Crazy like Jesus

The crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’ (Mark 3:2-21)

From one point of view, not much has changed. The figure of Jesus—his words, his example, the life he lived and into which invites others—presents a choice that is no different now than 20 centuries ago.

On one hand, there were those who clamored near to see what he’d do next. The evidence suggests he did some amazing things. People got healed and released from a variety of maladies, physical and emotional, in his presence. They also heard a message that the poorest, weakest and worst among them were at least as valued, important and loved as celebrities and those who occupy executive suites.

Any real American will tell you this is at least a little crazy.

So it is no surprise that many in his own time thought Jesus engaged in trickery, sorcery, and delusion, suggesting he was off his rocker, perhaps a megalomaniac who was a danger to himself, to society and to anyone who got too close to him.

They were right, of course, not about the megalomania, but certainly about being a danger to himself and others, as history and the experience of many millions well prove.

Consider. He had power. He acted with authority. He spoke as if the life of God worked though him. And he was certain this power was not for personal comfort, protection or glory but for the healing of broken bodies and hearts—even if that should cost him dearly, which it did.

Jesus’ family apparently wanted to save him from this madness by taking him home and ending this silly mission he called the kingdom of God, this community defined by the mutuality of love not the accumulation of power.

Some ... most, I suppose, believe or live like this is just as crazy as when Jesus suggested this is what God always had mind for us.

But what most impresses me, after nearly 70 years of life, is that the people I most admire, the souls who have made the biggest impact on my soul, the faces who bring tears of gratitude to my eyes are exactly those who were crazy like Jesus.

David L. Miller

 

 

 

 

 

Sabbath moment

Then Jesus said to them, ‘The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath. (Mark 2:27)

Sabbath moment

I come here looking for sabbath, and often as not I find it. Or perhaps sabbath finds me once the scene is set.

The scene is simple enough, a desk piled with books partially read, pens and pencils askew in a desk organizer, a lamp, a candle, a computer, steam rising from a coffee cup, a small stereo from which Latin chant praises the God who meets us in common things and familiar places.

Today, sabbath time is interrupted by a familiar voice on the phone, a request, conversation, laughter, the promise to speak again soon.

The sun momentarily pokes through winter’s gray, disappearing again into a January sky.

It matters not, for warmth within offers the only sabbath the heart truly needs. Sabbath is more than rest or even quiet. Sometimes sabbath is as noisy as the laughter that filled the room ... and my heart ... as we ended the call that interrupted my silence.

Sabbath happens when the heart sinks into the well of Love hidden in the depth of one’s soul. Wholly immersed in this mysterious Love who loves us whole, gentle joy fills the heart ... knowing this Love is within us yet infinitely beyond and immeasurably deep.

Words fail, of course. For what words can encompass the Love who encompasses all and extends beyond all that is? This Love is unknowable, yet known; uncontainable, yet dwelling in the hidden depth of our souls into which we sink in sabbath moments.

Every such moment is a gift of love from the Love who invites us to seek sabbath space where our hearts can sink into their depths to receive what Love alone can give.

Love really has only one thing to give, its own dear self. Receiving this gift, we become more ourselves than we usually are.

David L. Miller

Caught in the middle with you

And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins. (Mark 2:22)

Liminal space, it is sometimes called, this time out of time when you are neither where you were nor where you might, could and (one hopes) will be, once body and soul find their way from the no-longer to the not-yet.

Faith is needed, of course. It always is, but perhaps more so amid transition because so little is seen, and the restlessness within is hard to define. Is it hunger for rest in the peace of God where love fills the heart, or is this restiveness the Spirit’s agitation, spurring the heart to new ways of being?

Ancient wisdom suggests it is Spirit’s way of saying, Keep going. Keeping looking. Keep your heart open, and don’t try fit your life into former patterns that once fit like a glove. They no longer do.

The happy implication here is the promise of more. I have more for you, the Spirit says. Don’t imagine I am done with you. Springs of water will bubble up in your life, and I will turn them into the wine of gladness, joy you have not yet tasted.

