Reflection
Happiness and Haiti, funerals and politics, Genesis and church chatter come together in unexpected ways.
A couple of years ago, a journalist published a book that lived on my daughter’s shelf until she gave it to me, knowing I was intrigued by the title, The Geography of Bliss. The book is a funny and illuminating read.
The author traveled to a dozen countries to learn why those who live there are so happy--or not. The countries were not picked at random. He chose his destinations after visiting the World Happiness Database (I’m not making this up) in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
The WHD compiles and compares studies from social scientists across the world, who examine the age-old mystery of what makes for happy contented lives. Countries even receive scores on a 1-10 scale, based on extensive surveying.
In case you’re wondering, the United States is not among the 20 happiest places on Earth. It ranks below places like Costa Rica, Malta, Malaysia, Bhutan and Iceland, way below Iceland.
No surprise there. During my lifetime, Americans have become many times richer, but the divorce rate has tripled, violent crime has quadrupled, the prison population quintupled and mental health disorders like anxiety and depression are much more common, not merely more commonly diagnosed.
This leads to the obvious conclusion that money matters less we imagine. After having enough to satisfy basic human needs, happiness plateaus and having more money makes little difference.
What matters are social and family connections, belonging to a people, a history and a culture that transcends oneself. Trusting others is essential, your neighbors and fellow citizens. Envy is totally toxic, as are unrealistic expectations for personal success and accomplishment.
Happy places allow people to try and fail without shame, providing them freedom to reinvent themselves. They have space for idleness beyond the daily rush. They also inspire an expansive consciousness, the awareness that life is bigger than me and my personal needs.
Summing up his view--and much of this happy, thoughtful book, a public official in the tiny nation of Bhutan said, “Happiness is 100% relational.”
The Bible connects here. Once we move beyond silly arguments about whether the creation stories of Genesis are literal history, the stories speak deep truth about human nature and how we connect with God.
We are created from and for each other, to complete each other. We are fashioned for harmony with the earth and those with whom we share it. Recognize it or not, we are deeply connected, and we find our joy and purpose in the community of those connections.
Little wonder that human happiness is 100% relational. We can’t deny our communal nature or hide it under the myth of the “self-made man” or beneath foolish ideas that suggest that we can live separate lives. We are intimately connected with every other human family with whom we share this planet.
Occasionally, the narcissistic walls that keep us from seeing these connections crumble. Earthquakes do this. Pictures from Haiti move us in ways we can neither understand nor deny, as we witness faces of suffering and recognize those faces as our own.
So we care, we act, we give, becoming more human and, dare I say it, happier, having fulfilled in our bodies the humanity and communal connection God fashioned in our depths.
This is why two funerals I recently led were happier places than the American political marketplace. At the funerals, we remembered, cried and laughed together. We felt the sinews of love, struggle and history that bind us together. Amid sorrow, there was joy as we experienced those connections--and our connection with God.
This is so different from American politics where the reality that we are all in this together is daily ripped asunder by tactics of denunciation and excoriation.
Different, too, were the circles of conversation that continued longer than normal in the narthex last Sunday. Serious exchanges and laughter spiced the air. People shared news of illnesses and treatment, of family visits and children’s activities, of hopes and anxieties for the coming week.
Connections were savored and nurtured, and we were happier and more human for it. In some not-so-hidden way, the kingdom of God’s delight was real.
Pr. David L. Miller
http://prayingthemystery.blogspot.com/
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Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
Today’s text
Luke 4:18-19
The spirit of the Lord is on me, for he has anointed me to bring the good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free to proclaim a year of favor from the Lord.
Reflection
Today, I want to be free. Everyday I want to be free, but I am free only on some days. And recently, they have been too few.
So I come again and listen to the voice of freedom, and I hear your desire, singular it is: to set captive souls free from every bondage that prevents true humanness.
I am well acquainted with bondage. In recent days, my impatience with long meetings, human pettiness, administrative minutia and my own limitations of time and grace have made me less than a reasonable soul.
Perhaps I should ask for forgiveness for ways in which my anger has owned me, but I know forgiveness is already there for the taking. And I take it.
Plus, my soul is less bound by guilt than by my own perfectionism and my insistence that life should be lived as much as possible from the center of one’s soul, from the grace and beauty that is there.
That comes easily when I listen and talk to souls, seeking their good, when I pray and speak of the Loving Mystery you are, Holy One. But it disappears behind a thick gray cloud of frustration and melancholy when the big picture of life and grace gets lost in a dense cloud of detail.
So what is my captivity? Dealing with the detail? Shutting off my soul when the minutia and pettiness comes? Or perhaps it is my secret belief that I should not have to (and do not want to) deal with the nuts and bolts of the machinery that makes life … and congregations run?
Frankly, I can’t name my own bondage at this moment, but I am freer just for acknowledging this. I sense the center of my soul that has been lost to me in recent days. And the love I feel there--yours and mine--frees me to live with the joy of freedom that is your desire for me. And mine. Thank you.
Let me live this day from the heart.
Pr. David L. Miller
Luke 4:18-19
The spirit of the Lord is on me, for he has anointed me to bring the good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free to proclaim a year of favor from the Lord.
Reflection
Today, I want to be free. Everyday I want to be free, but I am free only on some days. And recently, they have been too few.
So I come again and listen to the voice of freedom, and I hear your desire, singular it is: to set captive souls free from every bondage that prevents true humanness.
I am well acquainted with bondage. In recent days, my impatience with long meetings, human pettiness, administrative minutia and my own limitations of time and grace have made me less than a reasonable soul.
Perhaps I should ask for forgiveness for ways in which my anger has owned me, but I know forgiveness is already there for the taking. And I take it.
Plus, my soul is less bound by guilt than by my own perfectionism and my insistence that life should be lived as much as possible from the center of one’s soul, from the grace and beauty that is there.
That comes easily when I listen and talk to souls, seeking their good, when I pray and speak of the Loving Mystery you are, Holy One. But it disappears behind a thick gray cloud of frustration and melancholy when the big picture of life and grace gets lost in a dense cloud of detail.
So what is my captivity? Dealing with the detail? Shutting off my soul when the minutia and pettiness comes? Or perhaps it is my secret belief that I should not have to (and do not want to) deal with the nuts and bolts of the machinery that makes life … and congregations run?
Frankly, I can’t name my own bondage at this moment, but I am freer just for acknowledging this. I sense the center of my soul that has been lost to me in recent days. And the love I feel there--yours and mine--frees me to live with the joy of freedom that is your desire for me. And mine. Thank you.
Let me live this day from the heart.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Today’s text
Luke 4:18-19
The spirit of the Lord is on me, for he has anointed me to bring the good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free to proclaim a year of favor from the Lord.
Reflection
Listening to your words, Jesus, I no longer see you in ancient Palestine. I see a hilltop in Haiti with a crowd seeking you, flowing, scrambling up the steep side to get close.
They are the afflicted, and like the afflicted of every age their hearts--to say nothing of their stomachs--move them to seek food that fills the anxiety of emptiness, the emptiness of body and spirit.
Empty they are, lacking food and medicine for broken bodies and balm for souls that may well live out their earthly lives in perpetual grief for the destruction of their city, the death of loved ones and the obliteration of hope.
They want what I want: to feel alive. They want to know the exhilaration of truly living, no longer weighted to earth by sorrow and fear.
They want to feel the surge of joy and love in their depths that makes them eager for the day.
They want to live beyond the grief of today and the dread of tomorrow, knowing that Love is near, that Love will come, that Love surrounds and enfolds even the horrors of devastated cities and the cry of broken children. And I believe that you do, Holy One.
I don’t know why the earth shudders and kills a multitude in a moment. I don’t know why the sun doesn’t grow dark and weep in abject sorrow at the destruction of human life that happens every day on this planet.
I have no adequate answers for my own questions, let alone those of others.
I simply know the lilt of heart that happens when I hear you, Jesus, telling me that you come to set captive hearts free, liberating us from all that binds us from living in hope and joy.
That’s why crowds sought you. They wanted to live. Me, too.
I want this life for those whose lives are unimaginable to me, lives that must stumble amid the rubble of places like Port au Prince. Let love and the passion of care surround them all, Lord Jesus. Release their souls from the anxiety of emptiness and the dread of tomorrow.
