is in us.
Awaking, I open the door and smell the earth, moist and fresh. My heart rises for reasons it refuses to tell me, but I know: all is well and will be so.
This lightness of being … and hope is the greatest I have known in days, and it comes at the end of things.
Summer is gone. Autumn comes reminding me again that all things end. The warm sun wanes, and winter (too soon to come) must be endured … again, until I am no more.
But the colors speak, an impressionist’s palette of burnished red and gold constantly remixed, shimmering fire and translucent gold, falling by the millions in piles school children shuffle through on their way to more mundane concerns.
Gold leaf covers the back patio inches deep awakening a quiet joy I can neither bid nor stop. Its source is as mysterious as the hand who paints the earth on this October morning.
Too soon it will all be gone. The colors will fade to brown and be swept into gutters. Cold rains will turn the decaying mass to thick dark sludge as we enter winter’s trudge.
But today I have seen the brilliance, the colors lit from within by the uncreated light of the One who is Being itself. I have seen, and having seen I cannot be the same.
Eternity appeared on Janes Avenue, and I was there. And more: the Spirit who paints cool fall days gave me eyes to see the fire that burns in the Heart of Love for whom I most hunger.
That Mystery paints the day with brilliance and wonder, so that with eyes of the heart, we may see the beauty of the One who treasures and holds us, who decorates fall days with the light of eternity that we may know we are made for more than just trudging through our days.
We are made to know more love, more beauty, more wonder than we can imagine. We are made for the More that shines through autumn days and in the beauty of our brother Jesus, who is lit from within by the Love that will not let us fall into the gutter and be swept away.
Some say the life of faith is about avoiding sin and being righteous … that this most glorifies God. But the glory of fall days suggests otherwise.
Maybe our life is about seeing and knowing the More that shines through every beauty, every love, every caring word--and every fresh, moist Autumn morning that awakens the awareness that all is, indeed, well.
And it is, for we rest in the hands of the Maker of the Morning, who decorates the day with the color of paradise.
And in seeing this, our little lives are colored with the beauty we see, alight with a glory beyond all time.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Today's text
1 Peter 1:1-2
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into a heritage that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away.’s
Reflection
Only you are never spoilt or fade away. We rise and fall. We draw breath and grow quiet. The earth changes, erodes, erupts and reshapes itself in the constant movement of nature, unresting, unceasing, day to day, age to age.
Eons pass. The new that comes allows faint memory of the joys and sorrows of the millions who have gone before, of the earth they knew.
It is the nature of things, and we find ourselves thrown into it, taking our place in the chain of ever-changing generations, rising up with promise only to fade away.
This should be a council of despair to my soul. But it is not, for eternity is known amid the temporal and dying, the unchanging is felt in and through all that changes. You who are n ever spoilt or soiled, you who never fade away are tasted amid all that fails and falls.
Life is known by those for whom death is certain. Of this, I am certain, eve now.
For even now I know life, not as biological fact but as the eternal stirring of your grace and beauty in the tears of hope that are my morning praise to you.
Even here, even now, that which does not fade or fail, spoil or decay dwells in my inner experience of joy and hope … and the love that I know you to be, through and through.
What I taste is but a taste. Yet, it is real, and it is now. And my prayer to know the joyous consolation of your life within my mind and heart finds its answer.
So blessed are you, for you do not let death have its way in human souls. You give life and then life eternal to dead, here and now, and a hungry assurance that what I taste will be forever.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Peter 1:1-2
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into a heritage that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away.’s
Reflection
Only you are never spoilt or fade away. We rise and fall. We draw breath and grow quiet. The earth changes, erodes, erupts and reshapes itself in the constant movement of nature, unresting, unceasing, day to day, age to age.
Eons pass. The new that comes allows faint memory of the joys and sorrows of the millions who have gone before, of the earth they knew.