This is your word to me this day, a word for any, I suppose, who are caught in liminal space, eager to know what will come ... now that what-was is no longer.

You are in this space with me, dearest Love, and you bid me to wait and watch and know ...  all is well and will be, for there is no space where you, my Lord, are not.

And this is enough for me.

David L. Miller

Little things

 Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. (Philippians 4:8)

Who knows when the hidden soul will speak, telling you ... lest you forget ... that the deepest part of you is not under your control? Insignificant moments awaken the heart to immense love and beauty in the world ... and in ourselves.

I pull a light gray t-shirt over my head, fresh from the drawer, clean, still fragrant from the wash, fitting my frame but not tightly. Gratitude fills me whole as it embraces my flesh. Such a little thing, yet it stirs love and gratitude for the grace of being alive, able to feel common cotton running down my chest and across my back.

There is no good reason for such surplus of feeling. But today something within notices ... and blesses me with unexpected joy.

And it is not just that. There are other little things, like the aroma of coffee as I sit in the rocker by the window, morning sun streaming through as I look left at the vase of red carnations on the hearth. Mere buds days ago, now they unfold their promise, each in its own time, delighting my eye with the color of beauty amid winter’s monochrome.

Nearby, a sheaf of dried wheat lies on the hearth. Deep red winterberries left over from Christmas adorn the stalks, each stalk headed with grain, kernels of life—no, Life—gracious bounty springing from the earth. They bear my heart to Nebraska days when I’d stop the car on country roads and survey great fields of grain, waves of life undulating in the wind, thankful for every stalk and every hope-filled heart who planted the seeds, wondering, too, why I should be graced to see such beauty.

Three candles stand guard a-front the hearth, a tall center candle closely flanked by two shorter ones of equal height. Together, they form a tiny cathedral, a trinity, framing a small stone angel. Her eyes cast down in contemplation, she invites the same of any who might sit near and bend low to see the words inscribed on the stone base where she sits, “Find peace.”

There is no need to go looking. It is right here. In little things. That aren’t so little at all.

Listen.

David L. Miller

 

My people

 On entering the house, [the wise me] saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure-chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. (Matthew 2:11)

Perhaps it’s pandemic fatigue, but this detail moves me to tears. I want to be with the wise men. So I kneel and see myself beside them in the eye of my heart. This is my place, and these are my people, souls who kneel before the beauty of God’s loving humility.

The wise men do not speak as I kneel beside them, nor do they speak in the story about their arrival at the place of Jesus’ infancy. Scripture reveals no dialogue between them, Mary and Joseph.

This seems right. Words distance us from mysteries only the heart can know. If you can say it, it is not God, St. Augustine wrote 17 centuries ago, and I have no reason to suggest otherwise.

So I just kneel there, in the presence of Love Incarnate, and let my poor heart sink into the well of knowing that opens within, surrendering all attempts to name what cannot be named in any language, except those of silent love and gratitude.

But words still come, a whispered “thank you.”

It’s funny ... or maybe predictable  ... that I notice others standing around as I kneel before Mary and the child who bears God’s infinite love. I know these people. Their faces are engraved on my heart. They smile and nod as they look at us kneeling there, gestures of blessing and assurance.

It is for this that we taught you, their faces say. It is for this that we loved you. But they do not kneel, for they look on from a higher plane, pleased that seeds they sowed actually took root and grew.

They are my people, too, like the wise men, hearts moved to worship the wonder of Love’s holy presence.

I long to be among such souls, listening, sharing, laughing and struggling together. It is a missing piece of life in these pandemic days. And it has long been a missing piece in the lives of many Christians and spiritual seekers of various types.

We need gracious and welcoming places where it is safe to kneel, at least metaphorically, and share the mysteries we feel ... that we may fall into the Love we most need.

David L. Miller

We’ll see

Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.’ Nathanael said to him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’ (John 1:45-46)

Cold winter wind buffets the west wall as night overtakes the leaden gray of this January day. The house flexes and creaks in the onslaught, irregular bursts of winter wildness sure to surround our sleep before dark gives way to the iron-gray smudge of a new dawn’s frozen light.

