Monday, September 10, 2012

Today’s text

Psalm 116:5-9

Yahweh is merciful and upright, our God is tenderness. Yahweh looks after the simple, when I was brought low he gave me strength. Yahweh looks after the simple, when I was brought low he gave me strength. He has rescued me from death, my eyes from tears, and my feet from stumbling. I shall pass my life in the presence of Yahweh, in the land of the living.

Reflection

You are tenderness, and in tenderness we know you as the Heart as the Universe who hungers for our hearts and is content with nothing less than healing.

To know you, Holy One, is to know the breath in our lungs as it returns when the heaviness of sorrow and fear lift in the light of love’s embrace.

To know you is to see and feel your smile radiating in the grace of faces that know and love you … and us.

To know you is to feel strength of soul as hope for the fullness of life returns, for without it our hearts remain unfinished and longing.

To know you is to know the love that cannot and will not release our hearts even when we have no strength left to hold on. You hold onto us. Always will.

In that knowledge, we live our lives and all eternity in the land of your Presence, the land of the living.

For there is no life, no real living without knowing and feeling, without awareness of the love you are, the tenderness of your divine heart.

So very different are you than those who thunder from pulpits and television screens announcing your judgment upon our failed humanity.

I turn from them more and more as the years pass. Once they held fascination. They seemed to know you better than I.

But in these latter days I listen to what I know within, paying pay less attention to outside voices that tell me who you are, what you want, how I should live, what I should say and how I should lead.

I listen instead to the voice of tenderness that returns the breath to my lungs so that I may live and breathe, hope and know that all lies in Love’s unfailing hands. Always will.

And simply knowing, I dwell in the land of the living. Thank you.

Pr. David L. Miller

Saturday September 8, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 7:34-37

Then looking up to heaven he [Jesus] sighed; and he said to him, 'Ephphatha,' that is, 'Be opened.' And his ears were opened, and at once the impediment of his tongue was loosened and he spoke clearly. And Jesus ordered them to tell no one about it, but the more he insisted, the more widely they proclaimed it. Their admiration was unbounded, and they said, 'Everything he does is good, he makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak.'

Reflection

Open our ears to the deep hunger of our souls that we may seek the fullness of your heart each day and find the healing and peace we so badly need. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Open our ears to the needs of the world and the hearts of friend and foe that we may hear with love and grace, as you hear us. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Open our mouths to bless and encourage others that hearts may be lifted and your church may grow into an ever-widening community of blessing. Bless all who teach and learn your gospel, all who witness and worship. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Open our eyes to the wonder of the heavens and the earth, the seas, and all that is in them, to forests, mountains and lakes and the gentle beauty of fawn and flower, that we may be moved praise you and care for the well-being of all you have made. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Open our hearts to the hungry and those who wither in poverty and want. Move us to share with those in need and seek your justice for those oppressed. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Open the gates of your healing compassion to all who are sick or in any need. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Open our arms to love our neighbors as ourselves. Open our hearts to care for the stranger and welcome every soul into your assembly with honor and dignity. Lord, in your mercy,
hear our prayer.

Open our souls to the loving witness of those who have gone before us that we, too, may inherit the kingdom you promise to whose who love you. Grant comfort and healing to all who mourn. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Hear our hearts, faithful God, and pour out your Spirit from the ever-flowing depths of your divine heart that filled with the love you are we may joyfully love and serve you and one another, through Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, September 7, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 7:34-37

Then looking up to heaven he [Jesus] sighed; and he said to him, 'Ephphatha,' that is, 'Be opened.' And his ears were opened, and at once the impediment of his tongue was loosened and he spoke clearly. And Jesus ordered them to tell no one about it, but the more he insisted, the more widely they proclaimed it. Their admiration was unbounded, and they said, 'Everything he does is good, he makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak.'

Reflection

No, it is not good. It is life. He is life, and they are missing it. Don’t miss life.

Let your heart be taken in by the life he is. Be captured by the wonder of what you see and feel in him. Your ears will open and you will hear and speak as never before.

How do you hear? How do you speak?

Jesus hears the world with grace, in all its sorrow, hunger and joy. Captured by his life, the life of the one who sighs with care and loving mercy, you will hear your life and life around you with this same grace.

He doesn’t want your admiration or approval. They mean nothing to him. What he wants is for you to see and hear as he sees, as he sees and hears you.

He hungers for you to be as he is. That is his purpose and joy, the fulfillment of his life and yours.

He sees you through eyes of penetrating grace, knowing all of you and loving all of it because it is you, because all of it shapes a soul so unique no other soul is quite like it or ever will be.