It is the nature of things, and we find ourselves thrown into it, taking our place in the chain of ever-changing generations, rising up with promise only to fade away.
This should be a council of despair to my soul. But it is not, for eternity is known amid the temporal and dying, the unchanging is felt in and through all that changes. You who are n ever spoilt or soiled, you who never fade away are tasted amid all that fails and falls.
Life is known by those for whom death is certain. Of this, I am certain, eve now.
For even now I know life, not as biological fact but as the eternal stirring of your grace and beauty in the tears of hope that are my morning praise to you.
Even here, even now, that which does not fade or fail, spoil or decay dwells in my inner experience of joy and hope … and the love that I know you to be, through and through.
What I taste is but a taste. Yet, it is real, and it is now. And my prayer to know the joyous consolation of your life within my mind and heart finds its answer.
So blessed are you, for you do not let death have its way in human souls. You give life and then life eternal to dead, here and now, and a hungry assurance that what I taste will be forever.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:1-2
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead
Reflection
It is at the point of hope that we are most vulnerable, Holy One.
The hope born in us is simple, yet all eternity will not be enough to satisfy it. We hope to know you, and you are inexhaustible.
You are the inexhaustible fountain of life from which all that lives flows. You are the fount of mercy who has mercy even on that which does not yet exist.
How can one have mercy on the nonexistent? I don’t know, but you do.
You look upon the infinite possibilities of life and color and beauty within yourself, and in mercy you make them come to life. Such is the source of my own being, from within you who are Being.
You had mercy on me before I existed. Seeing the possibility of my life, your mercy willed that I should be and know the joy and mystery of just being alive--and of knowing that I had nothing to be bringing myself to be. All is gift.
The inexhaustible flow of your life cannot be dammed or held captive by the cold clutch of death. You bring my brother, Jesus, again to life.
Seeing this, the soul leaps and knows that hope is no illusion. It finds its Source in the Source of Inexhaustible Mercy, in you.
Tasting the sweet surprise of being alive, we sample your mercy. We know you. Hearing the ever-fresh news of Jesus resurrection, we feel hope for all eternity flicker to life in our souls. We know you.
This is our living hope: to know you completely, with a knowledge felt in one’s uttermost depths. I know you as the Inexhaustible Fountain of the life that is in me. I know you as the Infinite Mercy who gives me life again and again that my soul may not die.
The evil one attacks at exactly this spot, seeking to erode the hope of knowing you today.
Surely, today is not special, he taunts. Surely, the pettiness of routine, the crush of deadlines and the challenge of difficult circumstances will push aside all else. Surely, my only real hope is just getting through the thicket of daily detail and making to evening.
But a living hope seeks you in every moment.
So today, I claim again the sweet surprise of being alive with a life I did not make. Today, I claim again the presence of your risen life in my heart and the lives of so many others.
Today, I feel once more that you, Holy Mystery, are the Inexhaustible Fountain of living Mercy that will not let me die.
Today, hope will live in me because you live.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Peter 1:1-2
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead
Reflection
It is at the point of hope that we are most vulnerable, Holy One.
The hope born in us is simple, yet all eternity will not be enough to satisfy it. We hope to know you, and you are inexhaustible.
You are the inexhaustible fountain of life from which all that lives flows. You are the fount of mercy who has mercy even on that which does not yet exist.
How can one have mercy on the nonexistent? I don’t know, but you do.
You look upon the infinite possibilities of life and color and beauty within yourself, and in mercy you make them come to life. Such is the source of my own being, from within you who are Being.
You had mercy on me before I existed. Seeing the possibility of my life, your mercy willed that I should be and know the joy and mystery of just being alive--and of knowing that I had nothing to be bringing myself to be. All is gift.
The inexhaustible flow of your life cannot be dammed or held captive by the cold clutch of death. You bring my brother, Jesus, again to life.
Seeing this, the soul leaps and knows that hope is no illusion. It finds its Source in the Source of Inexhaustible Mercy, in you.
