Today’s text
Matthew 1:18-23
This is how Jesus Christ came to be born. His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph; but before they came to live together she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being an upright man and wanting to spare her disgrace, decided to divorce her informally. He had made up his mind to do this when suddenly the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, 'Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because she has conceived what is in her by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you must name him Jesus, because he is the one who is to save his people from their sins.' Now all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken through the prophet: Look! the virgin is with child and will give birth to a son whom they will call Immanuel, a name which means 'God-is-with-us'.
Reflection
Your promise is always the same: Immanuel, God is with us.
Jesus, you are the sign of Immanuel, the flesh and blood mark of what is always true. You are the physical presence of the constant abiding of the One who knows no boundaries, the Mystery who is ever here, everywhere.
You invite me to enter the true state of things, to come out of illusion into the reality of Abiding Presence.
I may live as if life is what I make it. I may imagine that I am largely on my own on this green planet, save those nearest and dearest to me. I may dwell in the fantasy that I face my trials and sorrows alone and that my joys and small victories are shared only by those closest.
I may imagine, but imagining is not the reality that You Are. You Are everywhere I am and go. You Are grace that makes and savors life, my life with every true and false step on the way. You Are love embracing each moment of existence.
Your appearing in the arms of your mother and under the watchful vision of your confused earthly father speaks the truth I most need: Immanuel, God is with us.
In life and death: Immanuel. When I feel alone: Immanuel. When the load of my beloved is too heavy: Immanuel. When I am fail and sin: Immanuel.
Immanuel comes in a sign I can hold in my arms, with a tender face I can trace with my fingers.
He comes to save me from my sin, the most important of which is the big lie, the illusion that I live anywhere but in the presence of Immanuel.
Save me today. Make my heart dance to the music of Love ever near.
Pr. David L. Miller
http://prayingthemystery.blogspot.com/
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Thursday, December 16, 2010
Wednesday, December 08, 2010
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Today’s text
Isaiah 35:4-6
Strengthen all weary hands, steady all trembling knees and say to the faint-hearted, 'Be strong! Do not be afraid. Here is your God, vengeance is coming, divine retribution; he is coming to save you.' Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf unsealed, then the lame will leap like a deer and the tongue of the dumb sing for joy; for water will gush in the desert and streams in the wastelands, the parched ground will become a marsh and the thirsty land springs of water.
Reflection
Our God comes not with vengeance but to restore sovereignty. Vengeance does not best capture the reality.
God is the power of deliverance at work in the universe. God’s delight is to save. God comes to reorder life, to set things right, to establish that God rules. God is the final and ultimate power over a cosmos that threatens to devolve into chaotic disorder.
The end is always joy. Sorrow may endure for an evening, but joy comes in the morning. This is the constant message, the profound hope that runs throughout all of Scripture. The reason is simple. This has been the experience of those who have looked and prayed for God’s deliverance in every age.
Deliverance may not come in the form we want. Our family struggles may not be resolved. Our cancer may not find healing. Death and pain may come to us and those we love.
But in the midst of human struggle, God comes.
That’s the message of hope to which we cling in all times. Joy starts the moment our souls begin to trust that God will come to deliver our souls from despair and dissolution.
Joy and strength do not return to reinvigorate our bodies when all we want or pray for finally happens. Our souls rise from dead when we are lifted by a simple, single truth: God comes to us and always will.
The living hope for appearance of the One who is the Power of Deliverance makes us strong in ways we doubt we could ever be. The strength we hold is not of our making, and it is more powerful than all that disfigures life and tempts to despair.
It lifts weak arms and troubled heads. It turns desert hearts into streams of living water. It gives silent souls songs to sing and moves lame legs to dance to the music of God’s future, which is life, always life.
Be strong. God shall come, and you will laugh.
Pr. David L. Miller
Isaiah 35:4-6
Strengthen all weary hands, steady all trembling knees and say to the faint-hearted, 'Be strong! Do not be afraid. Here is your God, vengeance is coming, divine retribution; he is coming to save you.' Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf unsealed, then the lame will leap like a deer and the tongue of the dumb sing for joy; for water will gush in the desert and streams in the wastelands, the parched ground will become a marsh and the thirsty land springs of water.
Reflection
Our God comes not with vengeance but to restore sovereignty. Vengeance does not best capture the reality.
God is the power of deliverance at work in the universe. God’s delight is to save. God comes to reorder life, to set things right, to establish that God rules. God is the final and ultimate power over a cosmos that threatens to devolve into chaotic disorder.
The end is always joy. Sorrow may endure for an evening, but joy comes in the morning. This is the constant message, the profound hope that runs throughout all of Scripture. The reason is simple. This has been the experience of those who have looked and prayed for God’s deliverance in every age.
Deliverance may not come in the form we want. Our family struggles may not be resolved. Our cancer may not find healing. Death and pain may come to us and those we love.
But in the midst of human struggle, God comes.
That’s the message of hope to which we cling in all times. Joy starts the moment our souls begin to trust that God will come to deliver our souls from despair and dissolution.
Joy and strength do not return to reinvigorate our bodies when all we want or pray for finally happens. Our souls rise from dead when we are lifted by a simple, single truth: God comes to us and always will.
The living hope for appearance of the One who is the Power of Deliverance makes us strong in ways we doubt we could ever be. The strength we hold is not of our making, and it is more powerful than all that disfigures life and tempts to despair.
It lifts weak arms and troubled heads. It turns desert hearts into streams of living water. It gives silent souls songs to sing and moves lame legs to dance to the music of God’s future, which is life, always life.
Be strong. God shall come, and you will laugh.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Today’s text
Isaiah 35:3-8
Strengthen all weary hands, steady all trembling knees and say to the faint-hearted, 'Be strong! Do not be afraid. Here is your God, vengeance is coming, divine retribution; he is coming to save you.' Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf unsealed, then the lame will leap like a deer and the tongue of the dumb sing for joy; for water will gush in the desert and streams in the wastelands, the parched ground will become a marsh and the thirsty land springs of water; the lairs where the jackals used to live will become plots of reed and papyrus. And through it will run a road for them and a highway which will be called the Sacred Way; the unclean will not be allowed to use it; He will be the one to use this road, the fool will not stray along it.
Reflection
The prophet speaks of the joy of returning home for a people long separated from the place they belong. This is one of the great stories of Hebrew Scripture, the deliverance return home of exiles.
I have seen the anguish of exile. As a journalist, I walked through refugee camps on more than one continent. The language, culture and skin color of the refugees were different in each case. But the single question on their lips was always the same: When can we go home?
Home may have been in shambles, ravaged by looting, bombs and fire. They may have known or suspected that their physical dwellings no longer existed. It didn’t matter. Their hearts’ desire was the same … home. I want to go home.
Every strange face of a journalist or aid worker was one more person to ask the sad question: When? Will it be soon?
I dreaded the question. I had no answer, and the answer I suspected might be accurate was depressing. I would shake my head, look at the ground and say, “No, not soon,” all the time wondering if the honest answer was, “not ever.”
Almost every person I met longed to return home. Their eyes said it without words, “I need to return to my place in the world, to the place I know, to the place that knows me. Until then, there is no peace.”
Such longing is the ground from which the prophet Isaiah’s joy springs. The land, the animals, all nature participates in the exiles’ joy as they walk the road home, a holy road that only the faithful could walk, only those who kept hope alive, only those who were not reduced to foolishness of despair by interminable waiting for a release they could never assume was coming.
When release comes all nature lights up with the joy of souls whose hearts’ delight is coming true. Such feeling is not unknown to us. We well know what happens in our hearts and in the entirety of our outlook when the sun comes out after a long or deep sadness.
The hopeful message is that God is the loving power of deliverance that seeks to bring us home to the joy for which we are intended, to the places we know and the places that know us, to our true home. Foolishness is failure to trust the good and gracious will of the One whose name is Deliverance.
I could speak of this as a physical coming home to a place we once knew or perhaps a place we never knew, until we stumbled into a somewhere that became a true home for us, after years of never really having a home.
Or we might speak of the home as the spiritual discovery that we have spent much of our lives wandering about, going places, doing work, living in ways that left our souls uneasy and dissatisfied.
There is a coming home, here, too, a return to the Love for which no name will do. When we begin to feel and know it’s stirring, our lame hearts leap in joy and streams of water flow in the wastelands of our hearts. And we know: This is the sacred way.
Pr. David L. Miller
Isaiah 35:3-8
Strengthen all weary hands, steady all trembling knees and say to the faint-hearted, 'Be strong! Do not be afraid. Here is your God, vengeance is coming, divine retribution; he is coming to save you.' Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf unsealed, then the lame will leap like a deer and the tongue of the dumb sing for joy; for water will gush in the desert and streams in the wastelands, the parched ground will become a marsh and the thirsty land springs of water; the lairs where the jackals used to live will become plots of reed and papyrus. And through it will run a road for them and a highway which will be called the Sacred Way; the unclean will not be allowed to use it; He will be the one to use this road, the fool will not stray along it.
Reflection
The prophet speaks of the joy of returning home for a people long separated from the place they belong. This is one of the great stories of Hebrew Scripture, the deliverance return home of exiles.
I have seen the anguish of exile. As a journalist, I walked through refugee camps on more than one continent. The language, culture and skin color of the refugees were different in each case. But the single question on their lips was always the same: When can we go home?
Home may have been in shambles, ravaged by looting, bombs and fire. They may have known or suspected that their physical dwellings no longer existed. It didn’t matter. Their hearts’ desire was the same … home. I want to go home.
Every strange face of a journalist or aid worker was one more person to ask the sad question: When? Will it be soon?