Winter has come, but not here where a candle glows at my right elbow and music from a Celtic harp keeps the cold from my heart.

The day has been well-spent. Children called. Books read. Warm soup consumed. Nearly Epiphany, decorations were lovingly stored, well-ordered and safe, ready to be retrieved with delight when Advent rolls around to excite our expectations once more.

Who knows what will be then? More Covid? Greater freedom to go where we want when we want? Will Mom still be with us, then in her 94^th year? Questions abound, all with the same answer, “We’ll see.”

Still, to quote Nathaniel, Can anything good come of this?

It is natural question when you consider the mess of the world, the bitterness of current divisions, a pandemic entering its third year and the unrelenting gale of troubling news that chills the heart if you care enough to let it in.

But I suppose that’s the magic of faith. It gives us just enough patience to wait and see what comes, trusting that whatever comes ... somewhere in the middle of it all ... we’ll see grace of the One we most need.

David L. Miller

 

Where Love dwells

 When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’ They said to him, ‘Rabbi’ (which translated means Teacher), ‘where are you staying?’ He said to them, ‘Come and see.’ (John 1:38-39a)

It’s been an off day, which is to say I am off, not sick but not entirely well either. I have recently had more of these than I have been willing to admit, even to myself, chronic conditions exacerbated by a bit of age. Tomorrow is a new day, and conditions will likely change but today must be embraced for what it might give.

What I most miss on days like this is the desire to do much of anything—and the inability to concentrate on anything except by force of will, and then poorly.

It is easy for me to pray and know you, my God, on days when my step is lighter and my body works as I think it should. But now, not so much. And I wonder about the inexorable reality that days will come when energy fades not for a few hours or days but for good.

Will I be able to know and enjoy you then as deeply as I have been blessed to know you through the years of my seeking? Will I still be able to force myself to these keys to speak my longing and find you in the midst of it?

For my need of you ... and my questions ... will be the same as they have always been. Where does Love dwell? Where can Love be known? Where can you and I dwell together that sweet tears may kiss my eyes at the joy of knowing you?

Perhaps you smile at this, Lord, knowing that I will know you exactly where you have always met and given yourself to me. And this is a very deep irony. For you dwell in my need, beckoning me to come in the honesty of prayer to the very place where Love dwells.

Come and see.

David L. Miller

 

 

That thing with feathers

All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. (John 1:3-5)

Hope is that thing with feathers/that perches in the soul/and sings the tune without words, so begins Emily Dickenson’s poem that comes to mind as the water washes over me in the shower and the mind turns to what 2022 might bring. “I’ve heard it in the chilliest land,” Dickenson concludes, but it never “asked a crumb—of me.”

Hope certainly swoops and sweeps through our souls when we didn’t her coming. But to live in hope asks for at least a few crumbs. Hope just doesn’t spring eternal. It requires care and feeding.

The superficial optimism occasioned by the New Year (I hesitate calling it hope) soon dies in the doldrums of daily routine as we realize the world goes on much as before. The vagaries and frailties that dogged us in the past stubbornly cling to our flesh—leaving us to wonder if we will ever become the people we could be, want to be, and somehow know ourselves to be despite our persistent slips and falls from the self we feel within.

Hope lives in the willingness, decision and determination to see every goodness and beauty, every friendship, love and act of care, no matter how small, mundane or routine, as the presence and action of “the life that [is] the light of all people,” as the “light that shines in the darkness” no matter how bright or bleak our days may be.

Every time someone carries on in the face of difficulty or simply attends to the responsibilities life has given them just because they need to be done ... the light from which all things come shines. And those who have eyes to see can smile in recognition, while feeling “that thing with feathers that perches in the soul” taking flight and singing its winsome song to carry them forward with hopeful step.

An old spiritual practice suggests daily taking stock of the events and moods of the day, noting what stirred life, joy, energy and love for the world, ourselves and others—and conversely, what drained life and joy. The exercise begins with taking account of what moved gratitude during the day.