Your soul, your life can shine with grace and understanding, blessing and hope like no other that has or ever will exist.

You are a special vessel of life and grace intended for your time and place. Your words can bless and encourage, grace and gentle the heart of people no one else can reach.

Your ears can listen and hear people who hunger to be known and understood for what they are in all their beauty and woundedness. Your ears can hear and heal the soul that hides beneath surface words and actions.

You can listen with grace and share the joy and sorrows of human hearts, as Jesus knows and shares the depth of your heart.

You can speak words of blessing that link hearts-to-hearts and minds-to-minds, as Jesus blesses you and pours the elixir of his gracious life into yours, opening your ears to hear and your mouth to speak.

You can heal the discord of cliques and family rifts, of party spirit and political polarization, of racial and national divides.

You need only allow your heart to be taken in, held, captured and conquered by the one who hears your heart and loves all of you, … the one whose sighs speak volumes about what is in the heart of God … for you.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 7:32-37

And they brought him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they asked him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside to be by themselves, away from the crowd, put his fingers into the man's ears and touched his tongue with spittle. Then looking up to heaven he sighed; and he said to him, 'Ephphatha,' that is, 'Be opened.' And his ears were opened, and at once the impediment of his tongue was loosened and he spoke clearly. And Jesus ordered them to tell no one about it, but the more he insisted, the more widely they proclaimed it. Their admiration was unbounded, and they said, 'Everything he does is good, he makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak.'

Reflection

We can hear these words on two levels. One is incomplete and shallow; the other reflects understanding and wisdom.

The crowd saw Jesus touch the deaf man and sigh. They were amazed that he was soon able to hear and speak. Their understanding was shallow. It never penetrated the surface of what happened right in front of them.

They spread the story, raising eyebrows and curiosity to be sure. But were their souls stirred to crave union with the one who sighs in wounded love for the world?

Do they want what is in him? Do they hunger to know his great soul in the depth of their own? Do they seek this transformation so that they, too, with sighs of love and sorrow, might touch and make the world more whole for their presence?

To want this is to possess Jesus, to have his soul flowing through your own, for his soul hungers for the world and broken hearts to be made whole.

Wholeness is not primarily physical but spiritual and emotional. There are those with fully-able bodies who will never be whole, and there are those who are losing their battles with cancer and disease, who are more whole than they have ever been.

It’s about connection. Those who are whole feel and know connection with the Great Life who does not die. Their bodies tingle in awareness that the Life and Love of God is in them, filling them with that otherwise elusive feeling that they are well, that all is well. They know all they are and all that is rests in Love and always will.

They know: Love works … constantly, in all, through all, with all. It always has the final word, and that word is life and peace, unity with the Loving Wonder for whom our hearts long.

Wholeness is the life that flows in us when we know and feel the truth: You dwell in the atmosphere of God who is love, the One who sighs out, “Be opened.

“Be opened, so you may know and be filled with the Spirit of Life and Love that I am. Be opened, and you will live.”

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 7:32-35

And they brought him [Jesus] a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they asked him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside to be by themselves, away from the crowd, put his fingers into the man's ears and touched his tongue with spittle. Then looking up to heaven he sighed; and he said to him, 'Ephphatha,' that is, 'Be opened.' And his ears were opened, and at once the impediment of his tongue was loosened and he spoke clearly.

Reflection

Be open. To what? To whom?

To the love that is in Jesus, to the Wonder whom he bears. Then, we will be united with inward center of his soul, through which flows the Soul of the Universe, the heart of divine creativity and joy, yes, joy.

Be open and receive from the divine source of whom your life is a physical expression. Your heart will soften, its emptiness will experience fullness and you will speak from your spiritual center, your inmost being.

Your words will truly ring with an authenticity and depth you have never known, bearing a love beyond your own.

It begins with being open. This does not come easily, and for some it never comes.

Jesus opens the man’s ears with a sigh, the sign of a great effort of soul. He seeks to pour out what is in his heart.

He surrenders to the need of the other, as he always does. He gives his heart to the deaf man, not knowing if he will hear, receive or even want what his soul hungers to give.

He sighs in vulnerability, risking rejection willing to make a fool of himself for the sake of the love within him, so willing is he to bless and give away what he has and knows.

Jesus knows utter intimacy, undivided unity with the Eternal Wonder who is love, the One from whom all creation flows, dazzling and perplexing our senses.

He truly knows the Infinite Source of all our bodies and souls need and crave. Divine hunger to give it all away stirs his soul beyond himself to reach and touch the souls of need that surround him at every hand.