I dreaded the question. I had no answer, and the answer I suspected might be accurate was depressing. I would shake my head, look at the ground and say, “No, not soon,” all the time wondering if the honest answer was, “not ever.”
Almost every person I met longed to return home. Their eyes said it without words, “I need to return to my place in the world, to the place I know, to the place that knows me. Until then, there is no peace.”
Such longing is the ground from which the prophet Isaiah’s joy springs. The land, the animals, all nature participates in the exiles’ joy as they walk the road home, a holy road that only the faithful could walk, only those who kept hope alive, only those who were not reduced to foolishness of despair by interminable waiting for a release they could never assume was coming.
When release comes all nature lights up with the joy of souls whose hearts’ delight is coming true. Such feeling is not unknown to us. We well know what happens in our hearts and in the entirety of our outlook when the sun comes out after a long or deep sadness.
The hopeful message is that God is the loving power of deliverance that seeks to bring us home to the joy for which we are intended, to the places we know and the places that know us, to our true home. Foolishness is failure to trust the good and gracious will of the One whose name is Deliverance.
I could speak of this as a physical coming home to a place we once knew or perhaps a place we never knew, until we stumbled into a somewhere that became a true home for us, after years of never really having a home.
Or we might speak of the home as the spiritual discovery that we have spent much of our lives wandering about, going places, doing work, living in ways that left our souls uneasy and dissatisfied.
There is a coming home, here, too, a return to the Love for which no name will do. When we begin to feel and know it’s stirring, our lame hearts leap in joy and streams of water flow in the wastelands of our hearts. And we know: This is the sacred way.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Today’s text
Matthew 3:5-9
Then Jerusalem and all Judaea and the whole Jordan district made their way to him [John the Baptist], and as they were baptized by him in the river Jordan they confessed their sins. But when he saw a number of Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism he said to them, 'Brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming retribution? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance, and do not presume to tell yourselves, "We have Abraham as our father," because, I tell you, God can raise children for Abraham from these stones.
Reflection
Come as you are, beyond all presumption. That’s what I hear, and it’s a good word, one I need.
The day arrives, and I see opportunities that promise growth and goodness, but a sinking feeling wafts through me as my mind enters the possibilities. Entering the future I perceive means more work, more dedication, more than time or energy allows.
Quickly, I am cast back upon my limitations, knowing the strength of my abilities and will are not up to the tasks that I see as most crucial. I need help. I cannot stand alone. Others must stand with me.
This makes me part of a crowd to which I want to belong, the crowd of faceless and nameless souls who made their way to John and Baptist to confess their sins, their failures of will, nerve and goodness.
He did not refuse them. No shaming tone colored his voice as they came. We are told nothing of what he said to them, only that he received them willingly with acceptance, it appears. And he baptized them as a sign of their desire to change and be more fully given to God’s dream for their lives.
He thundered no anger or denunciation upon them. That was reserved for the entitled and presumptuous, those who imagined they didn’t need what John offered.
But what is that, and why does it still draw … me?
John called people to stand in the river shallows beside him, without or fear or shame. He invited them to put away all arrogance or presumption that they had life figured out or that they were any but human and needy.
Through John’s bluster and demand, a deep whisper echoes. “Come, bring what you are, your weakness and need, your failed attempts to fulfill the promise of your humanity. Come stand with me. There is a place for you here, and you will never be cast out.
“Come and taste the rule of heaven.”
Pr. David L. Miller
Matthew 3:5-9
Then Jerusalem and all Judaea and the whole Jordan district made their way to him [John the Baptist], and as they were baptized by him in the river Jordan they confessed their sins. But when he saw a number of Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism he said to them, 'Brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming retribution? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance, and do not presume to tell yourselves, "We have Abraham as our father," because, I tell you, God can raise children for Abraham from these stones.
Reflection
Come as you are, beyond all presumption. That’s what I hear, and it’s a good word, one I need.
The day arrives, and I see opportunities that promise growth and goodness, but a sinking feeling wafts through me as my mind enters the possibilities. Entering the future I perceive means more work, more dedication, more than time or energy allows.
Quickly, I am cast back upon my limitations, knowing the strength of my abilities and will are not up to the tasks that I see as most crucial. I need help. I cannot stand alone. Others must stand with me.
This makes me part of a crowd to which I want to belong, the crowd of faceless and nameless souls who made their way to John and Baptist to confess their sins, their failures of will, nerve and goodness.
He did not refuse them. No shaming tone colored his voice as they came. We are told nothing of what he said to them, only that he received them willingly with acceptance, it appears. And he baptized them as a sign of their desire to change and be more fully given to God’s dream for their lives.
He thundered no anger or denunciation upon them. That was reserved for the entitled and presumptuous, those who imagined they didn’t need what John offered.
But what is that, and why does it still draw … me?
John called people to stand in the river shallows beside him, without or fear or shame. He invited them to put away all arrogance or presumption that they had life figured out or that they were any but human and needy.
Through John’s bluster and demand, a deep whisper echoes. “Come, bring what you are, your weakness and need, your failed attempts to fulfill the promise of your humanity. Come stand with me. There is a place for you here, and you will never be cast out.
“Come and taste the rule of heaven.”
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Today’s text
Matthew 3:1-3
In due course John the Baptist appeared; he proclaimed this message in the desert of Judaea, 'Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is close at hand.' This was the man spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said: A voice of one that cries in the desert, 'Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight.'
Reflection
For what should I repent? I can list a dozen things, but my heart is in none of them.
I really don’t want to change. I am attached to the way I live and see things. The thought of changing how I see (and pigeon-hole) people and situations is harder work than I care to do. I am comfortably stuck in patterns of living that feel better than any alternative, if only because I know them. They are my ruts, familiar and well-worn.
My heart knows I can’t change anyway. I am stuck with the same sadness and fears that long have hemmed in my life. As much as I want to be happier, stronger and less able to be hurt, nothing will change unless you change me, O Lord.
Fear holds me back, which proves that again that I am 100 percent human. Fear is always the root of our problems and sorrows, our hatreds and our resistance to grow into your dream of what our lives could be. There is no greater enemy.
Fear keeps us from letting down our guard to enter a new way of life, a new way of being. John the Baptist (Jesus, too) called it the kingdom of heaven, the administration of the heavenly king, a rule quite unlike governments we know.
John describes this kingdom as a threat to all that resists it. This new godly administration will violently wipe away everything that is contrary to its way.
I don’t think John got it right. He understood a new king, a new rule was coming, but he failed to grasp how radically different the rule of heaven is from anything we have ever known or felt.
God’s new kingdom strikes at the root of our problem: our fear of each other, our fear of being hurt, our fear of losing what we think we most need, the fear moves us to strike at others, the fear that stops us from opening our hearts and being truly human with each other so that we may grow into God’s dream for our lives.
The kingdom of heaven, unlike earthly kingdoms, rules not by force but through the persuasion of love. The king appears in the form of Jesus, our brother, inviting us to enter a circle of blessing. The mercy of forgiveness and unmerited grace pours through him from the heart of God, drawing us into a new arrangement of things where each passes along blessing and grace, receiving the same in return from others. The circle of blessing melts away our fears, whispering that the rejections and pains we feel, the threats to our life and health, the sorrows we know do not finally matter.
They don’t matter, for heaven rules, and heaven is this circle of blessing with neither beginning nor end. When you get caught up in this circle, in God’s kingdom--if only for a moment, you feel the freedom from fear that changes you from the inside out. You know: the circle of blessing is more real and powerful than anything you fear.
The kingdom of heaven is near, always. The only thing it threatens is your fear.
Pr. David L. Miller
Matthew 3:1-3
In due course John the Baptist appeared; he proclaimed this message in the desert of Judaea, 'Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is close at hand.' This was the man spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said: A voice of one that cries in the desert, 'Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight.'
Reflection
For what should I repent? I can list a dozen things, but my heart is in none of them.
I really don’t want to change. I am attached to the way I live and see things. The thought of changing how I see (and pigeon-hole) people and situations is harder work than I care to do. I am comfortably stuck in patterns of living that feel better than any alternative, if only because I know them. They are my ruts, familiar and well-worn.
My heart knows I can’t change anyway. I am stuck with the same sadness and fears that long have hemmed in my life. As much as I want to be happier, stronger and less able to be hurt, nothing will change unless you change me, O Lord.
Fear holds me back, which proves that again that I am 100 percent human. Fear is always the root of our problems and sorrows, our hatreds and our resistance to grow into your dream of what our lives could be. There is no greater enemy.
Fear keeps us from letting down our guard to enter a new way of life, a new way of being. John the Baptist (Jesus, too) called it the kingdom of heaven, the administration of the heavenly king, a rule quite unlike governments we know.
John describes this kingdom as a threat to all that resists it. This new godly administration will violently wipe away everything that is contrary to its way.
I don’t think John got it right. He understood a new king, a new rule was coming, but he failed to grasp how radically different the rule of heaven is from anything we have ever known or felt.
God’s new kingdom strikes at the root of our problem: our fear of each other, our fear of being hurt, our fear of losing what we think we most need, the fear moves us to strike at others, the fear that stops us from opening our hearts and being truly human with each other so that we may grow into God’s dream for our lives.
The kingdom of heaven, unlike earthly kingdoms, rules not by force but through the persuasion of love. The king appears in the form of Jesus, our brother, inviting us to enter a circle of blessing. The mercy of forgiveness and unmerited grace pours through him from the heart of God, drawing us into a new arrangement of things where each passes along blessing and grace, receiving the same in return from others. The circle of blessing melts away our fears, whispering that the rejections and pains we feel, the threats to our life and health, the sorrows we know do not finally matter.