Free their captive souls--and mine, that we all might live. We all want to live, which is why we seek you, Jesus, from ancient times to hilltops in Haiti.
Pr. David L. Miller
Today’s text
Luke 4:18-19
The spirit of the Lord is on me, for he has anointed me to bring the good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free to proclaim a year of favor from the Lord.
Reflection
Listening to your words, Jesus, I no longer see you in ancient Palestine. I see a hilltop in Haiti with a crowd seeking you, flowing, scrambling up the steep side to get close.
They are the afflicted, and like the afflicted of every age their hearts--to say nothing of their stomachs--move them to seek food that fills the anxiety of emptiness, the emptiness of body and spirit.
Empty they are, lacking food and medicine for broken bodies and balm for souls that may well live out their earthly lives in perpetual grief for the destruction of their city, the death of loved ones and the obliteration of hope.
They want what I want: to feel alive. They want to know the exhilaration of truly living, no longer weighted to earth by sorrow and fear.
They want to feel the surge of joy and love in their depths that makes them eager for the day.
They want to live beyond the grief of today and the dread of tomorrow, knowing that Love is near, that Love will come, that Love surrounds and enfolds even the horrors of devastated cities and the cry of broken children. And I believe that you do, Holy One.
I don’t know why the earth shudders and kills a multitude in a moment. I don’t know why the sun doesn’t grow dark and weep in abject sorrow at the destruction of human life that happens every day on this planet.
I have no adequate answers for my own questions, let alone those of others.
I simply know the lilt of heart that happens when I hear you, Jesus, telling me that you come to set captive hearts free, liberating us from all that binds us from living in hope and joy.
That’s why crowds sought you. They wanted to live. Me, too.
I want this life for those whose lives are unimaginable to me, lives that must stumble amid the rubble of places like Port au Prince. Let love and the passion of care surround them all, Lord Jesus. Release their souls from the anxiety of emptiness and the dread of tomorrow.
Free their captive souls--and mine, that we all might live. We all want to live, which is why we seek you, Jesus, from ancient times to hilltops in Haiti.
Pr. David L. Miller
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Today’s text
John 2:6-10
There were six stone water jars standing there, meant for the ablutions that are customary among the Jews: each could hold twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants 'Fill the jars with water,' and they filled them to the brim. Then he said to them, 'Draw some out now and take it to the president of the feast. 'They did this; the president tasted the water, and it had turned into wine. Having no idea where it came from -- though the servants who had drawn the water knew -- the president of the feast called the bridegroom and said, 'Everyone serves good wine first and the worse wine when the guests are well wined; but you have kept the best wine till now.'
Reflection
I have known the souls of those who know you, Jesus. They are like water jars you fill, not with water, but with the wine of your life.
This early morning I know that wine also in my soul, as if the veins and arteries that course this body run with the sweet blood of grace that ran through you as you dropped in on wedding feasts.
And yes, you did make the party run crazy. All that wine was not to impress the guests but to ensure human joy did not play out.
You come, Jesus, bearing the intention of God that the wine that makes glad the hearts of human souls might never run dry.
You come to a wedding feast to reveal that, in you, heaven and earth are wed, forever joined. You come to pour the wine of eternity into the narrow confines of our little lives, into the saddest corners of our worlds that the joy of the world we cannot yet imagine might fill our hearts and move our song.
And just maybe, we might learn to dance through sad and difficult days, knowing the sweet wine of your life runs through our being, too.
Truly, it does, and it never ceases to surprise me, filling me with a joy and power that makes me eager for the day, knowing there is good work to do and broken souls to touch.
Funny, too, that when we pour our lives out for another we find there is more in our souls than mere water.
I don’t wonder how it got there.
Pr. David L. Miller
John 2:6-10
There were six stone water jars standing there, meant for the ablutions that are customary among the Jews: each could hold twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants 'Fill the jars with water,' and they filled them to the brim. Then he said to them, 'Draw some out now and take it to the president of the feast. 'They did this; the president tasted the water, and it had turned into wine. Having no idea where it came from -- though the servants who had drawn the water knew -- the president of the feast called the bridegroom and said, 'Everyone serves good wine first and the worse wine when the guests are well wined; but you have kept the best wine till now.'
Reflection
I have known the souls of those who know you, Jesus. They are like water jars you fill, not with water, but with the wine of your life.
This early morning I know that wine also in my soul, as if the veins and arteries that course this body run with the sweet blood of grace that ran through you as you dropped in on wedding feasts.
And yes, you did make the party run crazy. All that wine was not to impress the guests but to ensure human joy did not play out.
You come, Jesus, bearing the intention of God that the wine that makes glad the hearts of human souls might never run dry.
You come to a wedding feast to reveal that, in you, heaven and earth are wed, forever joined. You come to pour the wine of eternity into the narrow confines of our little lives, into the saddest corners of our worlds that the joy of the world we cannot yet imagine might fill our hearts and move our song.
And just maybe, we might learn to dance through sad and difficult days, knowing the sweet wine of your life runs through our being, too.
Truly, it does, and it never ceases to surprise me, filling me with a joy and power that makes me eager for the day, knowing there is good work to do and broken souls to touch.
Funny, too, that when we pour our lives out for another we find there is more in our souls than mere water.
I don’t wonder how it got there.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Today’s text
John 2:1-3
On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee. The mother of Jesus was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited. And they ran out of wine, since the wine provided for the feast had all been used, and the mother of Jesus said to him, 'They have no wine.'
Reflection
You come, Jesus. You come when the wine of life plays out, and we have no more.
You come when energy is low, and the day feels overwhelming.
You come when there is too little time and too little will.
You come when we wonder if our efforts are worth anything.
You come when we fail and see no reason to try again.
You come when we feel alone and wonder if we will ever be known.
You come when the road is hard and the way feels unending.
You come when we lose our way, and hope is faint.
You come when we hunger for joy, but our souls are cool.
You come when words feel empty and catch in our throat.
You come when life is threatened, and death draws near.
Come here, Jesus, where the wine threatens to play out, where souls mourn their beloved and worry amid disease. Come where weary hearts and worn bodies already bear too much, and life demands more.
Come to us. Pour into our souls the wine of laughter and assurance, the joy of loving companionship, the knowledge that in you heaven is wed to earth, and we need never worry about the wine.
For you will always bring enough, and the feast of heavenly joy will moisten every cheek.
Pr. David. L. Miller
John 2:1-3
On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee. The mother of Jesus was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited. And they ran out of wine, since the wine provided for the feast had all been used, and the mother of Jesus said to him, 'They have no wine.'
Reflection
You come, Jesus. You come when the wine of life plays out, and we have no more.
You come when energy is low, and the day feels overwhelming.
You come when there is too little time and too little will.
You come when we wonder if our efforts are worth anything.
You come when we fail and see no reason to try again.
You come when we feel alone and wonder if we will ever be known.
You come when the road is hard and the way feels unending.
You come when we lose our way, and hope is faint.
You come when we hunger for joy, but our souls are cool.
You come when words feel empty and catch in our throat.
You come when life is threatened, and death draws near.
Come here, Jesus, where the wine threatens to play out, where souls mourn their beloved and worry amid disease. Come where weary hearts and worn bodies already bear too much, and life demands more.
Come to us. Pour into our souls the wine of laughter and assurance, the joy of loving companionship, the knowledge that in you heaven is wed to earth, and we need never worry about the wine.
For you will always bring enough, and the feast of heavenly joy will moisten every cheek.
Pr. David. L. Miller
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Today’s text
Isaiah 43:1-3a
And now, thus says Yahweh, he who created you, Jacob, who formed you, Israel: Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name, you are mine. Should you pass through the waters, I shall be with you; or through rivers, they will not swallow you up. Should you walk through fire, you will not suffer, and the flame will not burn you. Should you pass through the waters, I shall be with you; or through rivers, they will not swallow you up. Should you walk through fire, you will not suffer, and the flame will not burn you.
Reflection
My fears confound me, Holy One, leaving unrest in my heart. I see a soul to whom I want (or feel I should) reach out, but other people and duties distract me before I can step into the space of meeting.
I allow it to happen, but only when it involves someone with whom I am less than comfortable because of past conflict or misunderstanding. I know the meeting may prove awkward. We may not know how to speak comfortably with each other. At worse, my overture of conversation may be refused or forcefully resisted.