He sighs and that which is in him passes to such a soul, a soul like mine and yours. He sighs, hoping our hearts might open so the total gift that is in him might fill our souls, too.

And when it does, in those graced moments of wonder, we, too, know intimate unity with the Unspeakable Love for which, for whom … even Jesus struggles for words. Sometimes only sighs say enough.

In this unity of soul with Soul, ours hearts with the boundless Heart, words of blessing and peace come to our lips without our usual stammer and struggle.

We speak, for once, the truth of the love that hungers for us, the love that can’t and won’t let go.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 7:24-28

He left that place and set out for the territory of Tyre. There he went into a house and did not want anyone to know he was there; but he could not pass unrecognized. At once a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him and came and fell at his feet. Now this woman was a gentile, by birth a Syro-Phoenician, and she begged him to drive the devil out of her daughter. And he said to her, 'The children should be fed first, because it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to little dogs.' But she spoke up, 'Ah yes, sir,' she replied, 'but little dogs under the table eat the scraps from the children.'

Reflection

Give me what you will, O Lord. Whatever you give will be enough because it is from you.

I do not seek the gifts or graces others have received from you. I beg no special favors, no great accomplishments, no celebration of my name.

I wanted these when I was young, and I sought them to heal inner wounds of early rejection and judgments that made me cower and feel small and weak.

Now I want to know the grace that fills the heart and heals every inner wound, evaporating all fear. I want you, your loving grace in me.

That’s no scrap, of course, but the true substance of life flowing through the heart so that I feel completely one with you, no separation between my heart the energy of Life and Love.

That’s why I am here once more, like a thousand times before, searching for the just the right words to express what I find within me so I can offer it as prayer to you.

When the right words come, the hidden door of my soul swings open, and you flow in and fill me, and I will feel … and be … fully alive.

This gentile woman--an outsider, considered unclean and unwanted, coming from a despised ethnic group and mothering a defiled daughter--found the words that opened the door of her being.

As she did, the Being of Jesus, the Soul of the Universe, flowed into her and her daughter, living waters of life cooling their fevers and fears and making them alive. The soul of Christ poured into them pushing out all that was not him.

It was just a scrap, of course. They did not yet possess the fullness of all he is that they would know when they entered into the fullness of God’s presence. That day would come for them as it does for all.

They would again feel the rejection of those who despised the color of their skin and the marks of their ethnicity. They would experience the fears and struggles of living like everyone else.

But they had eaten. They’d tasted the scraps of divine life. They found healing, and they knew they had what they needed. It was enough for them.

For us, too.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, September 3, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 7:24-25

He [Jesus] left that place and set out for the territory of Tyre. There he went into a house and did not want anyone to know he was there; but he could not pass unrecognized. At once a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him and came and fell at his feet.

Reflection

Our pains and burning need have two opposite effects. Either they isolate us as we shun human contact, or they move us beyond the narrow circle of self into a wider world of souls where the love that is God can pour from them into us.

Isolation is the soul’s great enemy. In our aloneness, we believe lies and imagine healing is impossible. Only in the appreciative gaze of love do we find ourselves and the healing for which we hunger.

None of us was created to be alone, cut off from others by illness or need, shame or despair, prejudice or angers. The devilish thing (truly evil) is that all these pains and so many others move us to hide and shun the light of human contact.

It often happens at the point of our greatest need. A loved one dies, a relationship injures, illness or depression saps our strength, and we think we are not fit to be out in public. We stop seeing, talking and touching even those we have known for years.

Alone, pain magnifies and isolates. I have seen it a thousand times following a death, a disappointment, a wounding incident.

We desperately need each other, for God intends us to be sacraments of the Love who is God, bearing healing grace and the oil of kindness. It flows in normal human exchange as we flee our aloneness to touch and listen, to speak and laugh, to be blessedly human with each other.

Healing begins as the Love who is God--and our deepest, truest selves--flows in common conversation and daily care.

It was need that moved the woman beyond the prison of her fears to seek healing for her daughter. In isolation, disease and dread of the future were her closest companions. They are soul-killing company, but she fled them for the sake of life.

Just so, the pains that imprison human hearts are either barriers to wholeness or the bridge into the land of grace and healing.

She moved from isolation to the feet of Jesus, to the soul of all healing and grace. No longer was she alone, no longer a prisoner, no longer limited to her own resources. Her pain and need brought her to the place where Love might do its holy work.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, August 22, 2012

Today’s text

John 6:56, 67-69

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in that person.