They don’t matter, for heaven rules, and heaven is this circle of blessing with neither beginning nor end. When you get caught up in this circle, in God’s kingdom--if only for a moment, you feel the freedom from fear that changes you from the inside out. You know: the circle of blessing is more real and powerful than anything you fear.
The kingdom of heaven is near, always. The only thing it threatens is your fear.
Pr. David L. Miller
Monday, November 29, 2010
Monday, November 29, 2010
Today’s text
Matthew 3:5-10
Then Jerusalem and all Judaea and the whole Jordan district made their way to him [John], and as they were baptized by him in the river Jordan they confessed their sins. But when he saw a number of Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism he said to them, 'Brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming retribution? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance, and do not presume to tell yourselves, "We have Abraham as our father," because, I tell you, God can raise children for Abraham from these stones. Even now the axe is being laid to the root of the trees, so that any tree failing to produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown on the fire.
Reflection
Long ago an image appeared in my prayer, a tree. It stood in the back field behind my aunt’s home, across the street from where I went to grade school. A small yard surrounded her house, and then the land dropped precipitously to a narrow stream that cut across town from the northeast to the southwest, on its way to the Apple River.
In my meditation, I saw that tree, thick at the trunk, tall and strong, an oak or spreading maple. It rose from the grassy field around the creek, limbs stretching wide, its foliage so thick with wide green leaves that the sun could not reach the ground beneath it.
But there was no tree in that field behind my aunt’s home. It appeared only in my prayer. In the inner eye of heart, I saw people coming out of the sun to rest under the tree, finding shelter from the sun’s searing blast.
I did not go there. I was the tree. This was the desire of my heart and the call of God to me. Somehow I was to be that tree, a place of shade and rest from the heat of life. Souls could come and just be there, free from the wearing heat of the day, at home in the calm shade of grace, strong and unwavering as that tree.
That was--is--the good fruit that my Lord commands me to bear. It is written on my soul, and I cannot escape it. The voice of one’s inner purpose can get drowned out amid the noisy distractions of living. We can ignore it. We can pretend God’s call is romantic nonsense.
But (I think) it never goes away. It is always there amid the myriad voices in one’s mind. It stirs feelings of restlessness and longing when we move too far from it, and it calls us home through that nebulous, vague sense that somewhere along the line we have lost something important--ourselves, the core of what the Loving Mystery has written on our hearts. As long as that voice niggles deeply in us we are not totally lost; we can still hear our Lord speaking, calling us to peace.
I don’t know if the Pharisees and Sadducees felt this niggling any longer or if they had ignored the calling of Spirit in their lives for so long that that their ears could no longer hear. They were trees of God’s shelter for the people, and John was calling them back to themselves, calling them to produce the fruit of blessing, help and hope for which they had been fashioned.
As harsh as John’s voice sounded in their ears, I hear also a call of grace from the wounded heart of God, and a promise: God will cut down that which doesn’t bear fruit. There is much too much in me that needs cutting down and clearing away so that this one tree, the one in my aunt’s grassy field, may grow strong again.
John’s harsh message sounds like grace to me.
Pr. David L. Miller
Matthew 3:5-10
Then Jerusalem and all Judaea and the whole Jordan district made their way to him [John], and as they were baptized by him in the river Jordan they confessed their sins. But when he saw a number of Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism he said to them, 'Brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming retribution? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance, and do not presume to tell yourselves, "We have Abraham as our father," because, I tell you, God can raise children for Abraham from these stones. Even now the axe is being laid to the root of the trees, so that any tree failing to produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown on the fire.
Reflection
Long ago an image appeared in my prayer, a tree. It stood in the back field behind my aunt’s home, across the street from where I went to grade school. A small yard surrounded her house, and then the land dropped precipitously to a narrow stream that cut across town from the northeast to the southwest, on its way to the Apple River.
In my meditation, I saw that tree, thick at the trunk, tall and strong, an oak or spreading maple. It rose from the grassy field around the creek, limbs stretching wide, its foliage so thick with wide green leaves that the sun could not reach the ground beneath it.
But there was no tree in that field behind my aunt’s home. It appeared only in my prayer. In the inner eye of heart, I saw people coming out of the sun to rest under the tree, finding shelter from the sun’s searing blast.
I did not go there. I was the tree. This was the desire of my heart and the call of God to me. Somehow I was to be that tree, a place of shade and rest from the heat of life. Souls could come and just be there, free from the wearing heat of the day, at home in the calm shade of grace, strong and unwavering as that tree.
That was--is--the good fruit that my Lord commands me to bear. It is written on my soul, and I cannot escape it. The voice of one’s inner purpose can get drowned out amid the noisy distractions of living. We can ignore it. We can pretend God’s call is romantic nonsense.
But (I think) it never goes away. It is always there amid the myriad voices in one’s mind. It stirs feelings of restlessness and longing when we move too far from it, and it calls us home through that nebulous, vague sense that somewhere along the line we have lost something important--ourselves, the core of what the Loving Mystery has written on our hearts. As long as that voice niggles deeply in us we are not totally lost; we can still hear our Lord speaking, calling us to peace.
I don’t know if the Pharisees and Sadducees felt this niggling any longer or if they had ignored the calling of Spirit in their lives for so long that that their ears could no longer hear. They were trees of God’s shelter for the people, and John was calling them back to themselves, calling them to produce the fruit of blessing, help and hope for which they had been fashioned.
As harsh as John’s voice sounded in their ears, I hear also a call of grace from the wounded heart of God, and a promise: God will cut down that which doesn’t bear fruit. There is much too much in me that needs cutting down and clearing away so that this one tree, the one in my aunt’s grassy field, may grow strong again.
John’s harsh message sounds like grace to me.
Pr. David L. Miller
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Today’s text
Colossians 1:15-16
He is the image of the unseen God, the first-born of all creation, for in him were created all things in heaven and on earth: everything visible and everything invisible, thrones, ruling forces, sovereignties, powers -- all things were created through him and for him.
Reflection
Formless substance passes through you and becomes a world, a universe of relationships and order, purpose and beauty. No, I say, more: Substance itself flows from within the Mystery you are into surprising existence.
All is made in you, an expression of your own life, of you who are Life, the flowing fountain of Being. All passes from and through you, bearing the gift of existence because you will it; you want it.
It is your nature that life should be, that the substance of your hidden heart, the content of your all-surpassing mind should be shared with that which doesn’t yet exist, so that it may exist.
This tells me all I need to know of your nature. You live to give life, to make life, to share the Mystery which you are so that we and every twig and tree in the stark autumnal woods should be.
So the face of my brother, Jesus, shouldn’t surprise, the face of one given, of one who loves his own and loves them to the end, whose heart is fixed on healing a world that threatens at every point to separate from the Source (you) from which it springs eternally every moment.
He is the Image of the Eternal Giver, the face of the Eternally Given, and the life we are is, too.
Words fail. I have none to capture the mystery of what I see and feel. My hopeless meanderings of thought cannot corral the wonder you are.
I stand in awe, constant and holy wonder knowing that all I see--and am--flows from the hiddenness of your divine being, each an expression, a clue to the Mystery of every age: Who are you? From what do we--and all life--spring?
You are the all-generous Source who gives life to what is not. I am that which is not life, given life as holy gift.
It is your nature to give. It is your work to create life, life that shares in your nature, your image in multifarious manner and expression.
You are giver, and you are gift, the gift we have simply by existing. By existing we are alive with the life of you, O Infinite Source, Flowing Fountain, Unceasing Generosity.
This is how I name you, words of praise for you whom I have no chance of ever understanding. May my overwhelmed wonder and tortured prose praise you.
It’s all I’ve got.
Pr. David L. Miller
Colossians 1:15-16
He is the image of the unseen God, the first-born of all creation, for in him were created all things in heaven and on earth: everything visible and everything invisible, thrones, ruling forces, sovereignties, powers -- all things were created through him and for him.
Reflection
Formless substance passes through you and becomes a world, a universe of relationships and order, purpose and beauty. No, I say, more: Substance itself flows from within the Mystery you are into surprising existence.
All is made in you, an expression of your own life, of you who are Life, the flowing fountain of Being. All passes from and through you, bearing the gift of existence because you will it; you want it.
It is your nature that life should be, that the substance of your hidden heart, the content of your all-surpassing mind should be shared with that which doesn’t yet exist, so that it may exist.
This tells me all I need to know of your nature. You live to give life, to make life, to share the Mystery which you are so that we and every twig and tree in the stark autumnal woods should be.
So the face of my brother, Jesus, shouldn’t surprise, the face of one given, of one who loves his own and loves them to the end, whose heart is fixed on healing a world that threatens at every point to separate from the Source (you) from which it springs eternally every moment.
He is the Image of the Eternal Giver, the face of the Eternally Given, and the life we are is, too.
Words fail. I have none to capture the mystery of what I see and feel. My hopeless meanderings of thought cannot corral the wonder you are.
I stand in awe, constant and holy wonder knowing that all I see--and am--flows from the hiddenness of your divine being, each an expression, a clue to the Mystery of every age: Who are you? From what do we--and all life--spring?
You are the all-generous Source who gives life to what is not. I am that which is not life, given life as holy gift.
It is your nature to give. It is your work to create life, life that shares in your nature, your image in multifarious manner and expression.
You are giver, and you are gift, the gift we have simply by existing. By existing we are alive with the life of you, O Infinite Source, Flowing Fountain, Unceasing Generosity.
This is how I name you, words of praise for you whom I have no chance of ever understanding. May my overwhelmed wonder and tortured prose praise you.
It’s all I’ve got.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, November 02, 2010
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Today’s text
Ephesians 1:17
May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you a spirit of wisdom and perception of what is revealed, to bring you to full knowledge of him.