It’s an exercise in paying attention, seeing the presence of light and giving thanks for it. This is how we keep hope alive.

David L. Miller

 

 

 

 

Love us home

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being (Hebrews 1:1-3a)

It was almost midnight. Dixie’s timers had switched off the lamps an hour before. We climbed the steps from the garage into the living room.

Darkness shrouded everything but the tree in the corner. It’s nothing ostentatious, just a tree with tiny, colored lights reflecting off an angel and a few ornaments we’ve long had, each with a story to tell.

Simple things are the most beautiful and most likely to penetrate the heart. This was no exception. The lights in the darkness told me I was home, not just here in this room but in a Love who speaks wherever Love wants to speak, like in darkened rooms when all you want is your bed and sleep.

Love speaks in a million ways. This great and mysterious Love has found ways to get my attention since I was a boy hating school and playing with my dog.

And now we see what Love has always been whispering to our hearts. For we have seen Jesus, the beauty of grace untold, who wants only to love us home.

David L. Miller

Christmas morning

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. (John 1:9)

Winter light slants through blinds in the loft, finding faces on the tapestry that hangs on the west wall. Joseph and two magi stand there. But the golden beam leaves them in shadow to illumine Mary, the infant Jesus, and a magi kneeling at the manger.

The light lingers on their faces, drawing my eyes and heart into this circle of light where my every longing falls silent as the air around me.

A photo across the way fills the dining room wall. Black and white, a country road, lined by bare trees, stretches into the distance, disappearing into a thin morning fog.

I don’t know where it leads or will end ... for me or anyone else. But sitting in the light of Christmas morning, none of that matters. All that matters is sitting here, enveloped in this circle of light, barely breathing, but knowing the Loving Light of Christ will find me ... and you ... on every road we shall ever walk, bearing us joyfully home at journey’s end.

David L. Miller

This night

Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy (Luke 2:10)

All creation sings with joy this night, for heaven and earth are joined as one, never to part. 

The heart of God is unveiled in a human heart. God’s everlasting desire appears in a Bethlehem stable.

Eternal light overflows heaven and spills into our darkness as God comes to us in the Christ child, who is this world’s light. He comes to embrace the lost, beckoning us to our true home that we may bask in everlasting kindness.

For the One who comes has loved us since before the birth of time, delighting in the moment we first drew breath, seeking us every moment since.

Shepherds were the first to come his side. I like to think they are the first church of those who love him. I imagine myself kneeling there beside them, leaning close to see him. And why not?

For I belong to this long line of anxious, confused, needy, hopeful souls that extends through the centuries to this night when we gaze at his beauty once more, finally home.

David L. Miller

What we see

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all. (Titus 2:11)

I’ve always wanted to celebrate Christmas in a barn amid the mingled scent of Holsteins, manure and hay fragrant with red clover.

I see it. A half dozen cows, ready to be milked, shift their weight in the worn wooden stanchions. A mouse rustles among bales in the mow. A fly-specked light bulb casts a dusty glow, as in the barn I remember from my earliest days. 

In the back, beyond the cows, sits a manger on the old board floor, beside a couple, exhausted, as an infant lies in the straw.

This is what we see when the glory of God takes on mortal flesh. The Loving Mystery, who made the stars, lies there for our adoration. Christ appears, a helpless infant, humbly wrapped by peasant parents in a place far from the halls of power and influence. For those places have no room for him.

But here, in the tender simplicity of a sleeping infant, we meet the Love who hungers to commune, heart-to heart, with us, and transform us into Love’s own image.

David L. Miller

Swept up in joy

 O sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth. (Psalm 96:1)

A cold, winter wind shivers the line of trees outside my window, driving autumn’s last leaves down the street. But safe inside, children sing Christmas into my soul from the stereo, their song a sacrament of the Love no winter can chill.

Gloria in excelsis Deo, their voices dance weightless in the air, echoing the angels’ song, Glory to God in the highest. And though I will never be able to create such exquisite beauty, my earth-bound heart takes flight and joins the song of creation, praising the Love who comes to our lowest places, wraps us in a mantle of mercy and carries us home.