Then Jesus said to the Twelve, 'What about you, do you want to go away too?' Simon Peter answered, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe; we have come to know that you are the Holy One of God.' and we believe; we have come to know that you are the Holy One of God.'

Reflection

Where do you live? We ask this question when first meeting someone, trying to place them in their state or neighborhood, thinking about how their life is similar or different from our own.

The biblical word is menein, abide. It asks, where do you live? Where does you heart dwell? Where are you at home? Where does your soul rest?

Where does peace appear, bubbling from depths of being even in surprising moments?

Where does the feeling of being wonderfully, beautifully alive, loved and wanted wash through you--even amid your brokenness, despite the pain or challenge of the day?

So many times we dwell in the land of our failures, or we abide and make our home in our anger and frustration over how life has gone for us.

Our minds and hearts travel well-worn roads back to the voices that diminished and defined us as unwanted and unworthy. We make our home in moments we felt judged. We dwell in the land of the lost, despairing beneath the weight of our brokenness, believing we can never be good and whole again.

We make our home in inhospitable lands that diminish our souls and wither the love and grace that is in us.

Jesus comes to us and all who need him bearing a land in which he bids us dwell, a land in which the love that fills him flows from his pores and every word telling us the truth and wonder of who we are.

We … you … are beloved and known, wanted and cherished, amid all your human imperfections and the wounds from the past and present.

“Come, to me,” he says. “Come and abide in me. Dwell in the circle of my nearness. This is your home. So come, receive and eat the truth. Take it into your body. Chew on it until it becomes part of your DNA.

“For what is in me is love without limit, a river of grace that never runs dry. Taste what is in me. Beauty and the joy of life will flow from your soul, and you will know, truly know, the life of eternity, right here and now.’”

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Today’s text

John 6:63

Then Jesus said to the Twelve, 'What about you, do you want to go away too?' Simon Peter answered, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the message of eternal life.'

Reflection

Where do you go when in pain? What do you do when the world turns upside down or the details of the day make you dizzy?

Where is the portal through which you may step from the world of constant change into awareness of the eternal constancy, which gives rest to the soul and assurance that all is and shall be well?

The disciples heard Jesus and had an intuition. They felt his words flowing from a source beyond any they had ever known.

Jesus voice transported them beyond their fears and daily squabbles for bread and ego. They listened … and heard the Soul of the Universe inviting them to enter a world beyond their daily worries.

They were lifted into Love, feeling love and life bubbling up in them as if from a fountain deep within, a Source they didn’t know was there.

“Abide in me,” Jesus said to them. Come, rest in me. Listen to the silence of my voice. Quiet your struggle for a few minutes and just know what is in me.”

In this knowing, what was in him flowed also through them.

Life from an endless source, love that never runs dry pushed and surged from hidden depths to fill their chest and throat, warming them throughout, giving rest and utter assurance to their minds.

Their hearts then knew all that was needed to live and laugh that they might also pour themselves out for the sake of the startling love that surged within.

They tasted the life of eternity and knew what God had made them to know.

May you know it, too.

Listen to the voice that says, “Rest, my child. Rest, my friend. The Love I am seeks to fill you from within and touch you from without.”

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Today’s text

John 6:63

‘It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh has nothing to offer. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.’

Reflection

Moments of awareness come when you least expect them, but they come more often when you put yourself on the road they travel. Mine travel in books I read sitting on the back patio. So I sit there on sunny Mondays, basking in gentle suns of late summer.

I listen as voices rise from the pages, awakening an inner voice of love that invites me to sink into my deep inner self. There I find an awareness that this love is in me, waiting always for me to come home and know that this is my true being and my home.

This is who I really am, stripped for the moment of any thoughts of history or accomplishment, failures or frustrations. My being is this love, and for the moment I am one with this awareness; … I know this completely.

I know the Love who loves, and there is no doubt and certainly no fear in me. I am well through and through.

I do not know how or why the words on the page elicited this awareness, however fleeting it may be. Perhaps the writer shared an experience so close to my own that I knew I was not strange or alone. Perhaps her embrace of her life experiences, both jubilant and mundane, spoke a love for life that allowed me to love mine, too.

I simply know there is a spirit of love awakened within that heals and makes whole, stirred perhaps by the action of that same spirit in another human heart and mind.

When Jesus spoke his words flowed from his consciousness of oneness with Love. The Spirit of the All-Loving One filled him, inviting all who heard to know what he knew, to feel what he felt so they might enter the land he inhabited--the land of the knowing oneness with Love that can happen on back patios or wherever Spirit catches up with you.