Reflection
I fell into a pattern of prayer more than a year ago that continues to appear from time to time. I was writing a small book when I first noticed I kept returning to a particular phrase.
I did not want the book to flow from my mind, but from a deeper and truer place in my being. I wanted to experience oneness with the words and ideas that flowed from the end of my fingers, so that there was no distance, no separation between what appeared on the page and what I felt within.
The words needed to express what my soul knew by way of deepest feeling and intuition. So, each morning I knelt in the place of my writing and prayed: “May I hear the voice within the voice that renders all other voices irrelevant.”
I sought that voice that speaks within my own being that, when I hear it, all else flees my heart, all anxiety and uncertainty, all other truth and awareness.
Following this prayer, I would write.
I do not know if I can describe the sensation or awareness that frequently arose from within me in this process of putting fingers to the keys. I always knew when the words were forced, coming from mere thought and not from some hidden point within me where my spirit and the divine spirit rested comfortably within each other, abiding.
I could feel it. I knew when the words where right, and when they were clever ideas but not the expression of that deeper voice. When I heard it I did not need to ask whether the words were true, for they resonated with the calm of a grace-filled love that filled the soul with the sublime sweetness of utter peace, often with tears.
In such moments, the voice I heard within, the voice that spoke back to me from the computer screen, was so much greater than my own, more calm, utterly certain and unperturbed.
Yet, it was my own voice, speaking divine wisdom and truth through my experiences and struggles, which had become the medium for the voice of the Loving Mystery who was pleased to join divine Spirit with my frail and mortal spirit … to speak.
And, I think, this prayer of Ephesians was answered: “May … the Father of glory give you a spirit of wisdom and perception of what is revealed, to bring you to full knowledge of him.”
There was a voice inside of my own to which I listened. It spoke wisdom I do not possess and gave knowledge, however full, of the Unimaginable One, of you my Lord, Holy and Loving Mystery.
In that time, nothing else mattered. All other voices were irrelevant. All that mattered was hearing, listening, feeling and speaking from the point of soul where my spirit and your own merged into a single speaking of total love for a crazy world … and for me.
Pr. David L. Miller
Ephesians 1:17
May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you a spirit of wisdom and perception of what is revealed, to bring you to full knowledge of him.
Reflection
I fell into a pattern of prayer more than a year ago that continues to appear from time to time. I was writing a small book when I first noticed I kept returning to a particular phrase.
I did not want the book to flow from my mind, but from a deeper and truer place in my being. I wanted to experience oneness with the words and ideas that flowed from the end of my fingers, so that there was no distance, no separation between what appeared on the page and what I felt within.
The words needed to express what my soul knew by way of deepest feeling and intuition. So, each morning I knelt in the place of my writing and prayed: “May I hear the voice within the voice that renders all other voices irrelevant.”
I sought that voice that speaks within my own being that, when I hear it, all else flees my heart, all anxiety and uncertainty, all other truth and awareness.
Following this prayer, I would write.
I do not know if I can describe the sensation or awareness that frequently arose from within me in this process of putting fingers to the keys. I always knew when the words were forced, coming from mere thought and not from some hidden point within me where my spirit and the divine spirit rested comfortably within each other, abiding.
I could feel it. I knew when the words where right, and when they were clever ideas but not the expression of that deeper voice. When I heard it I did not need to ask whether the words were true, for they resonated with the calm of a grace-filled love that filled the soul with the sublime sweetness of utter peace, often with tears.
In such moments, the voice I heard within, the voice that spoke back to me from the computer screen, was so much greater than my own, more calm, utterly certain and unperturbed.
Yet, it was my own voice, speaking divine wisdom and truth through my experiences and struggles, which had become the medium for the voice of the Loving Mystery who was pleased to join divine Spirit with my frail and mortal spirit … to speak.
And, I think, this prayer of Ephesians was answered: “May … the Father of glory give you a spirit of wisdom and perception of what is revealed, to bring you to full knowledge of him.”
There was a voice inside of my own to which I listened. It spoke wisdom I do not possess and gave knowledge, however full, of the Unimaginable One, of you my Lord, Holy and Loving Mystery.
In that time, nothing else mattered. All other voices were irrelevant. All that mattered was hearing, listening, feeling and speaking from the point of soul where my spirit and your own merged into a single speaking of total love for a crazy world … and for me.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Today’s text
Jeremiah 31-34
'Look, the days are coming, Yahweh declares, when I shall make a new covenant with the House of Israel (and the House of Judah), but not like the covenant I made with their ancestors the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of Egypt, a covenant which they broke, even though I was their Master, Yahweh declares. No, this is the covenant I shall make with the House of Israel when those days have come, Yahweh declares. Within them I shall plant my Law, writing it on their hearts. Then I shall be their God and they will be my people. There will be no further need for everyone to teach neighbor or brother, saying, "Learn to know Yahweh!" No, they will all know me, from the least to the greatest, Yahweh declares, since I shall forgive their guilt and never more call their sin to mind.'
Reflection
They will all know me.
What is it to know you, Holy One? How can I say that I know you any more than the squirrels scampering across the patio can know me?
They bark curses at me when I rake up their autumnal bounty or startle them. Standing off, they assume a belligerent stance, protecting their turf, ready at my slightest twitch to scurry up the backyard birch, toenails ripping through peeling bark.
Do they know me? I suppose, but only as the alien who invades and occupies their space from time to time--and only as threat, a beast of which to be wary.
But they don’t know me any more, I suppose, than I can know you.
But somewhere and somehow I have come to faint knowledge that you are not threat, though you are always alien to me.
No, maybe you are a threat. You threaten the understanding of life and self that I fall into every time I think I am alone, every time I feebly imagine that life is only what I make of it, that we are cast-offs here on this minuscule but oh-so-wondrous planet.
And you are as alien to me as I to my squirrels, as they keep sentry over the bonanza summer’s sun has yielded, sustenance for winter’s long cold.
You are alien because you are love and unending mercy, who casts my failures and sins into the deep from which they shall never reappear. My soul is alien to such love, or is it?
Even now I know a love--for myself, for this beautiful earth and for this screwed-up rat race of a world where fear and callous meism moves so much of what we do.
Even now, I love it, and I love it with a love that is here, in me, alien though it is, for it is born of higher and infinite heart, so far beyond my own that I am reduced to the status of the squirrels.
Yet, it is your pleasure that I should know this moment, this love … you, … and fulfill again, your promise.
Pr. David L. Miller
Jeremiah 31-34
'Look, the days are coming, Yahweh declares, when I shall make a new covenant with the House of Israel (and the House of Judah), but not like the covenant I made with their ancestors the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of Egypt, a covenant which they broke, even though I was their Master, Yahweh declares. No, this is the covenant I shall make with the House of Israel when those days have come, Yahweh declares. Within them I shall plant my Law, writing it on their hearts. Then I shall be their God and they will be my people. There will be no further need for everyone to teach neighbor or brother, saying, "Learn to know Yahweh!" No, they will all know me, from the least to the greatest, Yahweh declares, since I shall forgive their guilt and never more call their sin to mind.'
Reflection
They will all know me.
What is it to know you, Holy One? How can I say that I know you any more than the squirrels scampering across the patio can know me?
They bark curses at me when I rake up their autumnal bounty or startle them. Standing off, they assume a belligerent stance, protecting their turf, ready at my slightest twitch to scurry up the backyard birch, toenails ripping through peeling bark.
Do they know me? I suppose, but only as the alien who invades and occupies their space from time to time--and only as threat, a beast of which to be wary.
But they don’t know me any more, I suppose, than I can know you.
But somewhere and somehow I have come to faint knowledge that you are not threat, though you are always alien to me.
No, maybe you are a threat. You threaten the understanding of life and self that I fall into every time I think I am alone, every time I feebly imagine that life is only what I make of it, that we are cast-offs here on this minuscule but oh-so-wondrous planet.
And you are as alien to me as I to my squirrels, as they keep sentry over the bonanza summer’s sun has yielded, sustenance for winter’s long cold.
You are alien because you are love and unending mercy, who casts my failures and sins into the deep from which they shall never reappear. My soul is alien to such love, or is it?
Even now I know a love--for myself, for this beautiful earth and for this screwed-up rat race of a world where fear and callous meism moves so much of what we do.
Even now, I love it, and I love it with a love that is here, in me, alien though it is, for it is born of higher and infinite heart, so far beyond my own that I am reduced to the status of the squirrels.
Yet, it is your pleasure that I should know this moment, this love … you, … and fulfill again, your promise.
Pr. David L. Miller
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Today’s text
Psalm 84:2-3
My whole being yearns and pines for Yahweh's court. My heart and my body cry out for joy to the living God. Even the sparrow has found a home, the swallow a nest to place its young: your altars, Yahweh Sabaoth, my King and my God.
Reflection
The place of your presence is hope, my abode, my home. So why do I wander so far, driven by forces, from within and without, that I neither understand nor command?
I long for home. Bring me to that inner palace where I feel and know myself surrounded by eternal arms of unfailing mercy.
Even now, through the grayness, this home calls me to my heart’s desire. I see, within my hidden soul, a life, my life, surrounded in the darkness by your embracing presence, a watery cushion conformed to the contours of my life, lest any part of me slip beyond the divine circle of your care, constant and silent, ever there.
And I lie within your constant silence, an orb, an ellipse of life within your Love, and within myself stretches a child, arms and eyes reaching for daylight; an infant within, waiting to be born.
It lives. It is me, O Lord, that deepest element of the life that I am, awaiting full birth into whatever glory your divine DNA encoded into the mystery of my life.
I see all this, clearly, yet my soul is a wandering vagabond, coursing the earth and despairing days as if it has no home, no identity except that assigned to it by others, some in care others not.