Tasting the sweet surprise of being alive, we sample your mercy. We know you. Hearing the ever-fresh news of Jesus resurrection, we feel hope for all eternity flicker to life in our souls. We know you.
This is our living hope: to know you completely, with a knowledge felt in one’s uttermost depths. I know you as the Inexhaustible Fountain of the life that is in me. I know you as the Infinite Mercy who gives me life again and again that my soul may not die.
The evil one attacks at exactly this spot, seeking to erode the hope of knowing you today.
Surely, today is not special, he taunts. Surely, the pettiness of routine, the crush of deadlines and the challenge of difficult circumstances will push aside all else. Surely, my only real hope is just getting through the thicket of daily detail and making to evening.
But a living hope seeks you in every moment.
So today, I claim again the sweet surprise of being alive with a life I did not make. Today, I claim again the presence of your risen life in my heart and the lives of so many others.
Today, I feel once more that you, Holy Mystery, are the Inexhaustible Fountain of living Mercy that will not let me die.
Today, hope will live in me because you live.
Pr. David L. Miller
Friday, October 16, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:1-2
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Reflection
Morning is the time for new birth, though you are not confined to the rhythms and seasons of my life, Holy One. You can make new birth occur any where, any time. That is your way and power, and you almost always surprise.
But morning is a time of hope for newness in my heart. Daylight appears with the longing that maybe today I can get it right, do all I need to do, complete my labors and come to the day’s end with a peaceful heart.
It’s a nifty formula, if entirely misguided. My hope is premised on me getting things done, organizing my life so that the nagging anxiety of uncompleted tasks is put to bed by the work of my mind and hands.
The whole effort of trying to still my soul is moved by my fear of failing, of looking and being inadequate, unprepared and foolish.
How’s that for getting down to basics?
New birth is not found in my efforts. All I can do is anxiety management, but what I want and need is to end the anxiety altogether. This can happen only if I become someone new, someone other than whom I too often am.
Someone new must be born (again) within me. Even now, that happens. You, Jesus, come to me, come in me, in the morning light, changing my heart. No, you give me a new heart. The heart of my soul turns from worry over myself to simple trust in the Love who is the Father.
I become as you are. You trust the Love who is always enough, knowing that all that really needs to be done is not what the anxious mind suggests. All that matters is to express whatever this Love moves in heart and mind.
That is enough for the day, for any day.
You knew this every day.
So be born again in me, Lord Jesus, that my heart may be ever new.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Peter 1:1-2
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Reflection
Morning is the time for new birth, though you are not confined to the rhythms and seasons of my life, Holy One. You can make new birth occur any where, any time. That is your way and power, and you almost always surprise.
But morning is a time of hope for newness in my heart. Daylight appears with the longing that maybe today I can get it right, do all I need to do, complete my labors and come to the day’s end with a peaceful heart.
It’s a nifty formula, if entirely misguided. My hope is premised on me getting things done, organizing my life so that the nagging anxiety of uncompleted tasks is put to bed by the work of my mind and hands.
The whole effort of trying to still my soul is moved by my fear of failing, of looking and being inadequate, unprepared and foolish.
How’s that for getting down to basics?
New birth is not found in my efforts. All I can do is anxiety management, but what I want and need is to end the anxiety altogether. This can happen only if I become someone new, someone other than whom I too often am.
Someone new must be born (again) within me. Even now, that happens. You, Jesus, come to me, come in me, in the morning light, changing my heart. No, you give me a new heart. The heart of my soul turns from worry over myself to simple trust in the Love who is the Father.
I become as you are. You trust the Love who is always enough, knowing that all that really needs to be done is not what the anxious mind suggests. All that matters is to express whatever this Love moves in heart and mind.
That is enough for the day, for any day.
You knew this every day.
So be born again in me, Lord Jesus, that my heart may be ever new.