His words offended many. He told them to eat his flesh, drink his blood, and he wasn’t necessarily talking about taking communion at church. He was inviting them to hear the spirit of his words, the Spirit that filled his conscious awareness, so this awareness might fill them, too.

He seeks to give the life of oneness he lived that we, too, might live.

So we listen to love that is in him, the love that loves his own and this broken world and our broken selves, loving them completely, to the end, leaving nothing out.

And maybe, if you go to places where awareness finds you, you may sink deeply into the Spirit that is in him, knowing what he knows, feeling what he feels that wholeness may come, and you may discover who you really are.

Pr. David L. Miller

Saturday, August 17, 2012

Today’s text

John 6:51


I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.

Reflection

What shall we eat for lunch? Whatever else we eat Jesus invites us to take into our substance the substance of his soul, a soul who is the heart of the Mystery from which all wonders flow.

That Mystery is the One who is Love, the Ultimate Mystery. God is not a being, not a man or woman, old or young, bearded or sitting on a throne. All such language is poetry grasping our imaginations and drawing us beyond what we think or imagine that we might feel gape-jawed wonder at the mystery of our lives.

The Loving Mystery has called us into being and placed us here to know and be the Love God is. We did not choose this. We simply find ourselves here, alive, with the breath of God in our lungs and a niggling awareness that our lives are connected to a great wonder whose name we can’t quite speak or remember.

We feel this in our bones late in the night or when we stand amid the pines or hard woods, captured by the unique beauty of each tree as it grows from hidden depths, reaching skyward for that something without which our hearts remain restless, homeless, lacking peace.

The trees, too, hunger, just like our souls. We strain toward the substance that will fill our hearts so that fear fades and joyful giving and laughter overflows our boundaries, spilling onto the earth around us … and any who might be standing there.

We hunger to be filled with living bread, the substance of life, the hidden manna from the Source of our souls that completes the heart. There is no peace until we are one with the One from who we came, the One we most need, the One who is the love for which the soul hungers.

Jesus speaks simply to our restless hunger. “Come, eat the substance of this my soul, my flesh and blood. Come, eat and know what your heart needs to know. For, my soul is one with the One you need, the One who is all love, the One who is your Source and Home. Come eat my words; consume the bread I give, the wine that is my lifeblood.

“Taste and see the substance of my soul is the Love that draws you. Come and know. I am your peace. Always.”

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, August 17, 2012

Today’s text

Ephesians 5:18

Do not get drunk with wine; this is simply dissipation; be filled with the Spirit.

Reflection

The wind carries the song of the Spirit. Listen. You may hear.

The voice of your Dearest Friend may fill your heart with wordless speech that tells you all you need to know, lifting your soul into the rapture of true knowing: all things were made by Love to awaken the hidden beauty of the Love who abides in our hidden depths.

All creation is God’s holy speech. A red cardinal splits the range of my vision, slicing through the evening breeze that cools the earth. He settles into dense pine boughs, thick with needles, disappears, hidden and safe in his home.

The breeze silently whispers the name of the Holy One, the Creator of soft summer nights, the Source of the cardinal’s gaudy plumes and of the greening meadow, re-awakened to life by late rains that bring resurrection from scorching drought.

What a wonder this earth is. Not a word is spoken, yet everything speaks the wonder the Loving Mystery, the Infinite Source, the One who is Being and gives Being to all that is, and us, out of sheerest generosity.

The Lord is a singer of songs intended to seduce the heart to love the Love who in love breathes life into all that live.

Hearing the divine song, wherever it is sung, awakens love and life, filling even troubled hearts with the Divine Spirit, so that praise and gratitude requires no effort. It is as natural as breathing. We draw in the life that is Life, and we live, as surely resurrected as the green meadow from harsh summer’s burning.

So listen … and look. Life, that One, is there. Always.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Today’s text

Ephesians 5:16-17

Make the best of the present time, for it is a wicked age. This is why you must not be thoughtless but must recognize what is the will of the Lord.

Reflection

You have today. That is all you can be sure of, and you cannot be sure that all of this day will be yours.

There was a time when this thought brought human minds into sharp focus. Not so much anymore.

We live longer; the accidents and diseases, the happenstances that threaten life were more common and not as easy to avoid when I was a boy, to say nothing of earlier ages and centuries when the certainties of life were, well, much less certain.

Today, we readily assume that this day and the shape of our lives is secure, believing we will work and live through the day, rising tomorrow to receive another.

But there is another sense; a deeper awareness of the present moment, for it is all we really have: this moment. Right now
In an instant, the moment is gone, replaced by another as what just happened, what was said and done is carried into the past by an ever-flowing current none of us can stop.