And all the while, this inner palace awaits my return, calling to me, whispering my name--the one I forget--until I return to the one place where I may know the joy of the sparrow upon her nest.
So with these few words I step toward home, the inner palace where all that matters is you and me in the secret silence, where I am born … anew.
Pr. David L. Miller
Psalm 84:2-3
My whole being yearns and pines for Yahweh's court. My heart and my body cry out for joy to the living God. Even the sparrow has found a home, the swallow a nest to place its young: your altars, Yahweh Sabaoth, my King and my God.
Reflection
The place of your presence is hope, my abode, my home. So why do I wander so far, driven by forces, from within and without, that I neither understand nor command?
I long for home. Bring me to that inner palace where I feel and know myself surrounded by eternal arms of unfailing mercy.
Even now, through the grayness, this home calls me to my heart’s desire. I see, within my hidden soul, a life, my life, surrounded in the darkness by your embracing presence, a watery cushion conformed to the contours of my life, lest any part of me slip beyond the divine circle of your care, constant and silent, ever there.
And I lie within your constant silence, an orb, an ellipse of life within your Love, and within myself stretches a child, arms and eyes reaching for daylight; an infant within, waiting to be born.
It lives. It is me, O Lord, that deepest element of the life that I am, awaiting full birth into whatever glory your divine DNA encoded into the mystery of my life.
I see all this, clearly, yet my soul is a wandering vagabond, coursing the earth and despairing days as if it has no home, no identity except that assigned to it by others, some in care others not.
And all the while, this inner palace awaits my return, calling to me, whispering my name--the one I forget--until I return to the one place where I may know the joy of the sparrow upon her nest.
So with these few words I step toward home, the inner palace where all that matters is you and me in the secret silence, where I am born … anew.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Today's text
John 14:1-3
Do not let your hearts be troubled. You trust in God, trust also in me. In my Father's house there are many places to live in; otherwise I would have told you. I am going now to prepare a place for you,and after I have gone and prepared you a place, I shall return to take you to myself, so that you may be with me where I am.
Reflection
It is important to know your place.
Everything Sunday morning a ritual is acted out on the step at the front of our sanctuary. Readings from the Bible are read, and children are invited forward to sit on this step to hear the children’s sermon.
Children rush … they run forward to beat me to this step because I have a place, my place, right there in the middle. But I am too slow. They beat me to it. They look at me and giggle.
I try to squeeze in, and they push their skinny butts together so that I can squeeze in. But I can't, so I must sit on the floor in front of them. This is my place they tell me.
So I sit on the floor and talk to children, as they line up on that step and sit with me. In mock anger,I shake my finger at them and say, “You’re in my place.” But they just laugh … because they are in their place. It belongs to them, and they know it.
We are all in our place: We belong there. We are safe there; we are wanted there … and cherished. So we tell stories and laugh, and they make fun of me, and between the lines of all that happens we realize how much we love each other.
And the love that we share there, sitting together, is not ours, but flows from the reservoir of an infinite love that draws and holds us together.
Whether the congregation knows it or not, whether they see and recognize it or not, whether they have ears to hear what is happening, we are a living sacrament, sitting right there before them. We act out and make present the central truth of our lives. The truth: There is a love that is for us, a love that always has a place for us, a place with our name on it.
Right there on those steps … heaven appears. The love of Jesus enfolds us and silently whispers in our ears: 'You belong. You belong to me. In my love there is a place just for you … and it is yours forever.'
This day, O Lord, let us know our place.
Pr. David L. Miller
John 14:1-3
Do not let your hearts be troubled. You trust in God, trust also in me. In my Father's house there are many places to live in; otherwise I would have told you. I am going now to prepare a place for you,and after I have gone and prepared you a place, I shall return to take you to myself, so that you may be with me where I am.
Reflection
It is important to know your place.
Everything Sunday morning a ritual is acted out on the step at the front of our sanctuary. Readings from the Bible are read, and children are invited forward to sit on this step to hear the children’s sermon.
Children rush … they run forward to beat me to this step because I have a place, my place, right there in the middle. But I am too slow. They beat me to it. They look at me and giggle.
I try to squeeze in, and they push their skinny butts together so that I can squeeze in. But I can't, so I must sit on the floor in front of them. This is my place they tell me.
So I sit on the floor and talk to children, as they line up on that step and sit with me. In mock anger,I shake my finger at them and say, “You’re in my place.” But they just laugh … because they are in their place. It belongs to them, and they know it.
We are all in our place: We belong there. We are safe there; we are wanted there … and cherished. So we tell stories and laugh, and they make fun of me, and between the lines of all that happens we realize how much we love each other.
And the love that we share there, sitting together, is not ours, but flows from the reservoir of an infinite love that draws and holds us together.
Whether the congregation knows it or not, whether they see and recognize it or not, whether they have ears to hear what is happening, we are a living sacrament, sitting right there before them. We act out and make present the central truth of our lives. The truth: There is a love that is for us, a love that always has a place for us, a place with our name on it.
Right there on those steps … heaven appears. The love of Jesus enfolds us and silently whispers in our ears: 'You belong. You belong to me. In my love there is a place just for you … and it is yours forever.'
This day, O Lord, let us know our place.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Today’s text
Luke 18:1
Then Jesus told them a parable about the need to pray continually and never lose heart. 'There was a judge in a certain town,' he said, 'who had neither fear of God nor respect for anyone. In the same town there was also a Widow who kept on coming to him and saying, "I want justice from you against my enemy!" For a long time he refused, but at last he said to himself, "Even though I have neither fear of God nor respect for any human person, I must give this widow her just rights since she keeps pestering me, or she will come and slap me in the face." ' And the Lord said, 'You notice what the unjust judge has to say? Now, will not God see justice done to his elect if they keep calling to him day and night even though he still delays to help them? I promise you, he will see justice done to them, and done speedily. But when the Son of man comes, will he find any faith on earth?'
Reflection
A comic appeared in last Sunday’s paper, a single frame. A thick, muscled arm descends from a cloud, setting an enormous elbow on the ground. A huge hand extends to a stump where a small person grasps that hand and says, “On the count of three.”
There was nothing funny about the cartoon. I suppose the artist sought to comment on the lunacy of arm wrestling with God, “on the count of three” or any other count.
But such contests are not quickly over and done as the drawing suggests. They go on … and should.
Oh, we lose every skirmish. We are not going to wrestle God to the ground and demand whatever it is that we want.
But in the struggle with God we might find ourselves in the presence of a Mystery worthy of our worship, a mystery who in the end is Love, even when our heart’s desire doesn’t happen, even when what we fear becomes the bitter crust of our reality.
It is not uncommon for me to sit with souls who rail again heaven for the injustice and pain in their lives. Often as not, heaven has nothing to do with their pain, which has obvious causes closer to home.
Even then, we want what we want, an end to pain, relief from threats to those we love and healing from whatever illness, misfortune or just plain bad luck that makes life hard.
“Step in God. I demand that you do something about this. I’m talking to you God.”
For the strong ones, the blessed ones, the fight against heaven doesn’t soon end. They persevere. They press on, pressing home the justice of their cause, their honest need for blessing and relief from their unending run of miserable luck.
Blessed are they, for you, my most holy Lord, are real to them, even when your silence brings them pain.
Blessed are they, for they will wrestle with you (losing every skirmish) until the mystery of your love breaks their heart, and they stand, like Job, before the inscrutable chances of life, blessing you for being a God who refuses to be reduced to our size.
Pr. David L. Miller
Luke 18:1
Then Jesus told them a parable about the need to pray continually and never lose heart. 'There was a judge in a certain town,' he said, 'who had neither fear of God nor respect for anyone. In the same town there was also a Widow who kept on coming to him and saying, "I want justice from you against my enemy!" For a long time he refused, but at last he said to himself, "Even though I have neither fear of God nor respect for any human person, I must give this widow her just rights since she keeps pestering me, or she will come and slap me in the face." ' And the Lord said, 'You notice what the unjust judge has to say? Now, will not God see justice done to his elect if they keep calling to him day and night even though he still delays to help them? I promise you, he will see justice done to them, and done speedily. But when the Son of man comes, will he find any faith on earth?'
Reflection
A comic appeared in last Sunday’s paper, a single frame. A thick, muscled arm descends from a cloud, setting an enormous elbow on the ground. A huge hand extends to a stump where a small person grasps that hand and says, “On the count of three.”
There was nothing funny about the cartoon. I suppose the artist sought to comment on the lunacy of arm wrestling with God, “on the count of three” or any other count.
But such contests are not quickly over and done as the drawing suggests. They go on … and should.
Oh, we lose every skirmish. We are not going to wrestle God to the ground and demand whatever it is that we want.
But in the struggle with God we might find ourselves in the presence of a Mystery worthy of our worship, a mystery who in the end is Love, even when our heart’s desire doesn’t happen, even when what we fear becomes the bitter crust of our reality.
It is not uncommon for me to sit with souls who rail again heaven for the injustice and pain in their lives. Often as not, heaven has nothing to do with their pain, which has obvious causes closer to home.
Even then, we want what we want, an end to pain, relief from threats to those we love and healing from whatever illness, misfortune or just plain bad luck that makes life hard.
“Step in God. I demand that you do something about this. I’m talking to you God.”
For the strong ones, the blessed ones, the fight against heaven doesn’t soon end. They persevere. They press on, pressing home the justice of their cause, their honest need for blessing and relief from their unending run of miserable luck.
Blessed are they, for you, my most holy Lord, are real to them, even when your silence brings them pain.
Blessed are they, for they will wrestle with you (losing every skirmish) until the mystery of your love breaks their heart, and they stand, like Job, before the inscrutable chances of life, blessing you for being a God who refuses to be reduced to our size.