For Christ descends into the pains and losses that still our gladness to lift us from desolation into the delight of Love’s holy presence.

The Holy One created us to know the joy that wafts around, above and within me as children’s voices sing the truth we most need. Love comes. Love comes to sweep our hearts into joy, no matter how cold the winds blow.

David L. Miller

The hope of our longing

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 1:7b)

The sights and sounds of this blessed season stir a primal longing for grace and peace within us. Try as it might, the world’s doubt and cynicism cannot kill the hope of our longing.

We hunger for grace, for an impossible and improbable love freely given, poured out, charming our hearts, igniting joy.

And grace comes. It comes in sunlight piercing the gloom of a winter day, playing across my desk, dispersing the clouds that shadow the heart. It awakens tears as I hug my grandsons, startled by the awareness that the love I feel is God’s love flowing through me, holding us fast, pulling us close so that we are one with this great and improbable Love.

This is the hope of our longing and the illumination of our understanding. For such moments of oneness reveal the mystery of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the unity of transcendent, everlasting love and mortal life, whose grace draws us into the heart of God and satisfies our longing.

David L. Miller

What Love does

‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel’, which means, ‘God is with us.’ (Matthew 1:23)

I sat in the courtroom behind my friend, accused of a crime he did not commit. We spoke each time the judge called a recess, and each time he thanked me for being there, with him, until one time when I finally knew exactly what to say.

“I am not here because you are in trouble,” I said. “I am here because I love you, and I carry the love of a whole community that loves you. I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”

Neither would the God who comes to us in our Lord Jesus Christ.

There’s division of opinion in the history of Christian thought. Some say God needed to become flesh, Emmanuel, because of our sin, our death and sorrow.

The other opinion holds that the Incarnation was God’s plan before the creation of the universe. In other words, Christ was always going to come from eternity into time even if there had been no sin, no death, no broken lives and wounded hearts to heal.

Christ comes because God longs to be with the beloved.

Love wouldn't have it any other way.

David L. Miller

Lost & found

What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went stray? (Matthew 18:12)

It was the day my son was to audition at the Eastman School of Music. We stopped at a shopping mall to pick up something and kill a bit of time until the appointed hour.

At one point, Aaron went one direction; I went another, and somehow ... over 45 minutes or so ... I lost track of him. I walked the mall once, twice, three time or more with a growing sense of panic that something had happened to him in this place and city unknown to us, just as he was to embark on an adventure of great beauty and meaning for which I had prayed since the earliest days of his life.

Nothing unusual about this. I was just being a father, and my anxious emotions and fearful thoughts were exactly those of mothers and fathers since the dawn of time.

In such moments, the heart learns just how greatly it is possible to love. Gripped by a fear only love can create, we become what are, who we are, a little bit more than we usually are.

For each us, from the greatest to the least, the best to the worst, is an image of the Love in whose likeness we are fashioned, the Love who searches for the beloved.

And if we lose track of that, which we do all-too-often, this blessed season bears us into the mystery of God in whose image we are made. For in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Divine Majesty puts on flesh and reveals the Love who seeks us in all the places and all the ways we get lost, lest we forget exactly how precious we are.

David L. Miller  

 

 

An invocation of peace

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. (John 1:9)

Prayer has no words today, but words have been my life so I must try to name what can’t be named, knowing only that I will fail and that failure at this is better than every success I have ever known.

For today I do not pray; I am prayed, a participant in a prayer that has neither beginning nor end. When it happens all one can do is to consent or refuse. And refusal is madness.

So I sit, speechless, as winter light slants through blinds in the loft, oblique rays finding faces on the tapestry that hangs on the west wall. Joseph and the magi stand there, but the golden beams pass over and leave them in shadow to illumine Mary, the child and one magi kneeling at the manger, as speechless as I.

Time stands still as the light lingers on their faces, embracing and holding them as one with the child, drawing eyes and heart into this circle of light where every longing falls silent as the air around them.