But the connection between us needs one of us to take the risk, to seek encounter, lest the bonds of human community stretch thin and snap.
Knowing this, I still allow distractions to curb me from the place of my discomfort, the faces of my anxiety.
Mine are small fears in the great sweep of human struggle. They amount to almost nothing, yet they are the minutia that erodes community and fires distrust, as human hearts walk around each other instead of obeying the need of their hearts to understand and be understood.
It’s all about fear, Holy One, and here you speak gently, telling me not to fear. “Do not fear even though awkward and rejecting moments of life fragment your soul and shatter the peace you seek.”
“Do not fear,” you say. “You will walk through deep water, through fires of anger and division, amid threats that you’d rather avoid.
“But nothing is lost. No part of you will be scattered so far that it is beyond my gracious reach. Do not worry about being broken, about resistance and the pain of distrust. Do not fret that your soul will hurt when community is broken, when your overtures are unwelcome or when you are judged wanting or condemned. The waters will not swallow you up.
“I will gather up all the broken pieces of your heart and make you whole. I am the Lord, and nothing is lost to my love; no wounded part of you is lost to my healing.”
Pr. David L. Miller
Isaiah 43:1-3a
And now, thus says Yahweh, he who created you, Jacob, who formed you, Israel: Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name, you are mine. Should you pass through the waters, I shall be with you; or through rivers, they will not swallow you up. Should you walk through fire, you will not suffer, and the flame will not burn you. Should you pass through the waters, I shall be with you; or through rivers, they will not swallow you up. Should you walk through fire, you will not suffer, and the flame will not burn you.
Reflection
My fears confound me, Holy One, leaving unrest in my heart. I see a soul to whom I want (or feel I should) reach out, but other people and duties distract me before I can step into the space of meeting.
I allow it to happen, but only when it involves someone with whom I am less than comfortable because of past conflict or misunderstanding. I know the meeting may prove awkward. We may not know how to speak comfortably with each other. At worse, my overture of conversation may be refused or forcefully resisted.
But the connection between us needs one of us to take the risk, to seek encounter, lest the bonds of human community stretch thin and snap.
Knowing this, I still allow distractions to curb me from the place of my discomfort, the faces of my anxiety.
Mine are small fears in the great sweep of human struggle. They amount to almost nothing, yet they are the minutia that erodes community and fires distrust, as human hearts walk around each other instead of obeying the need of their hearts to understand and be understood.
It’s all about fear, Holy One, and here you speak gently, telling me not to fear. “Do not fear even though awkward and rejecting moments of life fragment your soul and shatter the peace you seek.”
“Do not fear,” you say. “You will walk through deep water, through fires of anger and division, amid threats that you’d rather avoid.
“But nothing is lost. No part of you will be scattered so far that it is beyond my gracious reach. Do not worry about being broken, about resistance and the pain of distrust. Do not fret that your soul will hurt when community is broken, when your overtures are unwelcome or when you are judged wanting or condemned. The waters will not swallow you up.
“I will gather up all the broken pieces of your heart and make you whole. I am the Lord, and nothing is lost to my love; no wounded part of you is lost to my healing.”
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Today’s text
Isaiah 43:1-3a
And now, thus says Yahweh, he who created you, Jacob, who formed you, Israel: Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name, you are mine. Should you pass through the waters, I shall be with you; or through rivers, they will not swallow you up. Should you walk through fire, you will not suffer, and the flame will not burn you. Should you pass through the waters, I shall be with you; or through rivers, they will not swallow you up. Should you walk through fire, you will not suffer, and the flame will not burn you.
Reflection
“You are mine,” you say, your voice more solid than the earth upon which I stand, and I hear your passion Holy One. I feel who you are.
Jealous and possessive is your love for those you cherish, a passion stronger than death, determined that nothing and no one should be lost to you. No soul shall be singed by the fires of life, drowned in woes that overwhelm and sweep us away.
You see all that our human frame suffers, and you shout to the heavens, “This shall not be. They are mine. I have fashioned and made them. I cherish them like a mother her infant child. More.
“Their souls shall not be lost, for I see them whenever they go, and I witness whatever befalls them. Their pains are felt in my divine heart, and I shall bring them back from where they are scattered. I will command the seas to give them up to my hand.
“I will raise them from the places they fall and breathe life into them after every death they suffer. I will gather the scattered fragments of their broken lives and make them whole again.
“For nothing will be lost to me; all they are shall be redeemed. And they will know I am a God of life and love, who cannot forget his own, who remembers the name of his myriad beloved, and who dwells in searching sorrow until all are gathered into my divine embrace.
“For you are mine, and I will not forget or leave you to flounder in the deep waters or to be consumed by threatening fires.
“There is nowhere you shall go; no place you shall fall that I will not be. You are mine, and the love and life that I am is yours.”
Pr. David L. Miller
Isaiah 43:1-3a
And now, thus says Yahweh, he who created you, Jacob, who formed you, Israel: Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name, you are mine. Should you pass through the waters, I shall be with you; or through rivers, they will not swallow you up. Should you walk through fire, you will not suffer, and the flame will not burn you. Should you pass through the waters, I shall be with you; or through rivers, they will not swallow you up. Should you walk through fire, you will not suffer, and the flame will not burn you.
Reflection
“You are mine,” you say, your voice more solid than the earth upon which I stand, and I hear your passion Holy One. I feel who you are.
Jealous and possessive is your love for those you cherish, a passion stronger than death, determined that nothing and no one should be lost to you. No soul shall be singed by the fires of life, drowned in woes that overwhelm and sweep us away.
You see all that our human frame suffers, and you shout to the heavens, “This shall not be. They are mine. I have fashioned and made them. I cherish them like a mother her infant child. More.
“Their souls shall not be lost, for I see them whenever they go, and I witness whatever befalls them. Their pains are felt in my divine heart, and I shall bring them back from where they are scattered. I will command the seas to give them up to my hand.
“I will raise them from the places they fall and breathe life into them after every death they suffer. I will gather the scattered fragments of their broken lives and make them whole again.
“For nothing will be lost to me; all they are shall be redeemed. And they will know I am a God of life and love, who cannot forget his own, who remembers the name of his myriad beloved, and who dwells in searching sorrow until all are gathered into my divine embrace.
“For you are mine, and I will not forget or leave you to flounder in the deep waters or to be consumed by threatening fires.
“There is nowhere you shall go; no place you shall fall that I will not be. You are mine, and the love and life that I am is yours.”
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Today’s text
Isaiah 43:1
And now, thus says Yahweh, he who created you, Jacob, who formed you, Israel: Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name, you are mine.
Reflection
Do I hear a cry in your voice, Loving Mystery, or is it my cry that falls on the ear?
No, there is but one single cry. It calls out of your great heart and finds its echo in my own soul. Yes, this is what I think, what I feel, what I hear.
“You are mine,” your eternal heart cries out. “I created you; I formed you. Come find your rest in my encircling presence, in the arms of my everlasting embrace which even now holds all time, all space.
“I will that my pain and yours should cease, for I, too, endure sorrow until all my wandering ones are at home, at peace, at rest.”
I hear your cry and feel that pain, knowing it, finally, not as my lonely sorrow, but as the sadness of your great heart, which I, too, feel when my heart feels far from you.
But I am not, for all that is resides in your immensity, encircled by arms of grace in the field of your Spirit’s play, seeking to draw me, the resistant, into the joy of knowing I dwell constantly in the atmosphere of love--of Love, who wants only that I should see and rest at home in this mystery, at peace and whole.
This comes to me in this instant, and an image appears in the mind’s eye: arms vast as the universe itself, no larger, a circle drawing in, ever so slowly, all that is, and I am in that embrace, but so seldom do I look and see the Drawing Love you are.
But right now, I know all this, as you invite me to make my home in you: you, who will cry for me until the day I rest finally and fully in you, who are Love.
Until then, I will know that when my soul grows sad and lonely that it is not my loneliness I feel, but the echo of your own, calling me home, to calm your cry.
Pr. David L. Miller
Isaiah 43:1
And now, thus says Yahweh, he who created you, Jacob, who formed you, Israel: Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name, you are mine.
Reflection
Do I hear a cry in your voice, Loving Mystery, or is it my cry that falls on the ear?