Pr. David L. Miller
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Thursday, September, 23, 2010
Finding joy
I don’t think I ever met a child I didn’t like, at least a little.
I love the playful innocence of children who make fun of me during children’s sermons. I love the unfiltered connection between what they feel and what they say.
I love feeling the brand new tender life of infants. I love the wonder and openness of four-year olds discovering the world. I love the spontaneity and fidgety energy of third-graders who can barely keep their butts attached to a chair.
And I want to bless them all.
This is biggest reason I love children: They elicit the deepest beauty and care that is in me. When I am with them I become the love that I am. They draw from my soul the best that is in me.
I feel their acute need to know that they belong, and I ache for them to feel treasured for what they are--irreplaceable expressions of life who is Life. Each enters the world a craving center of near-infinite need, crying out for blessing.
I want to supply that blessing. Truth is, however, I also want to do it for myself. For in blessing them I discover in my heart the One who is Blessing Himself.
God is this energy, this gravity who continually draws me to people and places I can love so that my heart may bring forth whatever hidden decency and beauty might yet be there.
This is all average, of course. This is how God works. This is how human beings are.
We are made for blessing. We crave it, needing to bless someone else just as much, if our lives are to know the joy that God intends.
This is why I find so much joy at baptisms. It’s why baptism is one of the two most sacred acts of the church’s communal life. We are drawn into the central activity of God--blessing tender and fragile life, there to see who God is and for what we are made.
It’s not just that we bless a child with the infinite grace of an unimaginable Love. Together, we also engage in an action in which we act out the central purpose of our life and discover the place where lasting joy is found.
We bless a human soul with a love we can’t begin to understand, only to discover that this unsurpassable love is also in us--and that joy is found in blessing.
Pr. David L. Miller
I don’t think I ever met a child I didn’t like, at least a little.
I love the playful innocence of children who make fun of me during children’s sermons. I love the unfiltered connection between what they feel and what they say.
I love feeling the brand new tender life of infants. I love the wonder and openness of four-year olds discovering the world. I love the spontaneity and fidgety energy of third-graders who can barely keep their butts attached to a chair.
And I want to bless them all.
This is biggest reason I love children: They elicit the deepest beauty and care that is in me. When I am with them I become the love that I am. They draw from my soul the best that is in me.
I feel their acute need to know that they belong, and I ache for them to feel treasured for what they are--irreplaceable expressions of life who is Life. Each enters the world a craving center of near-infinite need, crying out for blessing.
I want to supply that blessing. Truth is, however, I also want to do it for myself. For in blessing them I discover in my heart the One who is Blessing Himself.
God is this energy, this gravity who continually draws me to people and places I can love so that my heart may bring forth whatever hidden decency and beauty might yet be there.
This is all average, of course. This is how God works. This is how human beings are.
We are made for blessing. We crave it, needing to bless someone else just as much, if our lives are to know the joy that God intends.
This is why I find so much joy at baptisms. It’s why baptism is one of the two most sacred acts of the church’s communal life. We are drawn into the central activity of God--blessing tender and fragile life, there to see who God is and for what we are made.
It’s not just that we bless a child with the infinite grace of an unimaginable Love. Together, we also engage in an action in which we act out the central purpose of our life and discover the place where lasting joy is found.
We bless a human soul with a love we can’t begin to understand, only to discover that this unsurpassable love is also in us--and that joy is found in blessing.
Pr. David L. Miller
Monday, September 06, 2010
Monday, September 6, 2010
Today’s text
Luke 15:1-2
The tax collectors and sinners, however, were all crowding round to listen to him, and the Pharisees and scribed complained saying, 'This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.'
Reflection
Tell me, Jesus. How did your church become narrow and judgmental? You weren’t, and you paid a high price for your failure.
Deep unrest roils the souls of many U.S. Christians and churches. They are exercised by the imperative to protect the country and its children from the perils of gays or liberals or Islam and even from quieter Christians who are less adamant (or convinced) of such moral judgments.
Ironically, so many who fill the pews of American congregations have more in common with the Pharisees than with you. Right and wrong, good and bad, holy and secular are precisely parsed in their souls--one to be avoided the other embraced.
That’s what the Pharisaic spirit does, and it appears n every age, faith and society. But it is uniquely bothersome when it’s found among those who confess your name. They should known better
You embraced the secular, the bad, the wrong, a host of messy souls who populated the wrong side of the social divide. You didn’t tell them to go take a shower before they got too close.
And they liked you, too. They elbowed each other out of the way to hear what you said. They leaned close lest a stray word drop ungathered in the dust.
They wanted what was in you: the radiating Spirit of divine welcome that does not judge but draws into the gravity of an all-possessing love.
I have felt that welcome and long for it the more. Moments appear when we stand near a soul in whose presence all pretense fades, all concerns of judgment or rejection disappear. Soul encounters soul. Communion occurs, and self-consciousness flees like a lost dream upon awakening.
The life of needing to being judged and judging others--also ourselves--is the dream (the nightmare) that disappeared in those messed-up souls. It fled your presence.
So they flocked to you, seeking to be with you--soul to soul--divine welcome and human neediness wrapped up in a single embrace.
Yes, it’s true. The dream--the nightmare--of judgment is a human fiction, created from the need of threatened selves to imagine that some of us are better than others. Some are to be feared and kept out lest they spoil the lot.
Bu tin your presence, Jesus-- enfolded in that single embrace, illusion disappears in the warmth of morning light that drives off the shadows of night, and we see: the judgment of He who is Love is all that matters.
Only messed-up souls can know this, so they come to you, not the Pharisees, as do I.
Pr. David L. Miller
Luke 15:1-2
The tax collectors and sinners, however, were all crowding round to listen to him, and the Pharisees and scribed complained saying, 'This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.'
Reflection
Tell me, Jesus. How did your church become narrow and judgmental? You weren’t, and you paid a high price for your failure.
Deep unrest roils the souls of many U.S. Christians and churches. They are exercised by the imperative to protect the country and its children from the perils of gays or liberals or Islam and even from quieter Christians who are less adamant (or convinced) of such moral judgments.
Ironically, so many who fill the pews of American congregations have more in common with the Pharisees than with you. Right and wrong, good and bad, holy and secular are precisely parsed in their souls--one to be avoided the other embraced.
That’s what the Pharisaic spirit does, and it appears n every age, faith and society. But it is uniquely bothersome when it’s found among those who confess your name. They should known better
You embraced the secular, the bad, the wrong, a host of messy souls who populated the wrong side of the social divide. You didn’t tell them to go take a shower before they got too close.
And they liked you, too. They elbowed each other out of the way to hear what you said. They leaned close lest a stray word drop ungathered in the dust.
They wanted what was in you: the radiating Spirit of divine welcome that does not judge but draws into the gravity of an all-possessing love.
I have felt that welcome and long for it the more. Moments appear when we stand near a soul in whose presence all pretense fades, all concerns of judgment or rejection disappear. Soul encounters soul. Communion occurs, and self-consciousness flees like a lost dream upon awakening.
The life of needing to being judged and judging others--also ourselves--is the dream (the nightmare) that disappeared in those messed-up souls. It fled your presence.
So they flocked to you, seeking to be with you--soul to soul--divine welcome and human neediness wrapped up in a single embrace.
Yes, it’s true. The dream--the nightmare--of judgment is a human fiction, created from the need of threatened selves to imagine that some of us are better than others. Some are to be feared and kept out lest they spoil the lot.
Bu tin your presence, Jesus-- enfolded in that single embrace, illusion disappears in the warmth of morning light that drives off the shadows of night, and we see: the judgment of He who is Love is all that matters.
Only messed-up souls can know this, so they come to you, not the Pharisees, as do I.
Pr. David L. Miller
Monday, August 16, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
Today’s text
Luke 13:10-13
Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment." When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.
Reflection
I see no hesitation in you, Jesus.
You do not wait for her to ask for anything. You do not question her to check out whether she is good or worthy. You do not look for signs of faith or wonder if she is looking for God’s kingdom.
You do not know if she is a gentle soul or whether all that she has suffered has made her bitter and nasty, a scourge on the village whom everyone avoids.
The condition of her heart at this moment seems of no concern to you.
Your concern is singular: she must be set free.
All that matters is your mission, carrying out your work so that another kingdom, another way of being appears and beckons us to enter.
The way of your kingdom makes us nervous because it obliterates our judgments. We judge the worthiness of a human life by many measures, some known to us, many more utterly unconscious. Some we call good; others we reject.
That is not your way.
You do not walk the path of judgment and condemnation. Despite centuries of misunderstandings and misrepresentations the church has taught, you are not into guilt. You are not the Acme Judgment Company.
You are in the setting free business. You make things whole again, releasing bodies and souls from the bitter pains that enslave them so that they--that we, that I--might live free from all that prevents me from being human, graced and gracious.
That’s why you do not ask whether I or this crippled woman is deserving of your care. It is irrelevant.
All that matters is that we be set free and enter a way of being where judgments don’t count, even our judgments upon ourselves, because you have named us all beloved, leaving no place for guilt or deserving.
Such is the desire of your divine heart, a desire made clear when you heal and bless without request.
Pr. David L. Miller
Luke 13:10-13
Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment." When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.
Reflection
I see no hesitation in you, Jesus.
You do not wait for her to ask for anything. You do not question her to check out whether she is good or worthy. You do not look for signs of faith or wonder if she is looking for God’s kingdom.
You do not know if she is a gentle soul or whether all that she has suffered has made her bitter and nasty, a scourge on the village whom everyone avoids.
The condition of her heart at this moment seems of no concern to you.
