Friday, July 3, 2015

Matthew 6:26-29

Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.

In the moment

Here and now

is the secret, this …

moment, this tree,

this squirrel, this

diamond blue sky,

this cardinal, brilliant

and red calling his

singular cry over

this patio here and now.

Eternal moments,

each … a wonder

never to come again

quite the same.

Each … followed

by another equally

unique, precious.

unrepeatable.

Each … to be received

with gratitude with

sure and certain hope

that fullness of heart

for which we long is

here and now, found

in savoring what is,

releasing what may be

lest the grace of this day,

of what is, be lost

in longing or fear

of what is not come.

And what is ... in each

moment is the place,

the only place, our hearts

find life, the filling

of body and soul,

the upsurge of air

and energy, wind

of life lifting us into

the ecstasy of knowing

truly the joy which is

and can be ours … only

in the moment, savoring

what is that the here

and now may fill us once

more with the love

that alone fills the empty

spaces with startled

gratitude for life and love

beyond expectation,

received fresh and new

as each dawn, a day

clothed in the Love

who is the hope of each

here and now.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, June 27, 2015

Galatians 2:20

It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

The song of peace

It happened again on Sunday. I realized again why I am Christian, why I am a pastor and how inadequate my words have been through decades of writing as I try to describe the awareness of being one with God, inside God as God is inside you, with nary a bit of separation between.

The tradition calls it union or unitive experience. For many it happens in prayer or being in the wonder of nature, but on Sunday song carried us beyond ordinary consciousness into knowledge of that which is true every moment.

The music carried us away … into the place we always are, in God, with the wonder of God somehow simultaneously in us.

“Peace be yours” we sang over and over in response to the cantor’s song as she named the nations of the earth. Peace be yours. Peace be yours.

It was our prayer for a broken and fragmented world, for our divided nation and the distress and wounds of our own hearts. Peace be yours.

Somewhere in the repetition I became aware that I did not … we did not … stand outside of God, at some distance imploring God to give us the peace we cannot give ourselves and our world.

The song, the chant carried me into awareness that God was praying in us and through us. My voice and the Voice of Love were one and the same voice; God was praying in our prayer, the prayer of the song.

But it had ceased to be a prayer at all. It had become benediction, blessing. The Holy One was within us, within our souls and our assembly, singing through us, pouring out the blessing for which our song pleaded. Peace be yours.

And it was … and is ours. The Loving Mystery was pouring out the substance of the divine heart on us and through us, peace be yours, peace be yours, and all we needed to do was to let the steady flow carry us along into the awareness that God and we are not two but one.

We were in God, in the flow of peace that springs from the Mystery of the Love God is. The wonder of this One is in us, singing, blessing, giving us the desire of our hearts. We had become God’s song of peace, discovering our true identity, the who we most truly are.

We are the song of peace, the voice of the Voice who sang through us on a Sunday morning. We are one with the One, and for a few holy minutes we knew it beyond any doubt.

And now we pray the song of God’s heart may sing through us on Mondays, too.

Peace be yours.

Pr. David L. Miller

Saturday, June 13, 2015

Psalm 13

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
   How long will you hide your face from me? 
How long must I bear pain in my soul,
   and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? 
Consider and answer me, O Lord my God!
   Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death, 
and my enemy will say, ‘I have prevailed’;
   my foes will rejoice because I am shaken. 
But I trusted in your steadfast love;
   my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. 
I will sing to the Lord,
   because he has dealt bountifully with me.

For J

Abandoned and alone, the voice said, forgotten and cut off from the face of God. Days of sunshine had passed, leaving only the shadow of not knowing what hope can be had from an uncertain future.

So many walk this road. And the voice little knew in what blessed company he walks, for he is not and never alone. He walks with all who are stripped of the false certainties once imagined to be true.

He walks with those who know what life is, a path where hard-won wisdom leads either to despair or to the Love which is the foundation of all real hope.

He walks with those whose hearts are being made loving and beautiful by what they suffer.

He walks with those whose words ring true because they have endured the valley and know what remains when illusion is stripped away.

What remains is you, Holy One, just you, and that’s enough. You are enough for us.

When suffering comes, when the illusion that we are in control disappears, what remains is the Love that leaks through the crust of this earth— through chemotherapy and radiation, through CT scans and ultrasounds, through to-the-bone weariness and doctors frowns.

What remains is the Love who streams through every love and beauty, through the light of every dawn, through the rain that waters the earth, through the sweetness of sound and melody that cut through our darkness to the sensitive soul assuring us again that Love is, Love is, Love is.

You are the Love who remains, Holy One, the Love on which we lay on days when we cannot stand. You are the Love to whom we call when forgotten and alone, far from healing light, we cry to feel the light of your face shining on us nevertheless.

We cry out, our voice one with the sorrow of our brother, Jesus. Forgotten and alone, cast out and rejected he wanted only one thing—You. He longed for the light of the Love that remains when every illusion shatters.

You are the healing for which the soul longs, the rock solid beneath our feet when life and disease shake our foundations. The light of your love is the hope cancer and uncertainty cannot kill, the light that pierces the darkness of the valley that must be walked.

You are Love, and You are here … even now … always. Nothing can change that. So pour through the dark of difficult days. Give light to our eyes that our hearts may see and sing your beauty.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Psalm 92:4

For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work;
   at the works of your hands I sing for joy.