No, there is but one single cry. It calls out of your great heart and finds its echo in my own soul. Yes, this is what I think, what I feel, what I hear.
“You are mine,” your eternal heart cries out. “I created you; I formed you. Come find your rest in my encircling presence, in the arms of my everlasting embrace which even now holds all time, all space.
“I will that my pain and yours should cease, for I, too, endure sorrow until all my wandering ones are at home, at peace, at rest.”
I hear your cry and feel that pain, knowing it, finally, not as my lonely sorrow, but as the sadness of your great heart, which I, too, feel when my heart feels far from you.
But I am not, for all that is resides in your immensity, encircled by arms of grace in the field of your Spirit’s play, seeking to draw me, the resistant, into the joy of knowing I dwell constantly in the atmosphere of love--of Love, who wants only that I should see and rest at home in this mystery, at peace and whole.
This comes to me in this instant, and an image appears in the mind’s eye: arms vast as the universe itself, no larger, a circle drawing in, ever so slowly, all that is, and I am in that embrace, but so seldom do I look and see the Drawing Love you are.
But right now, I know all this, as you invite me to make my home in you: you, who will cry for me until the day I rest finally and fully in you, who are Love.
Until then, I will know that when my soul grows sad and lonely that it is not my loneliness I feel, but the echo of your own, calling me home, to calm your cry.
Pr. David L. Miller
Monday, December 28, 2009
Monday, December 28, 2009
Today’s text
Matthew 2:9-11
Having listened to what the king had to say, they set out. And suddenly the star they had seen rising went forward and halted over the place where the child was. The sight of the star filled them with delight, and going into the house they saw the child with his mother Mary, and falling to their knees they did him homage. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh.
Reflection
I see these Magi, their camels tripping down gulches where the spring rains run. The beasts struggle up the other side. Their riders tip precariously to the side, holding tight lest they fall into the ancient sand, which cares nothing for them or their search.
It is beastly ride. No sensible person would do it without a good reason, and to the average eye they have no cause sufficient to call them from the firelight warmth of their homes, which are more comfortable than most.
But they press on, mile after unsmiling mile, bearing gifts of gold and whatnot, not knowing what they’ll find at the end of their trek, or even if it will have an end. I am unimpressed by their gifts but quite moved by their hope and dignity.
These are not modern souls, tempted to believe the lie that life is aimless confusion, just one thing after another. Just getting through the day--or their years--as unscathed as possible by their worst fears, this holds no appeal for them. They want more.
They believe there is more. An infinitesimal spark within suggests that existence has a plot and a purpose. Their long years of study have not been able to identify the source of this intuition or expose it as a lie.
So they search, believing that by watching the ancient stars through predictable courses they may catch glimpses of that plot and purpose. They believe that it is worth the work and the interminable waiting as they scan the dark skies where new things seldom appear.
Until now. And they go, following this light.
But what do they find? Arriving, they give reverence and gifts to the child, but what is here? A king? A ruler supreme? All they see is a child and a couple of impoverished parents.
The child can say nothing, and the parents have nothing to say. So … the Magi return to their homes and studies to watch the sky and wait to see what will become of this child whose light they followed.
Their life of hoping, waiting and watching continues. But they believe they have glimpsed something of that plot and purpose their hearts know they must find and follow, lest they grow old and despairing.
They have glimpsed something deep, something new of which they do not know the ending.
They are just like me, My Lord. Just like me. We glimpse the light of your nearness, but what will happen to this light I cannot yet see, only hope and believe.
So I watch and wait with the Magi’s faith, walking in the light I have seen, hoping and believing there is much more to come.
Pr. David L. Miller
Matthew 2:9-11
Having listened to what the king had to say, they set out. And suddenly the star they had seen rising went forward and halted over the place where the child was. The sight of the star filled them with delight, and going into the house they saw the child with his mother Mary, and falling to their knees they did him homage. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh.
Reflection
I see these Magi, their camels tripping down gulches where the spring rains run. The beasts struggle up the other side. Their riders tip precariously to the side, holding tight lest they fall into the ancient sand, which cares nothing for them or their search.
It is beastly ride. No sensible person would do it without a good reason, and to the average eye they have no cause sufficient to call them from the firelight warmth of their homes, which are more comfortable than most.
But they press on, mile after unsmiling mile, bearing gifts of gold and whatnot, not knowing what they’ll find at the end of their trek, or even if it will have an end. I am unimpressed by their gifts but quite moved by their hope and dignity.
These are not modern souls, tempted to believe the lie that life is aimless confusion, just one thing after another. Just getting through the day--or their years--as unscathed as possible by their worst fears, this holds no appeal for them. They want more.
They believe there is more. An infinitesimal spark within suggests that existence has a plot and a purpose. Their long years of study have not been able to identify the source of this intuition or expose it as a lie.
So they search, believing that by watching the ancient stars through predictable courses they may catch glimpses of that plot and purpose. They believe that it is worth the work and the interminable waiting as they scan the dark skies where new things seldom appear.
Until now. And they go, following this light.
But what do they find? Arriving, they give reverence and gifts to the child, but what is here? A king? A ruler supreme? All they see is a child and a couple of impoverished parents.
The child can say nothing, and the parents have nothing to say. So … the Magi return to their homes and studies to watch the sky and wait to see what will become of this child whose light they followed.
Their life of hoping, waiting and watching continues. But they believe they have glimpsed something of that plot and purpose their hearts know they must find and follow, lest they grow old and despairing.
They have glimpsed something deep, something new of which they do not know the ending.
They are just like me, My Lord. Just like me. We glimpse the light of your nearness, but what will happen to this light I cannot yet see, only hope and believe.
So I watch and wait with the Magi’s faith, walking in the light I have seen, hoping and believing there is much more to come.
Pr. David L. Miller
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Today’s text
Luke 2:9-15
An angel of the Lord stood over them and the glory of the Lord shone round them. They were terrified, but the angel said, 'Do not be afraid. Look, I bring you news of great joy, a joy to be shared by the whole people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. And here is a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.' And all at once with the angel there was a great throng of the hosts of heaven, praising God with the words Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace for those he favors. Now it happened that when the angles had gone from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, 'Let us go to Bethlehem and see this event which the Lord has made known to us.'
Reflection
“Don’t be afraid,” the angel commands.
She (or is it he?) should have saved her breath. The light of God warms the winter night for shepherds on a hillside, and it is fear we most expect.
No command can still their fears … or ours. Go ahead, try. Command yourself not to be afraid. Command the fear of one who is dear to your heart. Tell their fears to go and not return. It does no good. We cannot be talked out of fears.
We can only be loved out of them.
Clueless about what they were doing, the shepherds do exactly this. “Let’s go and see,” they say. They run across frozen fields under the starlight to the old barn to see what is happening.
Join them.
Gather your hopes and fears. Take the ache at the pit of your stomach for something you don’t know how to name. Take the fragmented pieces of your life you can’t put together in way that satisfies your desire for a life that is truly human and happy.
Take your feeling of being lost and needy. Take your restless desire to know a great love that is always sufficient. Take your fears of life and death. Take that sinking feeling that your life will never be what you want and need it to be
Take it all, and go see the child.
The shepherds, confused and shy, slowly draw near, not knowing how close they may come or whether they are welcome.
Stand among them on hesitant feet. Come to the manger. See the child who stirs the hope that the ache in your heart can find healing.
Come and see: In this child, God comes to you. God pours the love of the divine heart into human form, seeking to awaken in you the love that is in the child … for you.
When you know this love you know the One who saves you from all that is not love.
This Love will save you from yourself and all your fears, pouring love on each of your dyings until there is nothing left but life and the angel’s song.
Pr. David L. Miller
Luke 2:9-15
An angel of the Lord stood over them and the glory of the Lord shone round them. They were terrified, but the angel said, 'Do not be afraid. Look, I bring you news of great joy, a joy to be shared by the whole people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. And here is a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.' And all at once with the angel there was a great throng of the hosts of heaven, praising God with the words Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace for those he favors. Now it happened that when the angles had gone from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, 'Let us go to Bethlehem and see this event which the Lord has made known to us.'
Reflection
“Don’t be afraid,” the angel commands.
She (or is it he?) should have saved her breath. The light of God warms the winter night for shepherds on a hillside, and it is fear we most expect.