Pr. David L. Miller
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:1-2
Peter, apostle of Jesus Christ, to all those living as aliens in the Dispersion of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen, in the foresight of God the Father, to be made holy by the Spirit, obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance.
Reflection
Now, I return to work after a week of respite, wondering if I can hold the slender insights that appeared during these days away from the stress that steals my soul.
My soul has known no rest, no peace in my normal labors. The peace that passes all understanding has passed me by altogether. It has been utterly beyond my reach, belonging to a world far removed from the one I have inhabited in recent weeks.
Now, I see that your peace has eluded me because I was dwelling, by choice, in fear, in a home of my own making, a place where I could protect myself from the judgments of others. I was not true to my own heart, the heart that is in me when I know you as all-surpassing love.
I have known grace and peace in abundance, and reading these words (from 1 Peter) I am captured by the generosity of heart of the writer. But this generosity has its Source in the surging waters of your abundance, in the incomprehensibility of your divine kindness.
May grace and peace be yours--be mine--in abundance. This is your heart speaking to this oft-despairing soul so needy and resistant to trusting your kindness.
Lacking trust, I protect myself from others, from their views and judgments, not revealing the heart of this soul of mine, where I know you as the Love you are. Amid difference and controversy, I seek reasons others may find convincing or worthy of respect, knowing all the while that I am being false to my truest self, to the soul that I am, to the Love that dwells there, to You.
I know no peace, no rest, because I am not living in your love but in an illusion I create for my own protection. You make a home for me in which to abide, and I try to build my own.
I know why. The home you make for me is the way of Jesus, my brother. Sprinkled with his blood, I have his life, his Spirit, a paschal spirit in which the way of life is letting go, releasing control, refusing my normal strategies of self-protection and relying on your love alone.
The way to new life is through death, the way to joy is through sorrow, the way to assurance is abandonment of the supports and protective walls I build for myself. Abundant peace arises from frightening vulnerability. This is the blood-sprinkled way into which my life has been initiated.
Seven days away has taught me this … again.
I ache for the abundance of peace you promise, Loving One, but the way to this home scares me. May my hope and aching need prove stronger than my fear.
May I trust you to be the abundant home I crave, and let go of all that is not you.
Pr. David L. Miller
Note: Thanks for blessing me with your notes, letting me know that you are still receiving … and welcoming these posts. May God’s peace rest upon you all.
1 Peter 1:1-2
Peter, apostle of Jesus Christ, to all those living as aliens in the Dispersion of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen, in the foresight of God the Father, to be made holy by the Spirit, obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance.
Reflection
Now, I return to work after a week of respite, wondering if I can hold the slender insights that appeared during these days away from the stress that steals my soul.
My soul has known no rest, no peace in my normal labors. The peace that passes all understanding has passed me by altogether. It has been utterly beyond my reach, belonging to a world far removed from the one I have inhabited in recent weeks.
Now, I see that your peace has eluded me because I was dwelling, by choice, in fear, in a home of my own making, a place where I could protect myself from the judgments of others. I was not true to my own heart, the heart that is in me when I know you as all-surpassing love.
I have known grace and peace in abundance, and reading these words (from 1 Peter) I am captured by the generosity of heart of the writer. But this generosity has its Source in the surging waters of your abundance, in the incomprehensibility of your divine kindness.
May grace and peace be yours--be mine--in abundance. This is your heart speaking to this oft-despairing soul so needy and resistant to trusting your kindness.
Lacking trust, I protect myself from others, from their views and judgments, not revealing the heart of this soul of mine, where I know you as the Love you are. Amid difference and controversy, I seek reasons others may find convincing or worthy of respect, knowing all the while that I am being false to my truest self, to the soul that I am, to the Love that dwells there, to You.
I know no peace, no rest, because I am not living in your love but in an illusion I create for my own protection. You make a home for me in which to abide, and I try to build my own.
