Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Isaiah 6:1-3

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said:
‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.’ 

Highway 61

It was Friday when the earth spoke. I was traveling along Minnesota 61, a stretch of asphalt along the west side of the Mississippi River as it lumbers southward.

The water is wide as you make your way north toward Lake Pepin, a length of river where the waters stretch a couple of miles across and more than 150 feet deep. The hills form a deep gorge, framing the river valley, steep and covered with trees, forest green, alight in the fullness of spring on this May day.

The cliffs bend and fold themselves along the valley, falling and rising, sunlight casting deep shadows in the folds and glistening green on the heights.

Everything you see is alive and speaks, each tree, each leaf, the contour of the hills, the glint of sun on blue waters, birds circling above an unhurried current while others rest in its face silently communing with fisherman alone in their boats.

There are no individual voices out here, no solos. All I see speaks as a whole, with one voice, and I hear it.

“I am. I am life. I am the life-force in all you see. I am the life you feel within. All you see is in me, and I am in it as I am in you.”

And I know: I am surrounded by God, inside the Loving Mystery, knowing, too, all that is exists in God who encompasses all that is. I am inside of God, given and sharing the life God is, as is all I see and feel along the highway.

You, O Mystery, are so near and yet so far beyond my understanding. For you are great, holding all that is, and yet so small that all that is holds you. Your transcendence is your immanence, and your immanence your transcendence. My mind does not have words for what my heart knows, and I know I never will.

I love you with a love beyond any words I shall ever have, a love I know is not my own but the Love you are and that you have for me and all I see.

I have no words of my own, so I speak these ancient words from Isaiah. The 2600 years between us evaporate like mist on the river in the morning sun. We are brothers. His experience and mine are one and the same, and his words become mine, “Holy, holy, holy Lord. The whole earth is full of your glory.”

You are the power of life that gives being to all life. The life you are sings and shouts and whispers, echoing through this ancient valley, over the waters and among the extravagant green of forests where sun and shadow play to delight my eyes.

“Holy, holy, holy Lord, Heaven and earth are full of your glory.” You echo my chant speaking through all that surrounds me, “I am. I am. I am. I am the Power of Being in you and in all.

“I am the Love who speaks in earth and sea, the Love who speaks in your brother Jesus, who breathes in in the Spirit of Love wherever and how ever love is known.”

Driving along, road signs direct one toward country churches, tucked among the folds of the hills. Each sign awakens thanks for souls who know it is only right to build places of prayer in this valley, sanctuaries where joy and love unite to praise you for May mornings that speak your name.

But then no sanctuaries are needed, for the earth and all creation are your sanctuary, and not just on Fridays.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, May 18, 2015

John 3:8

The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

Spirit born

Spirit blest,

You never rest

‘till billions feel

your life in all

the great and small,

high limbs above,

the cardinal call

and fall of rain,

all echoes your name.

Is there a place

where you are not?

I know of none,

yet there are some

of greater grace

their eyes alight

their face more bright

their beauty flows

awakening soul

‘till finally I see

this Love …

who knows me.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Colossians 3:14

Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

Folded together

I have a favorite image of Ethan, my youngest grandson. He is seven, getting bigger. But still not too big to curl up to his mother, my daughter, and fold himself into her side. He will read there or play a game. 

Folded into each other they are like one person, an exquisite unity of love and comfort, together.

Sometimes Ethan does the same thing with his big brother Ben, and he almost always takes Ben’s hand as they walk down the street. Brothers as one.

It touches me, Jesus, not so much because it is sweet, but because I see in them the union of love that you intend for all things. They are a picture of mutual affection, joined in love, a snap shot of final fulfillment, the loving communion in you into which you draw all that is and all we are.

They show me the life I am to live, the love I am to love… starting with you. It is the only place this life can start for you are the Love that bids me to come and fold myself into your side.

“Come find yourself in the Love I Am,” you say. “Only then will you know the peace and joy I hunger to give you. Only then will you be clothed in the love that holds my people together as one; only then will you know the loving communion that will hold everything, everyone … everywhere in a great sea of grace.

“Only then will you truly know me.”

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, May 11, 2015

Colossians 3:13

Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

No counting

I don’t think there is arithmetic in the kingdom of heaven. Subtraction maybe, but no addition or division.

You don’t count, Jesus. Oh, I know you told Peter he would deny you three times and after three days you would be raised from dead. And you did tell stories about the shepherd who lost a sheep and left the 99 to find the lost one.

But when it comes to our sins and failures … you don’t count. And you tell us not to count our own … anybody else’s for that matter.

Today’s a new day, you say. Let go of what was … and live, really live, free from the need to keep score.