A photo across the way fills the dining room wall. Black and white, a gravel road stretches into the distance, lined by dark trees, leaves of summer leaves long gone. Disappearing into a thin morning fog, who knows where the road goes ... or ends? Perhaps a cottage where warmth and light welcome wandering souls home, where we finally see each other as we are, beloved beyond measure, though we knew it not.

And this is my life, our life, shrouded in unknowing, yet illumined by the mystery of the light that shines from this child, warming everyone who cares enough to come close and kneel there, taken in by Mary‘s wonder, enveloped in the light from that child that shines through the centuries to this day, this morning, this moment, filling the silence ... and me.

Silently, it speaks the knowledge of what cannot be known, the mystery of Loving Light that streams from eternity into time, sweeping our uncomprehending willingness into this prayer of blessed communion with the Love for which we have always longed.

And on the white mantle beside me, one word, spelled out in wooden letters, Peace.

What more is there to say?

David L. Miller

 

 

 

 

Among the trees

 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? (Psalm 8:3-4)

‘Tis a gift to see. Walking west, November nearly gone, daylight fading, a valance of luminous orange clouds frame the horizon, shouting one last “alleluia” for the gift of light.

Extraordinary. Except it isn’t. Heaven’s display is common for any with a mind to stop and look, even here in this suburban woods as radiance pales to pink, filtered among trees, the fruit of their boughs, brown and dry, rustling at my feet as I stop and listen to the silence, grateful for eyes to see and a heart that knows.

Reach for the phone to picture it? No. Let it go. Just be here. Only the heart has a lens large enough to capture this day’s final grace with gratitude for the gift of seeing more than autumn’s end.

For both gift and Giver offer themselves in this moment.

The mystery of life is here—first, that anything at all should exist and second, that I should not only exist but be allowed, privileged to see, to feel, to know my little life caught up in a mystery as grand as the universe itself. Why? How? And what are these tears that sing a song of praise for which I have no words?

Perhaps it because here, standing still here among the trees, I know: There is Love within all this wonder and in the wonder of every love I have ever known.

And this Love wants me. Yes, wants me. And wants me to know what I know here, among the trees.

David L. Miller

 

No sweeter word

Peace, peace, to the far and the near, says the Lord; and I will heal them. (Isaiah 57:19)

There is no sweeter word in our language than peace, and no experience that seems more elusive. Efforts to bring peace to our hearts fail because peace is not ours to give.

Peace is the gift of being enveloped in the light of Eternal Love, which is to say the Love God is.

Peace, Peace, to those far and near, Isaiah proclaimed to those who dwelt in desolation. Their spirits fainting, God seemed to have turned away from them. 

We know the feeling. The light of love fades, hope flees and our barren hearts wander in halls of sadness, lost and alone.

But God who dwells in realms unreachable is also near, ready to appear as we pray our aching hearts and discover God’s great love amid our humble tears.

Feeling again the warmth of the divine heart, we know ... God’s deepest desire is to speak peace to the needy and broken places within us.

So say it now, Peace.

Peace ... to every far part of your heart, every corner embraced in loving light.

David L. Miller

 

Within the gaze

Now [Jesus] was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, ‘Woman, you are set free from your ailment.’  (Luke 13:10-12)

We see ourselves in Jesus’ eyes as he watches the bent woman shuffling across the cobblestones.

She says nothing but longs for a life she cannot have. I suspect that is why she came to the synagogue the day Jesus was there, hoping for healing and release.

Still, she could not have known what was in Jesus’ eyes. She could not have known he would see and touch her with a healing hand, which irritated the synagogue leader who imagined good order is more important than divine compassion.

For that is what is in Jesus’ eyes, for each of us.

We live encompassed within the compassionate gaze of an Everlasting Love, who reaches out to enfold us in Love’s healing presence.

Not everything gets healed in this life. We all remain more than a little stooped and bent. Tragedy and sorrow persist, and even the touch of divine love leaves us hungry for more.

But take a moment. Imagine his eyes ... on you. Now, say his name, Jesus. Healing starts here.

David L. Miller