Healing

Grant me grace to do the work of your hands with my hands, with my heart and voice. There are faces who hunger for blessing, too long neglected, their stories pushed aside by the demands of the urgent and the fearful mind’s avoidance of hard places.

Now, I hunger to let them know they are not lost to your people and never to you Holy One. What most gets in my way is guilt for having forgotten, for letting the clamor of living get in the way of loving hearts so wounded they could not cry for help.

But the anxiety of guilt is one more selfish distraction. It turns the mind back on itself, to its craving for comfort, making its own need central.

What is needed is not comfort but healing. The only comfort to be had, the only real comfort there is comes in the unity of love and reconciliation that heals the wounds of the forgotten, calms the fears of the threatened and washes away guilt in the flood of grace that flows from your heart.

It flows through us, Blessed One, when we open to each other the heart of our need and let the grace in us flow. This is your work, the work that gladdens the heart and lifts our souls to songs of joy.

Lift us today, Holy One, that we may sing the song that only love knows.

Pr. David L. Miller

June 8, 2015

Psalm 92:1-4

It is good to give thanks to the Lord,
   to sing praises to your name, O Most High; 
to declare your steadfast love in the morning,
   and your faithfulness by night, 
to the music of the lute and the harp,
   to the melody of the lyre. 
For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work;
   at the works of your hands I sing for joy.

Found again

Gratitude and hope bring me to these keys again, great hope for what might roll from my fingers before my mind knows what is happening and stops me from writing what I am … and discovering what is inside this mystery who wears my face.

I am grateful, Holy One, for whatever I am … I am part of you, not separate but connected, an expression of the life you are. The love and gratitude I know this day bring happy tears and praises you for every joy and pain and experience that brought me to where I am … with hope for who I will be and all that is to come.

Life knows no diminishment as my hair grows whiter (if that is possible). More than ever, I relish the reality of being, just being alive and knowing the wonder of sky and light, cloud and shadow, savoring the grace of love and the hugs and laughter of children in all their spontaneous freedom, which welcomes the immediacy of joy that bubbles beneath the surface of my soul.

Thank you for them … and for all who know how to play, inviting the child within to speak and sing and release the self I most am, so that I might see and know who I have been all along, finally becoming what you always knew me to be.

Thank you for them. They sing the song of your grace to my heart more clearly than any book or teaching ever could.

It is days like this, moments like these when I know this life is not about figuring things out, reducing the world, emotions, actions, politics, the state of the world (blah, blah, blah) into tidy explanations and equations in some vain attempt to find meaning … and You … in the midst of all the noise.

I don’t need to find anything … because you continue to find me even as I stumble across these keys savoring moments when life, no Life, finds and surprises me and makes me glad.

Thank you.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Mark 2:23-28

One Sabbath [Jesus] was going through the cornfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?’And he said to them, ‘Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.’ Then he said to them, ‘The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.’

Under a Sabbath sun

I love the freedom in Jesus and the freedom to which he invites me. He walks through the fields, picking grain, knowing all the earth is gift, a pleasure of God, flowing from the fullness of the Maker’s joy.

The grain plucked from ripe stems are for him, for his friends, for all the people of earth, to be received with thanks and shared in community with others.

Communion happens as they walk under a Sabbath sun receiving the goodness of creation, communion with God’s giving heart and with each other. They taste the joy of God, the love that overflows the divine heart and are joined in a common humanity, needing and receiving together the life God alone can give.

Seeing the scene, I want to walk with Jesus through those fields, picking that grain, enjoying communion with him under the Sabbath sun as clouds play tag across a summer sky. Being with him is freedom and peace.

I am free from rules that tell me what I am to do and how I should live. I am released from anxieties about success and failure, from judgments of who I am or what I do.

I know … all that matters is being with Jesus, receiving and sharing the goodness of what is, the wonder of what God gives, the love that can be found everywhere and in all things, the love that fills the heart with a great, wordless ‘thank you’ for life and love, truest worship of God.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, June 1, 2015

Mark 2:23-28

One Sabbath [Jesus] was going through the cornfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?’And he said to them, ‘Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.’ Then he said to them, ‘The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.’

Splendor in the grass

The highlight of my week often comes as I distribute communion. I get lost in the repetitive motion of breaking off a piece of bread and putting it in the hands of each person—or stooping to bless small children who do not yet commune.

The simple act carries me into awareness that life is a sharing of blessing, an extension of grace. God is not complicated or far but as simple as placing a piece of bread in human hands and just as close.

The mystery of our lives finds an answer in the gentle rhythm of breaking and giving, blessing each person who comes along. Nothing all that complicated about it.

There is joy in this, real as the joy I feel and see as I meet each person in the communion line. Eyes meet, bread is placed in open hands and we are lifted into ecstatic awareness of the blessing of life, the nearness of God and the simple goodness of sharing an intimate moment that touches and fills the heart’s reservoir.

Same, too, I suspect as Jesus walked with friends through those grains fields, picking the heads of grain. They knew the earth as a blessing, the sun as grace and each other’s company as blessed communion in the gift of being human … together.

Perhaps when they got tired they laid down in the grass at the field’s edge and basked in the goodness of being alive and savoring each moment for the grace it is.

Human souls are made for this. We need this splendor in the grass to be reminded of the gift life is, knowing, too, the heart of the Giver, losing ourselves in the goodness of breaking open  and sharing each day as it comes.

Jesus invites us to walk with him into this world of grace and pluck the grain that fills your emptiness.

Pr. David L. Miller

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