No command can still their fears … or ours. Go ahead, try. Command yourself not to be afraid. Command the fear of one who is dear to your heart. Tell their fears to go and not return. It does no good. We cannot be talked out of fears.
We can only be loved out of them.
Clueless about what they were doing, the shepherds do exactly this. “Let’s go and see,” they say. They run across frozen fields under the starlight to the old barn to see what is happening.
Join them.
Gather your hopes and fears. Take the ache at the pit of your stomach for something you don’t know how to name. Take the fragmented pieces of your life you can’t put together in way that satisfies your desire for a life that is truly human and happy.
Take your feeling of being lost and needy. Take your restless desire to know a great love that is always sufficient. Take your fears of life and death. Take that sinking feeling that your life will never be what you want and need it to be
Take it all, and go see the child.
The shepherds, confused and shy, slowly draw near, not knowing how close they may come or whether they are welcome.
Stand among them on hesitant feet. Come to the manger. See the child who stirs the hope that the ache in your heart can find healing.
Come and see: In this child, God comes to you. God pours the love of the divine heart into human form, seeking to awaken in you the love that is in the child … for you.
When you know this love you know the One who saves you from all that is not love.
This Love will save you from yourself and all your fears, pouring love on each of your dyings until there is nothing left but life and the angel’s song.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Today’s text
Luke 2:6-7
Now it happened that, while they were there, the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to a son, her first-born. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the living-space.
Reflection
I see them there, in the back corner of the red barn. A half dozen cattle stamping their feet, impatient to be milked, their necks through the old wooden stanchions, heads reaching and pulling at the hay as they feed.
Their breath hangs in the air, warm and sweet as summer clover. They glance over their thick shoulders as we pass and prepare for the milking.
I am too young to work, so I watch my uncle in the old barn that once was ours before my father got sick and had to surrender this place.
I steal away to the back corner where bales of hay and straw are stacked like a wall and cats climb and sniff, listening for the slightest rustle signaling a mouse burrowing among the bales.
I see them there. The man and the woman, startled at my approach, thinking they were alone in this place. Their eyes wide with apprehension, wondering what has happening to them and whether I will expose their presence.
There is no need for fear, for all I want is to watch, and I am a child, so what threat can I be to their already vulnerable lives? Their eyes return to the worn wooden box where the child lies amid straw pulled from the bales.
The woman takes the child and fusses with the cloths, wrapping the child securely from the cold that filters between the cracks where the barn boards warp and cup.
She swaddles the child, covering every bit of tender flesh but his face, and it is just then that I see.
I see that the approach of God to human flesh evokes no fear or trembling. The Holy One comes, vulnerable and in need of the love only human hearts can provide.
I see the desire of God has nothing to do with parading power or making me feel small or sinful and ugly. The Holy Mystery comes to awaken the love with which we are loved by Him.
God awakens the beauty of heart and care that I may tenderly pick up the child and swaddle this life, feeling the stir of a love that is the same love which moves the Holy One to seek me through the flesh of this child.
This I see, and seeing, I know: none of us know God until we know Him as the child in the manger, seeking to be swaddled and tenderly held in our hearts.
I see this, and outside the old barn, ancient stars shine on Pea Ridge, half-a-mile across sloping, frozen fields. And the wind through the trees that stand up there sounds like singing.
Pr. David L. Miller
Luke 2:6-7
Now it happened that, while they were there, the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to a son, her first-born. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the living-space.
Reflection
I see them there, in the back corner of the red barn. A half dozen cattle stamping their feet, impatient to be milked, their necks through the old wooden stanchions, heads reaching and pulling at the hay as they feed.
Their breath hangs in the air, warm and sweet as summer clover. They glance over their thick shoulders as we pass and prepare for the milking.
I am too young to work, so I watch my uncle in the old barn that once was ours before my father got sick and had to surrender this place.
I steal away to the back corner where bales of hay and straw are stacked like a wall and cats climb and sniff, listening for the slightest rustle signaling a mouse burrowing among the bales.
I see them there. The man and the woman, startled at my approach, thinking they were alone in this place. Their eyes wide with apprehension, wondering what has happening to them and whether I will expose their presence.
There is no need for fear, for all I want is to watch, and I am a child, so what threat can I be to their already vulnerable lives? Their eyes return to the worn wooden box where the child lies amid straw pulled from the bales.
The woman takes the child and fusses with the cloths, wrapping the child securely from the cold that filters between the cracks where the barn boards warp and cup.
She swaddles the child, covering every bit of tender flesh but his face, and it is just then that I see.
I see that the approach of God to human flesh evokes no fear or trembling. The Holy One comes, vulnerable and in need of the love only human hearts can provide.
I see the desire of God has nothing to do with parading power or making me feel small or sinful and ugly. The Holy Mystery comes to awaken the love with which we are loved by Him.
God awakens the beauty of heart and care that I may tenderly pick up the child and swaddle this life, feeling the stir of a love that is the same love which moves the Holy One to seek me through the flesh of this child.
This I see, and seeing, I know: none of us know God until we know Him as the child in the manger, seeking to be swaddled and tenderly held in our hearts.
I see this, and outside the old barn, ancient stars shine on Pea Ridge, half-a-mile across sloping, frozen fields. And the wind through the trees that stand up there sounds like singing.
Pr. David L. Miller
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Today’s text
Luke 1:46-49
And Mary said: My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; because he has looked upon the humiliation of his servant. Yes, from now onwards all generations will call me blessed, for the Almighty has done great things for me.
Reflection
Lift my lungs into praise of your wonder, O Lord. Sweep me into the chorus of rejoicing that I might be whole.
My soul languishes in regions of sadness where I know neither you nor my own self. Like Mary, like all humanity, I am whole only in the joy that comes in knowing you, in being swept up in the current of all that your love is doing.
This, I think, is the source of Mary’s praise, of her joy and the fulfillment of her soul, a completion for which my soul longs.
She sees, she knows, she feels within her own womb the goodness of what you are doing, coming in human form to each of us, to all of us. In startled joy, she knows she shares wholly in the greatness of your loving design, the work of love you make known in Jesus, our brother.
Joy is being swept up in you, my Lord. It is knowing that all we are--our soul, mind and the smallest parts of our bodies--are encompassed in your immensity. You are Love itself, Holy Mystery, so joy is being caught up in Love’s own being as it lifts the lowly and illumines the darkest paces of earth and soul.
We do not choose to praise you, my Lord. Praise comes as a precious gift when we, like Mary, are swept up in you, feeling ourselves immersed and encompassed in the liquidity of your life.
How this happens, when and where we cannot easily say, only that it does, and that it happens when we are in you. So we give ourselves to the work of praying and singing and reaching to you. We give ourselves to service, to loving, sharing and giving. For we know these are your works, your places, your haunts.
And we wait with hope for you to come and sweep us away from ourselves and the gray burdens of the day, carrying us to heights of praise where we know you as Holy Wonder and ourselves as blessed beloved.
Pr. David L. Miller
Today’s text
Luke 1:46-49
And Mary said: My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; because he has looked upon the humiliation of his servant. Yes, from now onwards all generations will call me blessed, for the Almighty has done great things for me.
Reflection
Lift my lungs into praise of your wonder, O Lord. Sweep me into the chorus of rejoicing that I might be whole.
My soul languishes in regions of sadness where I know neither you nor my own self. Like Mary, like all humanity, I am whole only in the joy that comes in knowing you, in being swept up in the current of all that your love is doing.
This, I think, is the source of Mary’s praise, of her joy and the fulfillment of her soul, a completion for which my soul longs.
She sees, she knows, she feels within her own womb the goodness of what you are doing, coming in human form to each of us, to all of us. In startled joy, she knows she shares wholly in the greatness of your loving design, the work of love you make known in Jesus, our brother.
Joy is being swept up in you, my Lord. It is knowing that all we are--our soul, mind and the smallest parts of our bodies--are encompassed in your immensity. You are Love itself, Holy Mystery, so joy is being caught up in Love’s own being as it lifts the lowly and illumines the darkest paces of earth and soul.
We do not choose to praise you, my Lord. Praise comes as a precious gift when we, like Mary, are swept up in you, feeling ourselves immersed and encompassed in the liquidity of your life.