I know why. The home you make for me is the way of Jesus, my brother. Sprinkled with his blood, I have his life, his Spirit, a paschal spirit in which the way of life is letting go, releasing control, refusing my normal strategies of self-protection and relying on your love alone.
The way to new life is through death, the way to joy is through sorrow, the way to assurance is abandonment of the supports and protective walls I build for myself. Abundant peace arises from frightening vulnerability. This is the blood-sprinkled way into which my life has been initiated.
Seven days away has taught me this … again.
I ache for the abundance of peace you promise, Loving One, but the way to this home scares me. May my hope and aching need prove stronger than my fear.
May I trust you to be the abundant home I crave, and let go of all that is not you.
Pr. David L. Miller
Note: Thanks for blessing me with your notes, letting me know that you are still receiving … and welcoming these posts. May God’s peace rest upon you all.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
October 11, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:1-2
Peter, apostle of Jesus Christ, to all those living as aliens in the Dispersion of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen, in the foresight of God the Father, to be made holy by the Spirit, obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance.
Reflection
I have heard the cry of refugees, living “behind the wire” of cold camps far from home. “When?” they all ask silently or aloud, fearing the answer. I never had an answer to give them, not the one I wanted to give.
I wanted to say, “Soon; the time is near,” but I could not. I didn’t know, so I shook my head and stared at the dead dust on my shoes into which their lives had descended with no end point in sight.
They yearned for what every refugee wants: home.
So do I, my Lord. I hunger for home. It’s not a new feeling, even the intensity of this distress is not unknown to me, but it has been a great while since it has been so strong.
My dispersion is not one of geography but of heart. I am what I am not; and what I am not, that is what I am.
I dwell far from home, from the heart of love where I know peace, where I rest secure in the heart of my soul … and you. When I find and enter my truest heart I discover yours also.
I am at peace, content to be who I am, neither more nor less, and the demands of others to be what they need or want me to be flies away. It does not matter.
All that matters is the dwelling, the abiding, the resting in that secret soul where I know who I am in the warm light of your smile.
My tears are not yet those of fullest joy. I stand at the portal, yearning to enter, to come home to myself and to you. But I still am an exile from the home I seek.
What keeps me out? What prevents me from entering? This is a mystery to me, for even now I see your smile, Blessed Mystery. Your hand extends to sprinkle me with the blood, the life of Jesus, who always knew his heart and yours, never knowing this distance I feel except, perhaps, in the final hours of his torture.
You want to sprinkle me with his life, his consciousness, the graced awareness of his identity as your beloved, your special servant. The heart that is his you would give to me. You have chosen me for this.
Move my soul to enter the blessedness you hungrily give. I want to come home.
Take from me every word and desire that hides and protects me from the judgments of others, for in fear I turn from being the heart that I am and become an exile from myself and the great bounty of your heart, my home.
Pr. David L. Miller
Note: I have made few posts in recent monthes as I wrote a book, Marks of the Christian Life, soon to be released by Augsburg Fortress. Please let me know if you are still receiving and find these posts useful.
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:1-2
Peter, apostle of Jesus Christ, to all those living as aliens in the Dispersion of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen, in the foresight of God the Father, to be made holy by the Spirit, obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance.
Reflection
I have heard the cry of refugees, living “behind the wire” of cold camps far from home. “When?” they all ask silently or aloud, fearing the answer. I never had an answer to give them, not the one I wanted to give.
I wanted to say, “Soon; the time is near,” but I could not. I didn’t know, so I shook my head and stared at the dead dust on my shoes into which their lives had descended with no end point in sight.
They yearned for what every refugee wants: home.
So do I, my Lord. I hunger for home. It’s not a new feeling, even the intensity of this distress is not unknown to me, but it has been a great while since it has been so strong.
My dispersion is not one of geography but of heart. I am what I am not; and what I am not, that is what I am.