The future moment, the next hour, tomorrow? These we do not yet have. What we have is now, a moment to be received in all its complexity and perplexity, a moment in which we can receive and bless, act and speak or choose silent watching as the better part of wisdom.

So be where you are; occupy the present moment, undistracted and undisturbed by anxieties or anticipations of tomorrow. These divert your eyes from what is before you now, the needs, the faces, the labor, the opportunities to bless and love, to grace and make this moment more alive.

You can grace this moment with the Life who is in you, the life and love that is the Loving Source of every moment.

You have today. Give yourself to it. Surrender your heart to the now. It holds treasures that bless, surprises that grace, pathways to become more human and beautiful than you know.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Today’s text

Ephesians 5:19-20

Sing psalms and hymns and inspired songs among yourselves, singing and chanting to the Lord in your hearts, always and everywhere giving thanks to God who is our Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Reflection

Sing the song of the soul’s delight. Sing the praise of the Unknowable Wonder who is always at hand.

Forget the pettiness with which you pick at all you find wrong with your life and the lives that brush against your own. Turn quickly from the seeming smallness of the present moment that feels insignificant compared with the lives of others or the life you dreamed.

Be here and now in this moment, which is more full of wonder and life, joy and holy purpose than you imagine. Be here to see and sing the glories of the day. Live the life you have been given to live

Enter now this great and beautiful day. You are summoned to a Wednesday, of all things, with eyes wide open and hearts filled with expectation, knowing that every where you look this day you can see and find grace.

You will know the beauty of human souls, the comfort of community and the greening of nature. You will witness with wonder that all things, all hearts and minds--yours, too--are fashioned to grow and thrive, to discover the beauty that is within them.

The beauty and life that lies within seeks hidden pathways from the dark intuitions of potential to the light of day, for the Creative Spirit whose Life fills all things, stirs in you, in all you love and in everything your eyes will see.

So look gently and intently on all that comes. Let thirsty eyes drink in the faces and places, the situations and challenges, the joys and tears, the laughter that sparkles and the fears you’d flee but cannot escape. Welcome the pains of moving from where you are to the unknown of what will yet be.

For the Living One is there amid it all, yes, all. No moment of time is forgotten, no hidden corner of creation is forsaken, no secret of your soul is beyond reach.

Know this, and keep your eyes open. The love that is present in every moment will find you--bursting also from hidden springs deep in our hearts. And you will sing the song of the soul’s delight.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Today’s text

Ephesians 5:15-16

That is why I, having once heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus, and your love for all God's holy people, have never failed to thank God for you and to remember you in my prayers.

Reflection

Too often, prayer for all those I serve is missing. As a result, I miss the fullness of gratitude and joy that is God’s hunger for every heart.

Lacking gratitude, I miss the power needed to live with anticipation, descending instead to the land of disappointment and petty aggrievement. Not today.

Today, I begin by lining up the faces that I saw at worship on Sunday. I go through them as best I can, too many to remember, but I remember some.

I think, too, of those whose faces I haven’t seen for a long time, those whom I hunger to have back in the assembly of hope that draws me back each Sunday to hear and claim a word of grace.

And I say two words, which are the only words necessary for prayer, “thank you.”

Thank you for the privilege of doing this work. Thank you for the privilege of bowing at the altar, of steering tennis-shoe clad acolytes through the service and joking with nervous assisting ministers on the leader’s bench. Thank you for the joy of singing.

Thank you for letting me stand at the head of a line of the needy with a loaf of bread in my hands and being able to give as you give, to love as you love, to share as you share, to bless their children, look into their eyes and feel their gratitude for receiving a gift that reawakens their faith that your love has not and will never lose them.

Thank you for each of them--the knowing and the unconscious, those just going through the motions and those who receive the bread and a hearty ‘amen,’ or a relieved ‘thanks be to God.’

Thanks for the ones that I don’t think like me much and those who hang on every word I speak. Thank you for the petty and the generous, the half-committed and those who can’t wait to get to their cars and flee the lot.

Thank you for each life, the breath they breathe and for their presence in my life. Thank you for what they might become if they truly knew you. Thank you for the love I know from and in them, the love I see in them for their children, their families and friends. Thanks for letting me see and hear the places where that love spills beyond their narrow circle of care to others. Thank you for their decency and the desire you have put in them to be the gracious souls you would have become.

Thank you for the sins and failures and wounds that awaken them to the love you are and always will be. Thank you for all of them, whether they be pleasant or a great challenge for me to like and love them.