We love to keep score; baseball, football, basketball, all kinds of games depend on it. We do it with money, success and how well our kids are performing, too. And we like to see that our score is a little better than others. 

Some even keep score religiously, pretending that they—and their church—are better, bigger or “more spiritual."

But you are not the Eternal Bookkeeper keeping track of things in a celestial ledger. You do not count sins or give demerits, and you have no interest in passing out spiritual merit badges.

You didn't show up to take away the sins of the good and agreeable. You take away the sins of the world. They’re gone. Kaput. Forgiven, Forgotten. Every last one of them. The whole kit and caboodle. Hung up on the cross.

Sounds crazy, but that’s the only way your plan works. You are joining everything in One Love, one great communion of grace in which everyone belongs because you love and forgive them all. The only people who risk excluding themselves are those who insist on keeping score.

They just don’t understand your kingdom is a party … not a ball game. And you like writing invitations.

Pr. David L. Miller

Saturday, May 9. 2015

Colossians 3:12

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.

Lilly’s dance

Lilly dances with delight as we sing“Glory to God in the Highest.” She steps into the aisle with a little girl twirl when the choir sings and the congregation lifts praise, “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Her feet are made for joy and her soul for delight.

But greater still is the delight I see and feel as I watch her and coax her to come toward the Lord’s Table where I stand, hoping the congregation will see her and feel what I feel.

Tell me, Jesus, is this what you want me to know and feel, this delight of love, this joy in knowing and praising you?

You want me to feel the love and compassion that fills you, the kindness and humility in which you give yourself to me, the patience and care that flows from the beauty of your heart. You ache for me to know this beauty that I see in this girl, barely three.

Delight fills me as I watch her, and I am clothed with the life you want for me, this joy, this delight from which love and compassion flow as naturally as laughter from the lips of a loved child.

You do not ask anything of me that you do not give.You do not command but invite me to be clothed in the life you are, O Christ, the life you give. For all that you are ... you give to me, to us, and I see what you are in Lilly’s dance.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, May 7, 2015

Colossians 3:11

In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!

One Love

Jennifer and Jennifer recently came to our church. They are married, and they came seeking baptism for their two children.

They had experienced little openness in other congregations. Now, they came seeking a community of grace, a question rising from deep within, Can we find you here, Lord?

We laughed when one of them asked if she should cover her tattoos the day of the service. The serenity prayer are tattooed on her ankle; her infant's feet are inked on her arm.

She didn't want to suffer further rejection or distract attention from the baptism of her precious children.

I doubt the tattoos will trouble anyone, though some may be distressed by their marriage. But what a gift they are, Gracious God. They are a flesh and blood expression of who you are and what you are doing among us and in all creation.

You are the Love who transcends every human boundary. You are the hunger in our hearts to be joined in one love—the Love you are—beyond all that separates.

Lesbian couples and their children … and even those barely civilized Sythians in southern Russia the Colossians wanted no part of—you join us as one that your love may be all in all, a communion of grace.

Make us one, Lord, joined at the heart with your heart, sharing the Love you are.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Colossians 3:9-10

Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.

Rain

I love the rain, especially at night. I lie in bed and hear it steady on the roof. Sometimes there is only a few intermittent drops, and I will it, pray for it to fall in a steady pulse that calms my heart.

I feel peace within as the house covers me and the waters surround me. I am part of this great thing called … life.

I am one with it all--the falling waters, the rhythm of the drops, the earth and trees and all that is washed fresh, drinking in life; the street, too, rinsed clean, the tires I hear on highway 355. All of it and more encompassed in the rain’s embrace.

Sometimes, Holy One, my best times, I feel and know myself within you. I am not separate, but somehow inside of you, being bathed and washed, cleansed and renewed by the Love that is your Life. I am me, distinct but not separate, inside of you, part of you, knowing you not as one who looks on from outside, but who is part of the Love and Life you are.

I am wanted, welcome, belonging, treasured, cared for and immersed like a drop of water in an unimaginable sea. My life is encompassed in Love that surrounds and seeks to freshen and fill me and everything.

This is what it is like to know you, Holy One, and to know myself. For I am not what I do, what I think and what I have accomplished. These are but the clothes in which I hide my nakedness. I am a drop of rain, part of the Love falling to earth to make each day new.  

Pr. David L. Miller

May 2, 2015

February 17

Colossians 1:15-16

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him.

The cosmic dance

Our telescopic eyes look deep into distant time, and we stagger at the color and beauty, the immensity and intricacy of a universe we can barely imagine, if at all. We see nearly to the dawn of time—15 billion years I am told. How can I imagine that?