How this happens, when and where we cannot easily say, only that it does, and that it happens when we are in you. So we give ourselves to the work of praying and singing and reaching to you. We give ourselves to service, to loving, sharing and giving. For we know these are your works, your places, your haunts.
And we wait with hope for you to come and sweep us away from ourselves and the gray burdens of the day, carrying us to heights of praise where we know you as Holy Wonder and ourselves as blessed beloved.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Today’s text
Luke 1:39-42
Mary set out at that time and went as quickly as she could into the hill country to a town in Judah. She went into Zechariah's house and greeted Elizabeth. Now it happened that as soon as Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leapt in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. She gave a loud cry and said, 'Of all women you are the most blessed, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.’
Reflection
I know why Elizabeth was filled with joy. It is because you, My Lord, filled Mary. Elizabeth’s heart jumps, to say nothing of the child she carried within her, at the presence of the Presence for which we all long.
Your Presence brings joy even amid gray December when the Western world is alight with happy twinkling that somehow fails to shed the joy for which the heart hungers.
I long for the joy that came so naturally to Elizabeth at Mary’s approach. A great flood of tears and laughter, joy and fulfillment is unleashed in her. She feels your nearness, and that alone--that only--propelled her soul to the heights of human fulfillment.
That’s the way it is in every age. Joy is in your presence. Completion comes as we feel your nearness, as we know you are here for us and always will be.
My fingers try to write my soul into this awareness as I imagine the scene. Elizabeth steps outside her house, her face alight. Her arms quickly open to enfold dearest Mary in love’s embrace, only to find that it is she, herself, who is embraced in ways she can never really understand.
Her life is enfolded into the life of the God who is love. Love’s Presence unleashes in her that flood of joy that is your joy to release in human souls.
So come to us, Lord Jesus. Free our souls from December grayness with the joy that runs like an unfettered river, surging and free, flowing from depths we did not know we possessed.
Let our laughter echo deep from lungs released from bonds of sadness. We, too, want to enfold you in our arms and know exactly what Elizabeth knew. Then we shall be whole.
Pr. David L. Miller
Luke 1:39-42
Mary set out at that time and went as quickly as she could into the hill country to a town in Judah. She went into Zechariah's house and greeted Elizabeth. Now it happened that as soon as Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leapt in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. She gave a loud cry and said, 'Of all women you are the most blessed, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.’
Reflection
I know why Elizabeth was filled with joy. It is because you, My Lord, filled Mary. Elizabeth’s heart jumps, to say nothing of the child she carried within her, at the presence of the Presence for which we all long.
Your Presence brings joy even amid gray December when the Western world is alight with happy twinkling that somehow fails to shed the joy for which the heart hungers.
I long for the joy that came so naturally to Elizabeth at Mary’s approach. A great flood of tears and laughter, joy and fulfillment is unleashed in her. She feels your nearness, and that alone--that only--propelled her soul to the heights of human fulfillment.
That’s the way it is in every age. Joy is in your presence. Completion comes as we feel your nearness, as we know you are here for us and always will be.
My fingers try to write my soul into this awareness as I imagine the scene. Elizabeth steps outside her house, her face alight. Her arms quickly open to enfold dearest Mary in love’s embrace, only to find that it is she, herself, who is embraced in ways she can never really understand.
Her life is enfolded into the life of the God who is love. Love’s Presence unleashes in her that flood of joy that is your joy to release in human souls.
So come to us, Lord Jesus. Free our souls from December grayness with the joy that runs like an unfettered river, surging and free, flowing from depths we did not know we possessed.
Let our laughter echo deep from lungs released from bonds of sadness. We, too, want to enfold you in our arms and know exactly what Elizabeth knew. Then we shall be whole.
Pr. David L. Miller
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Today’s text
Luke 3:16-17
John declared before them all, 'I baptize you with water, but someone is coming, who is more powerful than me, and I am not fit to undo the strap of his sandals; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing-fan is in his hand, to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his barn; but the chaff he will burn in a fire that will never go out.'
Reflection
Sometimes you don’t get what you expect. Sometimes it’s better.
John seemed to expect a larger version of himself. What came was of a different order altogether, not a fiery prophet railing at sin but an enigmatic mystic who spoke intimately of the Father and invited souls to see the rule of forever in the work of his hands and the sound of his voice.
Some heard. Some couldn’t imagine the kingdom of God was anything like a guy who ate with chippies and Roman collaborators and gave hell to those who tried to protect the eroding moral order with God’s ancient law.
If this is a winnowing out of the unholy and unworthy, it cut in a different direction than anyone expected. Those who were in were out; those who were up were down, and those who were cocksure of themselves ended up looking into the little circle around Jesus, excluded by their own lack of heart.
It was heart more than anything else that Jesus called for. Those who could love--and see their want of love--found repentance and entrance into a circle of grace where the rule of forever is taken in with every breath.
And John is right: no one is worthy of untying the sandals of this Jesus for whom we wait and long. But it doesn’t matter. Jesus isn’t much into bowing and scraping.
He invites us near to share his Spirit, the Spirit that made the day and fashioned the sun and loved you and all creation into being.
Catch a bit of that, and you know what fire is.
Pr. David L. Miller
Luke 3:16-17
John declared before them all, 'I baptize you with water, but someone is coming, who is more powerful than me, and I am not fit to undo the strap of his sandals; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing-fan is in his hand, to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his barn; but the chaff he will burn in a fire that will never go out.'
Reflection
Sometimes you don’t get what you expect. Sometimes it’s better.
John seemed to expect a larger version of himself. What came was of a different order altogether, not a fiery prophet railing at sin but an enigmatic mystic who spoke intimately of the Father and invited souls to see the rule of forever in the work of his hands and the sound of his voice.
Some heard. Some couldn’t imagine the kingdom of God was anything like a guy who ate with chippies and Roman collaborators and gave hell to those who tried to protect the eroding moral order with God’s ancient law.
If this is a winnowing out of the unholy and unworthy, it cut in a different direction than anyone expected. Those who were in were out; those who were up were down, and those who were cocksure of themselves ended up looking into the little circle around Jesus, excluded by their own lack of heart.
It was heart more than anything else that Jesus called for. Those who could love--and see their want of love--found repentance and entrance into a circle of grace where the rule of forever is taken in with every breath.
And John is right: no one is worthy of untying the sandals of this Jesus for whom we wait and long. But it doesn’t matter. Jesus isn’t much into bowing and scraping.
He invites us near to share his Spirit, the Spirit that made the day and fashioned the sun and loved you and all creation into being.
Catch a bit of that, and you know what fire is.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Today’s text
Luke 3:15
A feeling of expectancy had grown among the people, who were beginning to wonder whether John might be the Christ … .
Reflection
That expectancy is your gift, Holy One. I have lived without it on far too many days, and I want no more of those. But today this is of no concern. Expectancy is natural as a sunrise on new snow, fresh as December’s bracing cold.
I know that you are its source, and I can name the means through which you invigorate my old soul. Again, yesterday, you placed in my way real souls bearing the pain of their existence.
I am not thankful for their pain but for the courage with which they name it, the vulnerability that let them share it, the beauty of tenderness with which they feel their sorrows, the gentleness with which they care for their beloved, and the hope which brought them to seek elusive healing.
For those things I stand straight and praise you for the wonder of human souls and the privilege of caring for them. They invite me to what is most real in life, what is most important and to you.
For we discover you as sit and listen, finding beauty and life, care and love amid broken hearts and shattered fragments of life. Conversations certainly don’t start there, but you always seem to appear, bringing laughter amid tears and gratitude for the small joys of being human. That laughter wipes all hopelessness from the horizon.
For all of it, thank you, but especially for the expectancy already awake in my early morning soul on days like this. Having known you yesterday I anticipate meeting you again, today.
I have no idea where or in whom, so come Lord Jesus, surprise me.
Pr. David L. Miller
Luke 3:15
A feeling of expectancy had grown among the people, who were beginning to wonder whether John might be the Christ … .
Reflection
That expectancy is your gift, Holy One. I have lived without it on far too many days, and I want no more of those. But today this is of no concern. Expectancy is natural as a sunrise on new snow, fresh as December’s bracing cold.
I know that you are its source, and I can name the means through which you invigorate my old soul. Again, yesterday, you placed in my way real souls bearing the pain of their existence.