Your concern is singular: she must be set free.
All that matters is your mission, carrying out your work so that another kingdom, another way of being appears and beckons us to enter.
The way of your kingdom makes us nervous because it obliterates our judgments. We judge the worthiness of a human life by many measures, some known to us, many more utterly unconscious. Some we call good; others we reject.
That is not your way.
You do not walk the path of judgment and condemnation. Despite centuries of misunderstandings and misrepresentations the church has taught, you are not into guilt. You are not the Acme Judgment Company.
You are in the setting free business. You make things whole again, releasing bodies and souls from the bitter pains that enslave them so that they--that we, that I--might live free from all that prevents me from being human, graced and gracious.
That’s why you do not ask whether I or this crippled woman is deserving of your care. It is irrelevant.
All that matters is that we be set free and enter a way of being where judgments don’t count, even our judgments upon ourselves, because you have named us all beloved, leaving no place for guilt or deserving.
Such is the desire of your divine heart, a desire made clear when you heal and bless without request.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Today’s text
Luke 12:32-34
'There is no need to be afraid, little flock, for it has pleased your Father to give you the kingdom. 'Sell your possessions and give to those in need. Get yourselves purses that do not wear out, treasure that will not fail you, in heaven where no thief can reach it and no moth destroy it. For wherever your treasure is, that is where your heart will be too.'
Reflection
Recently, I was accused of employing a “heavy political and one-sided lens through which [I] have presented the ill-conceived ‘social gospel’ from the pulpit.”
Initially, I was profoundly angry and disgusted, not to mention surprised. I could more easily have been accused of being an unreformed German pietist who over-spiritualizes the gospel and is too little concerned with its social and political implications.
For the past decade, my ministry emphasis has been on personal spirituality and prayer, discernment and meditation, the knowing of God with heart and soul that relies less on the mind than on inner experience and intuition. I have studied, spoke and written hundreds of thousands of words about the teaching of great spiritual teachers of the Western Christian tradition.
Being accused of following an ill-conceived ideology rankled me. It also made me wonder if the person making the charge understood the term he was using, not to mention the deeply Christian convictions of the movement he used to insult me.
The social gospel movement was Protestant in origin and became prominent in the late 19th early 20th centuries. Proponents applied Christian ethics to social problems, such as social injustices, inequality, liquor, crime, racial tensions, slums, poverty, bad hygiene, child labor, weak labor unions, poor schools and the danger of war.
The movement encouraged people to be involved with the world’s problems, analyzing and responding to them from perspectives rooted in their Christian convictions.
A few of the movement’s theological beliefs were far too optimistic and died in the trenches of WWI. Most notably, some movement founders taught that human beings by their own efforts could build the kingdom of God and usher in the millennium.
But the influence of the movement outlived its founder’s optimism and helped shape significant events in the 20th century, such as women’s suffrage, the fight against poverty and the civil rights movement. The soaring rhetoric of Martin Luther King Jr., ringing with the language of Jesus and the prophets, reflects the deepest instincts of the social gospel movement.
The hunger and poverty ministries of major church bodies and many Christian organizations such as Lutheran World Relief and Feed my Starving Children also bear witness to the way this movement raised the consciousness of Christians in North America, even among believers who did not accept some of the theological baggage of its original founders.
Reflecting on this history, my anger fades, and I realize that I stand among good company: the company of Christians who seek to take their beliefs out of the sanctuary to address suffering and injustice, the company of those who don’t rush by Jesus’ warnings about the dangers of wealth … or his words about justice for the poor.
Sometimes the compatriots in this company have been right and helpful to the entire church and the broader society; sometimes they have been naïve and not well informed: just like the church in this and every age since Jesus.
And it is to Jesus that I return each day, listening for the assurance that urges me to trust that the Father cares so much for me that I can throw off my self-concerned worries and seek God’s love and justice for those who need.
I urge you to do the same. You will find good company, the company of Jesus.
Pr. David L. Miller
Luke 12:32-34
'There is no need to be afraid, little flock, for it has pleased your Father to give you the kingdom. 'Sell your possessions and give to those in need. Get yourselves purses that do not wear out, treasure that will not fail you, in heaven where no thief can reach it and no moth destroy it. For wherever your treasure is, that is where your heart will be too.'
Reflection
Recently, I was accused of employing a “heavy political and one-sided lens through which [I] have presented the ill-conceived ‘social gospel’ from the pulpit.”
Initially, I was profoundly angry and disgusted, not to mention surprised. I could more easily have been accused of being an unreformed German pietist who over-spiritualizes the gospel and is too little concerned with its social and political implications.
For the past decade, my ministry emphasis has been on personal spirituality and prayer, discernment and meditation, the knowing of God with heart and soul that relies less on the mind than on inner experience and intuition. I have studied, spoke and written hundreds of thousands of words about the teaching of great spiritual teachers of the Western Christian tradition.
Being accused of following an ill-conceived ideology rankled me. It also made me wonder if the person making the charge understood the term he was using, not to mention the deeply Christian convictions of the movement he used to insult me.
The social gospel movement was Protestant in origin and became prominent in the late 19th early 20th centuries. Proponents applied Christian ethics to social problems, such as social injustices, inequality, liquor, crime, racial tensions, slums, poverty, bad hygiene, child labor, weak labor unions, poor schools and the danger of war.
The movement encouraged people to be involved with the world’s problems, analyzing and responding to them from perspectives rooted in their Christian convictions.
A few of the movement’s theological beliefs were far too optimistic and died in the trenches of WWI. Most notably, some movement founders taught that human beings by their own efforts could build the kingdom of God and usher in the millennium.
But the influence of the movement outlived its founder’s optimism and helped shape significant events in the 20th century, such as women’s suffrage, the fight against poverty and the civil rights movement. The soaring rhetoric of Martin Luther King Jr., ringing with the language of Jesus and the prophets, reflects the deepest instincts of the social gospel movement.
The hunger and poverty ministries of major church bodies and many Christian organizations such as Lutheran World Relief and Feed my Starving Children also bear witness to the way this movement raised the consciousness of Christians in North America, even among believers who did not accept some of the theological baggage of its original founders.
Reflecting on this history, my anger fades, and I realize that I stand among good company: the company of Christians who seek to take their beliefs out of the sanctuary to address suffering and injustice, the company of those who don’t rush by Jesus’ warnings about the dangers of wealth … or his words about justice for the poor.
Sometimes the compatriots in this company have been right and helpful to the entire church and the broader society; sometimes they have been naïve and not well informed: just like the church in this and every age since Jesus.
And it is to Jesus that I return each day, listening for the assurance that urges me to trust that the Father cares so much for me that I can throw off my self-concerned worries and seek God’s love and justice for those who need.
I urge you to do the same. You will find good company, the company of Jesus.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Today’s text
Psalm 33:20-22
We are waiting for Yahweh; he is our help and our shield, for in him our heart rejoices, in his holy name we trust. Yahweh, let your faithful love rest on us, as our hope has rested in you.
Reflection
I wait for you, My God. Impatiently, I wait. Come and lift the burden of past days’ sadness that I may again rejoice with uplifted heart in freedom of spirit.
I have no will or power in my soul to lift myself beyond grayness. I do not even want release, not if it requires much energy for me. I have no effort to give.
My soul is hostage. Only my fingers can move and pray. My soul cannot lift itself above the chair.
So come to me through my fingers. Let my hands become the media of your presence, the path of your approach.
Use them to surprise me, to break through sad helplessness. Move them to find the right words, the precise sound needed to startle my soul into life, my will into action that, I, with you, may fight through this gloom of soul and find the joy of your saints.
I am not alone here. You come, even through fingers. Who knew fingers could form tears of relief and release?
Many. All who have felt the gloom, bore the sadness of the hour and found you, sitting and waiting in the depths, expecting them--now me--to show up. Just sitting there … and smiling.
Pr. David L. Miller
Psalm 33:20-22
We are waiting for Yahweh; he is our help and our shield, for in him our heart rejoices, in his holy name we trust. Yahweh, let your faithful love rest on us, as our hope has rested in you.
Reflection
I wait for you, My God. Impatiently, I wait. Come and lift the burden of past days’ sadness that I may again rejoice with uplifted heart in freedom of spirit.
I have no will or power in my soul to lift myself beyond grayness. I do not even want release, not if it requires much energy for me. I have no effort to give.
My soul is hostage. Only my fingers can move and pray. My soul cannot lift itself above the chair.
So come to me through my fingers. Let my hands become the media of your presence, the path of your approach.
Use them to surprise me, to break through sad helplessness. Move them to find the right words, the precise sound needed to startle my soul into life, my will into action that, I, with you, may fight through this gloom of soul and find the joy of your saints.
I am not alone here. You come, even through fingers. Who knew fingers could form tears of relief and release?
Many. All who have felt the gloom, bore the sadness of the hour and found you, sitting and waiting in the depths, expecting them--now me--to show up. Just sitting there … and smiling.
Pr. David L. Miller
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Today’s text
Luke 12:16-21
Then he told them a parable, 'There was once a rich man who, having had a good harvest from his land, thought to himself, "What am I to do? I have not enough room to store my crops." Then he said, "This is what I will do: I will pull down my barns and build bigger ones, and store all my grain and my goods in them, and I will say to my soul: My soul, you have plenty of good things laid by for many years to come; take things easy, eat, drink, have a good time." But God said to him, "Fool! This very night the demand will be made for your soul; and this hoard of yours, whose will it be then?" So it is when someone stores up treasure for himself instead of becoming rich in the sight of God.'
Reflection
‘The demand will be made for your soul.’ It sounds grave, the facing of death. Truth is the demand for one’s soul occurs daily.