But that is when all that is exploded into existence from an infinitesimal speck, so dense no light could neither penetrate or escape its gravity. An unimaginable blackness—and from this comes billions of galaxies each with billions of stars that make our sun look like an underachiever. And it continues to expand every second, an expanding cosmos.

And every atom, every drop of water, every galaxy, the dark matter stretching billions of light years between the burning suns bears the mark of Christ, created in love, by love and for love—from the joy of the divine heart who makes worlds and drives us to our knees at the sheer wonder of it all.

And we, too. All of us. All that is bears the mark of its Maker. We are fashioned in and for the Love he is, being drawn into a harmony of Spirit and matter so that everything, everywhere glistens with the glory of his life.

For you, Holy One, draws all that is into a great, cosmic dance, a holy harmony of peace and beauty where all is one.

This universe is one great story, and we are part of that story. The story begins in the impenetrable darkness of the divine will and ends in a great dance of light and color, beauty and love where each things finds its place in the Love he is.

No words can speak this. The silence of awe is the only true worship. 

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, May 1. 2015

Colossians 1:9-10

For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God.

Lost in love

Sun awakens my soul as I drive down the street and know what I need to know. The world is alive, but more wondrously, so am I. More than physical life, something within surges and fills every pore of my being.

It is love, or shall I say Love? For the Love that fills me is you, and for a moment I know you beyond any ideas I ever learned about you. I am in love with everything and everyone I see.

I am one with you, sharing your life, for your life is the Love flowing from your unfathomable heart, flowing now through me.

I know you and what you are doing under sun that warms me this wondrous spring morning. All that is, all I see, every soul I meet this and every day is to be brought in union with the Love you are, joined with you.

Your will is that we be as Christ, a blessed union of created and divine life where your love fills and infuses all, so that it is alive with light and color … and shining like the sun on this crystal day.

This is the deep desire of your heart, your will, and today … my great joy.

Thank you, again, for shining the light of your love and lighting the world for me to see.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Colossians 1:7-8

This you learned from Epaphras, our beloved fellow-servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, and he has made known to us your love in the Spirit.

Madison’s ministry

Madison is my teacher. She is six, and she has a new lesson for me every Sunday. She hunts me down whether I am in the sanctuary, the sacristy or my office, often with several other children in tow.

Brown eyes flashing, she turns her face up to me and wants to be hugged … or picked up. She is getting a bit big for that. But she wants the touch of the love that binds us, the joy we find in knowing that we love each other—and we love each other a lot.

Once in a while, she brings me a gift, but the real gift is the connection we share that teaches me week-by week what this life is about.

Madison is a good teacher, a faithful minister of Christ. After six decades of living, I am beginning to understand. The life to which you call us, Holy One, is about being connected with each other in common hope, love and struggle to live the Love you are, a common life ministering to each other amid the average stuff of daily life.

It is not about me, but about us, joined to each other by the love your Spirit awakens in our souls.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Colossians 1:3-5a

In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. 

One hope

Two words fill the heart. They are absolutely necessary and totally inadequate: Thank you.

Thank you, Holy One, for the hope that fills my life with light and color, beauty and joy. I do not hope for this or that … but for you, to know union, total and complete … with you … who are Love Incomprehensible.

Nothing else will do. Nothing else satisfies the soul. You made us for this, and whether we recognize it or not … our hearts long to see you, to know you, to live beyond the shadows of our earthly vision that we may see you face-to-face.

And we have seen your face in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and have come to believe that the Love in him is you, Holy One, a Love with nether beginning or end.

Having seen and having tasted, having known in our brother, Jesus, we hope for utter union with you who sent him to invite us home into the Love who made us.

This hope, laid up for us in heaven, fills us with love for you and all you have made, for sun and moon, for the souls we meet and the distant stars, knowing all that is comes from the Love you are. 

Knowing, too, you will not rest until all that is shines with the colors of your life, in utter harmony with you and all that is.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Colossians 1:1-2

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, To the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father. 

Ready to go

Every day is a journey, Holy One, a journey of hope. How can it be otherwise? For it is you who send us out.

I remember all those trips, dragging my packed bag through airports to cities and peoples unknown to me, knowing only that was you, through your church, who sent me to go and see.

I went, knowing always I would see you. You would find me in places and faces I had never known or imagined. You taught me to live in expectation for I never knew who, where, how or when you would open my eyes to see and my ears to hear … you.

I knew only that you sent me that the Love you are might be made known to and through me. That’s the way you are. You hunger to be known. You communicate not this or that idea about you … but you, the grace and peace, the fullness of Love you are.

No longer must I hustle through airports. Those days are done, but each day is its own journey. And I still don’t know who or when, how or where I will speak and share the love you are … or receive it from it another soul in an expected moment.