I am not thankful for their pain but for the courage with which they name it, the vulnerability that let them share it, the beauty of tenderness with which they feel their sorrows, the gentleness with which they care for their beloved, and the hope which brought them to seek elusive healing.
For those things I stand straight and praise you for the wonder of human souls and the privilege of caring for them. They invite me to what is most real in life, what is most important and to you.
For we discover you as sit and listen, finding beauty and life, care and love amid broken hearts and shattered fragments of life. Conversations certainly don’t start there, but you always seem to appear, bringing laughter amid tears and gratitude for the small joys of being human. That laughter wipes all hopelessness from the horizon.
For all of it, thank you, but especially for the expectancy already awake in my early morning soul on days like this. Having known you yesterday I anticipate meeting you again, today.
I have no idea where or in whom, so come Lord Jesus, surprise me.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Today's text
Luke 3:8
Produce fruit in keeping with repentance, and do not start telling yourselves, "We have Abraham as our father," because, I tell you, God can raise Children for Abraham from these stones.
Reflection
The fruit you seek is the flow of your generosity and justice through the confines of our narrow lives.
Our inherent self-concern clogs the arteries of grace so that little reaches through us to the heart of need that always surrounds. Then there are moments when I just don’t want to be bothered.
A man pushes a card or a paper in my hand as I walk a busy street. My soul, heart and conscience tell me to stop; block the flow of pedestrians in the intersection. Take the card and give the man a couple of dollars. He’s homeless, or at least says he’s doing this for the homeless.
Who is to know? I doubt it’s a scam. He looks homeless. But then … is it?
The question passes through my mind in an instant. I push the card back into his hand and cross the street, trying to convince myself that this is a poor way to help the homeless. I give to other things, I think to myself.
All true. But my heart accuses me, allowing me no rest. And this morning my mind resists thinking about these words of John the Baptizer, as he calls me to do the works of a changed heart, a heart that belongs to the infinite generosity and immeasurable mercy of God--to you, Holy One, whom I need as much as my next breath.
The reasons for my uneasy conscience are obvious. The man with his cards reminds me (again) of my failure to be human. A street scene lasting less than three seconds rips away my civilized façade, revealing the underlying selfishness that refuses mere inconvenience. I rush on to the next comfortable place that will welcome me, one of many that make my life so much easier than that of a guy selling cards on a December street corner.
It is no wonder God shows such favor to the poor. On city streets, their souls may be better or at least more accessible and honest than our own.
Pr. David L. Miller
Luke 3:8
Produce fruit in keeping with repentance, and do not start telling yourselves, "We have Abraham as our father," because, I tell you, God can raise Children for Abraham from these stones.
Reflection
The fruit you seek is the flow of your generosity and justice through the confines of our narrow lives.
Our inherent self-concern clogs the arteries of grace so that little reaches through us to the heart of need that always surrounds. Then there are moments when I just don’t want to be bothered.
A man pushes a card or a paper in my hand as I walk a busy street. My soul, heart and conscience tell me to stop; block the flow of pedestrians in the intersection. Take the card and give the man a couple of dollars. He’s homeless, or at least says he’s doing this for the homeless.
Who is to know? I doubt it’s a scam. He looks homeless. But then … is it?
The question passes through my mind in an instant. I push the card back into his hand and cross the street, trying to convince myself that this is a poor way to help the homeless. I give to other things, I think to myself.
All true. But my heart accuses me, allowing me no rest. And this morning my mind resists thinking about these words of John the Baptizer, as he calls me to do the works of a changed heart, a heart that belongs to the infinite generosity and immeasurable mercy of God--to you, Holy One, whom I need as much as my next breath.
The reasons for my uneasy conscience are obvious. The man with his cards reminds me (again) of my failure to be human. A street scene lasting less than three seconds rips away my civilized façade, revealing the underlying selfishness that refuses mere inconvenience. I rush on to the next comfortable place that will welcome me, one of many that make my life so much easier than that of a guy selling cards on a December street corner.
It is no wonder God shows such favor to the poor. On city streets, their souls may be better or at least more accessible and honest than our own.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Today’s text
Luke 3:1-3
In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar's reign, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judaea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of the territories of Ituraea and Trachonitis, Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, and while the high-priesthood was held by Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah, in the desert. He went through the whole Jordan area proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins ... .
Reflection
So it is, Holy One, while important people go about essential business of state, fulfilling the tedious demands of office, demanding due reverence to their position while making the rest of us aware of their significance to the social order, you come.
You come where and when you will, paying little attention to those to whom the population looks for assurance about what the markets will do or what bill will soon be enacted into law for the benefit, mostly, of those with power.
You pay no attention to power as we know it. You come in the desert places where human power is at its limit, where significance of place and position doesn’t matter, where nature reveals that we are nothing but flesh and blood and need.
You come where we have nothing of which to boast, nothing that lifts us above the common run of humanity, where our mortality is undeniable.
You come where we are most likely to listen, to hear and hunger for a voice beyond the cry of advertisers drumming up false needs and spurious wants. You come where we know our souls are far from the home, where our dis-ease moves us to seek a place, a word, a Presence for which we have longed, but seldom, if ever, entered.
You draw us to desert places where who we think we are and what we have done doesn’t matter, where we can acknowledge that the clothes in which we wrap ourselves, hiding our real faces, are illusory.
There your word comes to us, as to John, revealing again what (on some level) we already knew: that we need, and our need cries from depths we cannot deny.
We need the love you are, if we are ever to be free and full, if ever we are to be our truest selves. So lead us into desert places, and speak to us.
We hunger for your voice to touch the places we hide.
Pr. David L. Miller
Luke 3:1-3
In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar's reign, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judaea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of the territories of Ituraea and Trachonitis, Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, and while the high-priesthood was held by Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah, in the desert. He went through the whole Jordan area proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins ... .
Reflection
So it is, Holy One, while important people go about essential business of state, fulfilling the tedious demands of office, demanding due reverence to their position while making the rest of us aware of their significance to the social order, you come.
You come where and when you will, paying little attention to those to whom the population looks for assurance about what the markets will do or what bill will soon be enacted into law for the benefit, mostly, of those with power.
You pay no attention to power as we know it. You come in the desert places where human power is at its limit, where significance of place and position doesn’t matter, where nature reveals that we are nothing but flesh and blood and need.
You come where we have nothing of which to boast, nothing that lifts us above the common run of humanity, where our mortality is undeniable.
You come where we are most likely to listen, to hear and hunger for a voice beyond the cry of advertisers drumming up false needs and spurious wants. You come where we know our souls are far from the home, where our dis-ease moves us to seek a place, a word, a Presence for which we have longed, but seldom, if ever, entered.
You draw us to desert places where who we think we are and what we have done doesn’t matter, where we can acknowledge that the clothes in which we wrap ourselves, hiding our real faces, are illusory.
There your word comes to us, as to John, revealing again what (on some level) we already knew: that we need, and our need cries from depths we cannot deny.
We need the love you are, if we are ever to be free and full, if ever we are to be our truest selves. So lead us into desert places, and speak to us.
We hunger for your voice to touch the places we hide.
Pr. David L. Miller
Friday, November 27, 2009
Friday, November 27, 2009
Friday, November 27, 2009
Today’s text
1 Thessalonians 3:12-13
May the Lord increase and enrich your love for each other and for all, so that it matches ours for you. And may he so confirm your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless in the sight of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.
Reflection
The only holiness we have is the love that you wring from our stingy souls. And wring is the correct word, as we cling with death grip to our puny self-respect and the carefully tended masks that hide the need we fear to name.
I grow more insular each year, more drawn into myself, protecting my thoughts and anxieties, yet continually more needing the simplicity of connection, accepting friendships where all that matters is transparent humanity.
I long for moments of discovery when the beauty of a human heart shines through the bruises and wounds apathetic life inflicts on our fragile souls. And fragile, they are, easily lost to apathy or anger, to old wounds and suspicious bitterness born of too little love and too much living.
We hunger for the sacrament of safe space, for space in which false faces fade and masks are put away, and we risk needing and being needed. We need to become children again, unashamed of our want.
It is then that joy surprises us as we taste the happy communion for which you made us Holy One, a joy in which the love we know and share streams from the depth of eternity.
Most times we arrive at this grace only after denials of our needs are stripped away, when failed attempts to fill the hole in our hearts have proved futile, when you reveal (again) to our recalcitrance that we cannot be human except through surrender to need and love.