I dwell far from home, from the heart of love where I know peace, where I rest secure in the heart of my soul … and you. When I find and enter my truest heart I discover yours also.
I am at peace, content to be who I am, neither more nor less, and the demands of others to be what they need or want me to be flies away. It does not matter.
All that matters is the dwelling, the abiding, the resting in that secret soul where I know who I am in the warm light of your smile.
My tears are not yet those of fullest joy. I stand at the portal, yearning to enter, to come home to myself and to you. But I still am an exile from the home I seek.
What keeps me out? What prevents me from entering? This is a mystery to me, for even now I see your smile, Blessed Mystery. Your hand extends to sprinkle me with the blood, the life of Jesus, who always knew his heart and yours, never knowing this distance I feel except, perhaps, in the final hours of his torture.
You want to sprinkle me with his life, his consciousness, the graced awareness of his identity as your beloved, your special servant. The heart that is his you would give to me. You have chosen me for this.
Move my soul to enter the blessedness you hungrily give. I want to come home.
Take from me every word and desire that hides and protects me from the judgments of others, for in fear I turn from being the heart that I am and become an exile from myself and the great bounty of your heart, my home.
Pr. David L. Miller
Note: I have made few posts in recent monthes as I wrote a book, Marks of the Christian Life, soon to be released by Augsburg Fortress. Please let me know if you are still receiving and find these posts useful.
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Today’s text
Ephesians 1:9,10
He has let us know the mystery of his purpose, according to his good pleasure which he determined beforehand in Christ, for him to act upon when the times had run their course: that he would bring everything together under Christ, as head, everything in the heavens and everything on earth
Reflection
Have the times run their course, my Friend? Have we arrived at the day when you will bring everything together under Christ?
I haven’t yet read the paper, but I am certain the front page will tell me the news: “not yet.” No, not yet. The time has not arrived that will put at peace the tortured, divided world that, at once, longs for harmony but fails to know what makes for peace.
But here, in this oft-tortured heart of mine, there is, for once, no division. Only joy.
No, not the noise of happiness and good fortune, but the quiet giddiness that I know a secret and that secret is you, a love, a center of infinite gravity pulling, towing, drawing all life into yourself.
And for these morning moments, I am so drawn, knowing peace of heart, quiet of mind, joy of soul and the secret.
Time and history is a one-act play with one plot and a single motive force. You labor in all time and space to draw all things into the harmony of flesh and spirit, matter and divinity that is the life of Christ. He is the face of the future which all will become.
And the motive force is one: a love that cannot let go and let be, but which hungers for all and for me.
And for this morning at least, you’ve got me.
Thank you.
Pr. David L. Miller
Ephesians 1:9,10
He has let us know the mystery of his purpose, according to his good pleasure which he determined beforehand in Christ, for him to act upon when the times had run their course: that he would bring everything together under Christ, as head, everything in the heavens and everything on earth
Reflection
Have the times run their course, my Friend? Have we arrived at the day when you will bring everything together under Christ?
I haven’t yet read the paper, but I am certain the front page will tell me the news: “not yet.” No, not yet. The time has not arrived that will put at peace the tortured, divided world that, at once, longs for harmony but fails to know what makes for peace.
But here, in this oft-tortured heart of mine, there is, for once, no division. Only joy.
No, not the noise of happiness and good fortune, but the quiet giddiness that I know a secret and that secret is you, a love, a center of infinite gravity pulling, towing, drawing all life into yourself.
And for these morning moments, I am so drawn, knowing peace of heart, quiet of mind, joy of soul and the secret.
Time and history is a one-act play with one plot and a single motive force. You labor in all time and space to draw all things into the harmony of flesh and spirit, matter and divinity that is the life of Christ. He is the face of the future which all will become.
And the motive force is one: a love that cannot let go and let be, but which hungers for all and for me.
And for this morning at least, you’ve got me.
Thank you.
Pr. David L. Miller
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