It is a banal occurrence. It happens quietly in the course of the common and average. The demand for our soul is whispered in each encounter with every person in all circumstances. Most often we fail to hear it.
The manner in which we meet the final demand for our soul, when we face our demise, depends entirely upon on whether we have heard and responded to this whisper--and sought the wealth of God’s unfailing presence.
So what is the condition of my soul, O Lord? How well am I? Am I ready for what comes this day?
Has this soul of mine spent enough time encircled in your Loving Mystery? Have I found freedom rapt in the awareness of your love, or do I dwell in the anxiety of my fears and inadequacies?
Is my soul harried with many things, or do I know myself, my center, the core of being from which you want me to speak and act? Can I live with purpose moving deliberately amid the daily and distracting, able to pause, give, bless, laugh and listen?
The rich man sought his life in wealth and ignored the condition of his soul, dying in poverty. He’d starved the one thing he could take with him.
I know his name: Average. He is the average American. He is me … and most of those among whom I live and move. We are not evil, just busy, and often as not we are wholly out of tune with the condition of our souls. Until, of course, big challenges come, and our souls are demanded of us.
Then we know, and we regret our neglect and wish we’d done something more, paid attention, spent our time a differently, so that we knew how to touch and find the immovable rock of your loving life at the center of our souls.
The day to become rich is this one, now. And God is eager to give the wealth of the kingdom to those who come with empty hands and a willing heart.
Pr. David L. Miller
Luke 12:16-21
Then he told them a parable, 'There was once a rich man who, having had a good harvest from his land, thought to himself, "What am I to do? I have not enough room to store my crops." Then he said, "This is what I will do: I will pull down my barns and build bigger ones, and store all my grain and my goods in them, and I will say to my soul: My soul, you have plenty of good things laid by for many years to come; take things easy, eat, drink, have a good time." But God said to him, "Fool! This very night the demand will be made for your soul; and this hoard of yours, whose will it be then?" So it is when someone stores up treasure for himself instead of becoming rich in the sight of God.'
Reflection
‘The demand will be made for your soul.’ It sounds grave, the facing of death. Truth is the demand for one’s soul occurs daily.
It is a banal occurrence. It happens quietly in the course of the common and average. The demand for our soul is whispered in each encounter with every person in all circumstances. Most often we fail to hear it.
The manner in which we meet the final demand for our soul, when we face our demise, depends entirely upon on whether we have heard and responded to this whisper--and sought the wealth of God’s unfailing presence.
So what is the condition of my soul, O Lord? How well am I? Am I ready for what comes this day?
Has this soul of mine spent enough time encircled in your Loving Mystery? Have I found freedom rapt in the awareness of your love, or do I dwell in the anxiety of my fears and inadequacies?
Is my soul harried with many things, or do I know myself, my center, the core of being from which you want me to speak and act? Can I live with purpose moving deliberately amid the daily and distracting, able to pause, give, bless, laugh and listen?
The rich man sought his life in wealth and ignored the condition of his soul, dying in poverty. He’d starved the one thing he could take with him.
I know his name: Average. He is the average American. He is me … and most of those among whom I live and move. We are not evil, just busy, and often as not we are wholly out of tune with the condition of our souls. Until, of course, big challenges come, and our souls are demanded of us.
Then we know, and we regret our neglect and wish we’d done something more, paid attention, spent our time a differently, so that we knew how to touch and find the immovable rock of your loving life at the center of our souls.
The day to become rich is this one, now. And God is eager to give the wealth of the kingdom to those who come with empty hands and a willing heart.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Today’s text
Luke 12:13-15
A man in the crowd said to him, 'Master, tell my brother to give me a share of our inheritance.' He said to him, 'My friend, who appointed me your judge, or the arbitrator of your claims?' Then he said to them, 'Watch, and be on your guard against avarice of any kind, for life does not consist in possessions, even when someone has more than he needs.'
Reflection
Why are you here, Jesus? You clearly grasp the reason that resides at the core of your being and the nature of your life.
Settling family squabbles over money and possessions has no interest to you. You are not defined from the outside, by what others want or expect. Frustrating the expectations and perceived needs of those who came to you doesn’t bother you.
You are not anxious about pleasing them or winning them over with a wise word or felicitous answer to their query.
You quickly dismisses the role of arbiter or judge and frustrates the desire of those you might have “won over’ with a wise or pleasing answer.
I don’t think you go out of your way to trouble or annoy people, although there are other stories in the Bible where it appears that you are dong exactly this. Not here.
Here you are clear that settling fights or offering an equitable solution to a family problem is an annoying distraction that you brush away like a pesky fly.
You knew this did not connect with the substance of your being, the depth of your soul.
Your soul was focused on life, what brings it, what takes it away, of what life consists.
And it certainly doesn’t consist of most of the things on which we spend much of our time and substance.
I think that is at the core of frustration for me on some days. When the day is done I wonder: how much of this day flows from the depth of my soul, from deepest loves and convictions?
How much of it truly satisfies the heart because it comes from or leads to my deepest loves--and the Deep Love who holds me?
How much is done to satisfy expectations or desires foisted on me from the real or perceived expectations of others, expectations I sometimes take on even when they distract from the deepest substance of my soul, from being the person I am, the one you call me to be?
Today, Jesus, let me be true to the substance of my soul. I hunger to be so clear about my reason for being as are you.
Pr. David L. Miller
Luke 12:13-15
A man in the crowd said to him, 'Master, tell my brother to give me a share of our inheritance.' He said to him, 'My friend, who appointed me your judge, or the arbitrator of your claims?' Then he said to them, 'Watch, and be on your guard against avarice of any kind, for life does not consist in possessions, even when someone has more than he needs.'
Reflection
Why are you here, Jesus? You clearly grasp the reason that resides at the core of your being and the nature of your life.
Settling family squabbles over money and possessions has no interest to you. You are not defined from the outside, by what others want or expect. Frustrating the expectations and perceived needs of those who came to you doesn’t bother you.
You are not anxious about pleasing them or winning them over with a wise word or felicitous answer to their query.
You quickly dismisses the role of arbiter or judge and frustrates the desire of those you might have “won over’ with a wise or pleasing answer.
I don’t think you go out of your way to trouble or annoy people, although there are other stories in the Bible where it appears that you are dong exactly this. Not here.
Here you are clear that settling fights or offering an equitable solution to a family problem is an annoying distraction that you brush away like a pesky fly.
You knew this did not connect with the substance of your being, the depth of your soul.
Your soul was focused on life, what brings it, what takes it away, of what life consists.
And it certainly doesn’t consist of most of the things on which we spend much of our time and substance.
I think that is at the core of frustration for me on some days. When the day is done I wonder: how much of this day flows from the depth of my soul, from deepest loves and convictions?
How much of it truly satisfies the heart because it comes from or leads to my deepest loves--and the Deep Love who holds me?
How much is done to satisfy expectations or desires foisted on me from the real or perceived expectations of others, expectations I sometimes take on even when they distract from the deepest substance of my soul, from being the person I am, the one you call me to be?
Today, Jesus, let me be true to the substance of my soul. I hunger to be so clear about my reason for being as are you.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Today’s text
Luke 11:1
Now it happened that he was in a certain place praying, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said, 'Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.'
Reflection
Teach us to pray. The request is simple and unadorned. The desire beneath it is anything but. It arises from a morass of feeling and intuition that is as ancient as the human soul.
God speaks life into existence and from the depth of that life sounds an echo searching for its Source, knowing it is the child of an unknown immensity, craving to touch, to feel, to move in seamless rhythm with that from which it comes and to which it belongs, and there, finally, to find its peace.
The desire to pray is the restless heart’s hunger to know the mystery of its own life, of what and for what it is made--and to taste how dearly it is treasured by the Immensity to whom it owes its existence.
There is no rest until the soul echoes the voice of its Loving Maker, and the sound of that echo resonates in harmony with the Creator’s voice, so that the soul feels encompassed in the immensity of a love, a mercy it can never fully know.
It is in this resonance of prayer that I know you Holy One, and all my anxious worries and questions fall silent.
I understand your friend’s simple question, “Teach us to pray.” It is the searching echo of your search for us; it is the divine hunger within that my life should dwell fully within your immensity, moving in perfect harmony with the love you are.
I do not choose to want this. Your loving word fashioned such desire into our souls. You speak us into existence, and depth of soul echoes its answers. Prayer is that echo.
Pr. David L. Miller
Luke 11:1
Now it happened that he was in a certain place praying, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said, 'Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.'
Reflection
Teach us to pray. The request is simple and unadorned. The desire beneath it is anything but. It arises from a morass of feeling and intuition that is as ancient as the human soul.
God speaks life into existence and from the depth of that life sounds an echo searching for its Source, knowing it is the child of an unknown immensity, craving to touch, to feel, to move in seamless rhythm with that from which it comes and to which it belongs, and there, finally, to find its peace.
The desire to pray is the restless heart’s hunger to know the mystery of its own life, of what and for what it is made--and to taste how dearly it is treasured by the Immensity to whom it owes its existence.
There is no rest until the soul echoes the voice of its Loving Maker, and the sound of that echo resonates in harmony with the Creator’s voice, so that the soul feels encompassed in the immensity of a love, a mercy it can never fully know.
It is in this resonance of prayer that I know you Holy One, and all my anxious worries and questions fall silent.
I understand your friend’s simple question, “Teach us to pray.” It is the searching echo of your search for us; it is the divine hunger within that my life should dwell fully within your immensity, moving in perfect harmony with the love you are.
I do not choose to want this. Your loving word fashioned such desire into our souls. You speak us into existence, and depth of soul echoes its answers. Prayer is that echo.
Pr. David L. Miller
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