Thank you for each of them and the community I am privileged to lead and serve.

My morning prayer of thanks now given I go to my day, not defeated or afraid, not dreading routine duties that pile up.

I come with joy and gratitude, knowing I am part of something wondrous and beautiful, a beauty I just may see once more so long as prayer keeps my eyes open to what is before me on every hand.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, August 9, 2012

Today’s text

John 6:48-51

'I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate manna in the desert and they are dead; but this is the bread which comes down from heaven, so that a person may eat it and not die. I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.'

Reflection

What feeds a human soul so that the heart remain full and strong, the soul quiet and at peace?

This is no idle question amid the changes and chances of life that come as quickly as a telephone ring, bearing news you do not want.

There is no need to list the losses and challenges that come to even the most sheltered lives. Human life is what it is … unpredictable, gloriously filled with joy one moment and pitted with angst or sorrow the next.

We may wish for a stable soul, calm amid the storms, quiet in the face of painful loss, but few enjoy such strength and stability.

Some may reach for this state through denial of what is happening within them or by trying not to care, pretending the ship of their soul doesn’t rock much on the waves of living.

But cares will and do come, the soul shakes, the heart quakes and we hunger for strength, an awareness that allows a peaceful heart amid an unpeaceful world.

Jesus asks us what we are eating: Are we eating him? Are we consuming what is in him that we know what he knows and our hearts dwell in the land where he dwells?

“Come and eat,” he bids. “Come and know. Come and lay down at the side of my great soul that your soul may enter the place of peace and eat the bread of knowledge, taking in the life that is in me.”

There is no other way to become a great soul, who remains full and quiet, at peace and full amid jangling nerves and unpleasant news, except by eating, again and again, the revelation Jesus bears.

He bears the Life of the One who is Life, the love of the One who is Love. In nearness to him, we eat the bread of his all-encompassing heart and know ourselves encompassed and filled with the life of eternity even now, amid the noise and news of living these days.

“All is well,” great souls have said in every age. They were not naïve or stupid. They had just eaten more than we have.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Today’s text

Ephesians 4:31-5:2

Any bitterness or bad temper or anger or shouting or abuse must be far removed from you -- as must every kind of malice. Be generous to one another, sympathetic, forgiving each other as readily as God forgave you in Christ. As God's dear children, then, take him as your pattern, and follow Christ by loving as he loved you, giving himself up for us as an offering and a sweet-smelling sacrifice to God.

Reflection

So many walls divide the human family. Walls of language, culture and history divide nations. Old wounds and fears, unforgiven injuries and injustices, disrespect and insensitivities divide former friends and families, neighbors and communities.

Nations and peoples harbor anger and mistrust, arming themselves and striking when they fear the other might strike first.

We nurture grudges, repeating old stories about those who hurt or insulted us, hardening our attitudes and maintaining a safe distance between our hearts and their actions. It’s the human condition.

Amid such division the Spirit calls us to imitate the inimitable, to be as God, who tears down the walls that separate soul from soul, so the holy dream of God might come true--and all might be one in a great ocean of Love.

The first wall that must come down is that which distances our hearts from the divine heart, the undivided heart of God.

It’s hard to believe and trust that heart because we know our hearts, which are full of divisions and contradictions. The idea and experience of a heart that wills only one thing--complete and total love for all--is foreign to us, impossible to fathom.

We look at God as we look at others, wondering if we can trust that this heart. Does the heart of God seek to bless me at all times and in all things? What about all the crushing hardships, injustices and searing circumstances that cut to the heart and wear us down?

Even there? Even then?

Even there, even then: The great and undivided Heart who is God seeks our hearts, tearing down walls of fear, mistrust and doubt so that our hearts might be healed in the knowledge that there is One, … there is always One who loves and is love for us.

Only in the destruction of the walls of distrust that divide us from the fullness of the One who is full of love can our hearts imitate the inimitable, following the pattern of God who tears down walls that division may give way to unity and peace.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Today’s text

Ephesians 4:31-32

Any bitterness or bad temper or anger or shouting or abuse must be far removed from you -- as must every kind of malice. Be generous to one another, sympathetic, forgiving each other as readily as God forgave you in Christ.

Reflection

Last night’s news featured a photo of a former army officer standing in front of a Nazi flag bearing the infamous swastika, the world’s most notorious symbol of hate. More photos followed accompanied by angry music with vile lyrics.

How? I wondered. How can anyone identify with such filth, such death? How can a soul become so twisted that they willingly drink this poison--and be moved to kill, as this young man did, riddling a Sikh temple with bullets?