I know only that you are the Mystery of this Love who seeks not merely to communicate … but to commune … with me and every face today I see.

So let the journey begin. Send me to share and receive the wonder of your grace. I carry no bag … only a heart filled with hope.

 You have surprised me many times. Surprise me again, today.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Acts 6:29-31a                                                               

But Peter and the apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior.

A joy beyond

There are truths that must be spoken, joys that must be shared and love that cannot be denied or held inside.

Peter knew. He knew a Life evil cannot kill, a Love death cannot destroy. He knew God keeps the promise of life and always will. And he had to speak. No human command or power could stop him.

That’s what I want for us all, O Lord. I want to know Christ alive and loving, resurrected and real. I want to know you in every love that comes and every day that dawns.

Knowing you fills my heart beyond its capacity to hold it in. Grace and joy, blessing and beauty flow from depths of my being--no, not from but through my heart from the boundless source of grace you are.

And in the speaking and sharing I know a joy beyond any other in life. It is the joy of feeling myself in this boundless flow of a Love that never runs dry.

I am part of this flow that carries me and all who know the Love you are through this life and into the fullness of your eternal embrace.

It is for this that you made us, Holy One, to know this Love filling and spilling from us so that we must speak and share the Love that cannot be denied.

It is the fulfillment of our humanity.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

2 Samuel 6:14-15                                                               

David danced before the Lord with all his might; David was girded with a linen ephod. So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet.

Carried away

The ark, symbol and presence of the Holy One, is carried into the city, but it is David who gets carried away. He dances in the street, his heart bursting with the uncontainable joy of knowing you, O Lord. 

I see him, and I know him. In precious moments, I am him. And every single soul of us is invited to join him in the dance. Sometimes it happens.

I lift my hands high on Easter morning surrounded by children. They lead the congregation calling out, “Jesus is risen.”

“Alleluia,” the assembly erupts in reply, and we are lifted out of our everyday selves into the fullness of the joy we are invited to know—not just on Easter, but every day.

Ecstasy is the word. We are raised out of ourselves, beyond preoccupation with what we know and how we look. Normal worries and cares evaporate in the warmth of communal joy as resurrected Love is known and shared.

Lifted out of ourselves, ironically, we become who we are. You transform us, Holy One, into the people of love and joy you made us to be when you formed us in the image of you who are Love.

And for one blessed moment, we join David in his crazy, holy dance and know what it means to be a human being.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, April 2, 2015

 Revelation 12:1-2

A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth.

Pregnant with life

With each morning a challenge comes. Shall I rise above the lethargy that longs only for my bed, or shall I come here and seek you, Holy One? Shall I descend the stairs once more that my fingers may find the keys and my mind the words that open my heart?

Shall I come to this candle-lit space that I might know you and be raised from sleep once more?

Resurrection is not only an event but a practice to be renewed each day. Our souls are pregnant with life.

The One who is Love waits to be born again in us that we may know the exhilaration of love that is Love passing from the womb of our souls, through our lips and fingertips to speak and touch this world.

We give birth again to you whose birth within brings joy that shines in our eyes and spills from our hearts.  

These seem strange thoughts, but they are true to your people in every age. We, your people, are the woman clothed with the sun, pregnant with you.

Will is required for the new to be born and raise us to life, the will to pray or sing, to listen or see, to serve or to just keep trying to do the good when it is easier to quit. Such is the labor that delivers life.

For me, it requires the will to get out of bed listen again to your word (even strange passages like this one). I listen to you, to life and to my heart, and the birth of Spirit within my spirit comes.

You are born again in me, and I am alive with life that does not die. Resurrection comes once more with joy and hope so much brighter than my candles. 

That’s the way it works. It’s why I come here.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

1 Corinthians 5:7-8

Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch, as you really are unleavened. For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

As you are

Who are we?

We are not a people bound by the past, stuck in old sins and patterns that hold us fast in the mire of soulless living.

Resurrection power lives in our souls. Christ stirs within, raising our hopes and vision, transforming us into more than we ever thought we could be.

We are people of the resurrection, souls in whom the light of day casts out night. The joy of hope drives out despair and the presence of love awakens peace … and the passion to be the love we know.

Christ has broken death’s grip. He lives not far off but within the processes of history, in the fabric of life and in movements of our hearts.

He is the whisper reminding us anew, “You are more than you think. You bear the life who is life, the love who is Love.

“Lift yourself above the passion to pay evil for evil, beyond surrender to petty angers and grudges, above the anxious need to prove you are important. 

“And do not diminish yourself or what you can do. For you are a vessel of my life with the power to bless and lift others into the fullness of who they are as my blessed children.”

“The festival of life has come. All things are new, including you.”

Pr. David L. Miller