Perhaps it is fear of the outsider, fear of those who are different that motivates such hate. We seek to destroy that which we fear.

The invitation of God’s grace is to live beyond fear, knowing God is good and gracious, trusting that neither life nor death nor anything else can separate us from an immeasurable love that holds us in every moment.

There is no fear in God, who is full of loving graciousness even to the enemies of God, as Jesus revealed in him life and ministry.

There are moments when this love also fills us until we overflow with peace and kindness, wanting nothing other than to appreciate and bless those around us, gently handling every moment and every heart.

In these moments, we truly know who God is; we know how we are loved and held, and we know how we are to live--beyond fear and in love, always in love, generous as God is generous, forgiving as we are forgiven

Only in knowing the Love who holds us can we live the love that lifts us above our fears of the other, of those we do not agree with or understand.

When we see such hate as sometimes fills our TV screens we reach again for that Love who is always reaching for us that we might be the antidote to the hate that rips human souls and societies. This is Christ’s call to us.

And know: God uses everything, wasting nothing, not even swastikas.

I was blessed watching the news. The hate-filled images moved my heart to embrace more deeply the gentleness of the Spirit within my own heart, grown there through years of praying and hearing the way of Jesus, the way of grace that makes us human.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Today’s text


Ephesians 4:1-3

I, the prisoner in the Lord, urge you therefore to lead a life worthy of the vocation to which you were called. With all humility and gentleness, and with patience, support each other in love. Take every care to preserve the unity of the Spirit by the peace that binds you together.

Reflection

Unity of Spirit is not toleration, not mere acceptance or the absence of mistrust and conflict. It is the loving awareness that swells when human hearts experience common faith, hope and endeavor.

A song at worship can do this, sweeping souls into a single hope, lifting them into awareness of the great love who holds them.

Common work or sorrow also brings unity. Times of great loss or destruction breaks open our individual cocoons and joins us in common efforts to care for each other or rebuild broken lives and homes.

Christians … others, too, for that matter … band together to send crews to towns ravaged by disasters. We say we do it to live the love of Christ, and that is true. The Spirit within moves us beyond ourselves.

But we do it not only to share the love of Christ but to know Christ’s love, to be swept up in a love that binds us to each other and to the One who is the Fountain of that love.

Amid the common labor--or in sharing the sorrow of one who has suffered great personal loss--the gulf between our souls disappears. Our aloneness in the world evaporates. We feel connected at the heart, and God’s hope and plan for the world becomes real.

Our completion, the Spirit’s fulfillment and salvation of our lives is not an individual reality but a communal one. We are not saved by ourselves, all alone, but as we are gathered in an ocean of love that holds us all, and all of together, knowing one love.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Today’s text




Ephesians 4:1-3


I, the prisoner in the Lord, urge you therefore to lead a life worthy of the vocation to which you were called. With all humility and gentleness, and with patience, support each other in love. Take every care to preserve the unity of the Spirit by the peace that binds you together.


Reflection


There is a peace that binds us together and the name of that peace is Jesus.


In recent weeks, I sometimes have taken to repeating a simple phrase as a mantra. I say it under my breath or barely aloud: Jesus is our peace.


Sometimes, such as when I feel anxious, I speak it as a petition: Jesus be our peace.


It is not easy to say what this means to me, but I can share what it does. The phrase is a portal, a doorway into a fresh and immense reality.


I enter a space big as the universe or at least as large as the universe within the mystery of my own soul. The noisy chatter of my anxieties fall quiet, and I know the love that is in Jesus.


It is as if I enter the reality that he is, the world that is in him. In that world, the love of God is as embracing and pervasive as the sky, and I know beyond any doubt that there is nothing to fear.


I wish I could say there were particular images or words associated with this awareness, but right now I can name none. There is nothing I see that I can describe. I know only that I enter this immense space where I know union with the mystery of all that was in Jesus, loving unity.


I am in him, in the unity he shares with that Loving Mystery he called Father, who is a living fountain of love and life in such abundance that worry about … anything … disappears.


The world lights up as place of wonder where joy and peace of heart are not only possible but plentiful, even amid the challenges of the day. A desire emerges to live in peace with every living thing, every human soul and all creation.


The reality into which I enter is not an occasional reality but always there, waiting for my awareness to open the door, the awareness that comes in simplest prayer: Jesus is our peace.


Knowing this peace, seeking unity in the Spirit is not a chore but an invitation to live in the reality that Jesus is instead of the much more fearful world we create in our anxious imaginations.


Pr. David L. Miller