In that surrender we know you; even those who say they don’t believe know you, though they do not know how to name you.
But then neither do I. Who can name you?
For you are the Love that has left this wound, this need for Love in our hearts, and you are the Love that alone can heal us. Every love is a sacrament of the Love you are.
And loving is our only holiness, a share in the mystery of your life.
So let it be.
Pr. David L. Miller
Today’s text
1 Thessalonians 3:12-13
May the Lord increase and enrich your love for each other and for all, so that it matches ours for you. And may he so confirm your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless in the sight of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.
Reflection
The only holiness we have is the love that you wring from our stingy souls. And wring is the correct word, as we cling with death grip to our puny self-respect and the carefully tended masks that hide the need we fear to name.
I grow more insular each year, more drawn into myself, protecting my thoughts and anxieties, yet continually more needing the simplicity of connection, accepting friendships where all that matters is transparent humanity.
I long for moments of discovery when the beauty of a human heart shines through the bruises and wounds apathetic life inflicts on our fragile souls. And fragile, they are, easily lost to apathy or anger, to old wounds and suspicious bitterness born of too little love and too much living.
We hunger for the sacrament of safe space, for space in which false faces fade and masks are put away, and we risk needing and being needed. We need to become children again, unashamed of our want.
It is then that joy surprises us as we taste the happy communion for which you made us Holy One, a joy in which the love we know and share streams from the depth of eternity.
Most times we arrive at this grace only after denials of our needs are stripped away, when failed attempts to fill the hole in our hearts have proved futile, when you reveal (again) to our recalcitrance that we cannot be human except through surrender to need and love.
In that surrender we know you; even those who say they don’t believe know you, though they do not know how to name you.
But then neither do I. Who can name you?
For you are the Love that has left this wound, this need for Love in our hearts, and you are the Love that alone can heal us. Every love is a sacrament of the Love you are.
And loving is our only holiness, a share in the mystery of your life.
So let it be.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Today’s text
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Look, the days are coming, Yahweh declares, when I shall fulfill the promise of happiness I made to the House of Israel and the House of Judah: In those days and at that time, I shall make an upright Branch grow for David, who will do what is just and upright in the country. In those days Judah will triumph and Israel live in safety. And this is the name the city will be called: Yahweh-is-our-Saving-Justice."
Reflection
May the day come soon.
I understand why those who first heard Jeremiah’s words hungered for victory and safety. They lived under the heel of bitter oppression. Past ravages by sworn enemies put their fears on hair-trigger alert. It was a terrible way to live, always watching, anxiously anticipating the worst.
They wanted triumph, even revenge on the oppressor. I understand the urge, even as I reject it because it only creates more of the same. The ugly cycle of oppression, struggle, restoration and renewed oppression constantly repeats itself in human history and in our own personal histories.
The struggle draws the best and worst from our souls. The beauty of those who sacrifice for the liberation of others moves tears at the human capacity to give. But the tendency of the liberated to oppress once they have power moves astonishment at our forgetful idiocy: “How quickly we forget. Will we ever learn?”
So the prophet’s words do not move hunger for triumph over enemies far or near, Holy One. There is no blood lust in my soul these days, only sad longing for the day you promise, a day when you will be our saving justice.
So come and save us from ourselves. Save us from our angers, our myopic self-interest, our need to be right, our denunciations of others, our bitterness over slights and rejections and especially our failure to feel in our bones that that all of life, all of humanity, is one intricately connected family.
Transform our hearts so that we t know that the Love you are is life’s only justice, intended for all. May our hearts hunger for your justice and become your salvation, ending the ugly cycle that runs through all history and the depth of our hearts.
Save us from ourselves that we may become as you are.
Pr. David L. Miller
Today’s text
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Look, the days are coming, Yahweh declares, when I shall fulfill the promise of happiness I made to the House of Israel and the House of Judah: In those days and at that time, I shall make an upright Branch grow for David, who will do what is just and upright in the country. In those days Judah will triumph and Israel live in safety. And this is the name the city will be called: Yahweh-is-our-Saving-Justice."
Reflection
May the day come soon.
I understand why those who first heard Jeremiah’s words hungered for victory and safety. They lived under the heel of bitter oppression. Past ravages by sworn enemies put their fears on hair-trigger alert. It was a terrible way to live, always watching, anxiously anticipating the worst.
They wanted triumph, even revenge on the oppressor. I understand the urge, even as I reject it because it only creates more of the same. The ugly cycle of oppression, struggle, restoration and renewed oppression constantly repeats itself in human history and in our own personal histories.
The struggle draws the best and worst from our souls. The beauty of those who sacrifice for the liberation of others moves tears at the human capacity to give. But the tendency of the liberated to oppress once they have power moves astonishment at our forgetful idiocy: “How quickly we forget. Will we ever learn?”
So the prophet’s words do not move hunger for triumph over enemies far or near, Holy One. There is no blood lust in my soul these days, only sad longing for the day you promise, a day when you will be our saving justice.
So come and save us from ourselves. Save us from our angers, our myopic self-interest, our need to be right, our denunciations of others, our bitterness over slights and rejections and especially our failure to feel in our bones that that all of life, all of humanity, is one intricately connected family.
Transform our hearts so that we t know that the Love you are is life’s only justice, intended for all. May our hearts hunger for your justice and become your salvation, ending the ugly cycle that runs through all history and the depth of our hearts.
Save us from ourselves that we may become as you are.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Today’s text
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Look, the days are coming, Yahweh declares, when I shall fulfill the promise of happiness I made to the House of Israel and the House of Judah: In those days and at that time, I shall make an upright Branch grow for David, who will do what is just and upright in the country. In those days Judah will triumph and Israel live in safety. And this is the name the city will be called: Yahweh-is-our-Saving-Justice."
Reflection
Come, Lord Jesus. You are the righteous branch who grows from King David’s line. You are the fulfillment of promise and not of God’s promise alone. You fulfill the longing prophetic words stir in our hearts long centuries after their origin.
And we have such longing. We hunger to see, hear and be blessed by one who wills what you will, Loving Mystery, who loves what you love, who is pure in heart, fully given to your eternal desire.
We long to know Jesus, our brother who is truly your child, given solely to you. Seeing him, we know you and the life and the happiness for which we are intended.
So turn my heart from the distractions in which I delight. Turn my eyes to Jesus that I may see a life always guided by your eternal desire.
Let me see in him the beauty for which I hunger, for it is only in seeing and knowing that beauty also within myself that happiness comes, with truest humanity and the peaceful assurance that, finally, I have arrived home.
Pr. David L. Miller
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Look, the days are coming, Yahweh declares, when I shall fulfill the promise of happiness I made to the House of Israel and the House of Judah: In those days and at that time, I shall make an upright Branch grow for David, who will do what is just and upright in the country. In those days Judah will triumph and Israel live in safety. And this is the name the city will be called: Yahweh-is-our-Saving-Justice."
Reflection
Come, Lord Jesus. You are the righteous branch who grows from King David’s line. You are the fulfillment of promise and not of God’s promise alone. You fulfill the longing prophetic words stir in our hearts long centuries after their origin.
And we have such longing. We hunger to see, hear and be blessed by one who wills what you will, Loving Mystery, who loves what you love, who is pure in heart, fully given to your eternal desire.
We long to know Jesus, our brother who is truly your child, given solely to you. Seeing him, we know you and the life and the happiness for which we are intended.
So turn my heart from the distractions in which I delight. Turn my eyes to Jesus that I may see a life always guided by your eternal desire.
Let me see in him the beauty for which I hunger, for it is only in seeing and knowing that beauty also within myself that happiness comes, with truest humanity and the peaceful assurance that, finally, I have arrived home.
Pr. David L. Miller
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:8-9
You have not seen him, yet you love him; and still without seeing him you believe in him and so are already filled with a joy so glorious that it cannot be described; and you are sure of the goal of your faith, that is, the salvation of your souls.
Reflection
The soul seems like such an inconsequential reality. Some doubt that it is a reality at all. It’s an illusion, a puff of smoke, a fleeting intuition that one is more than mere molecules that chemistry and biology can explain.
But I often come to my day badly in need of being saved. My soul is sour, not hopeful; my orientation is towards things small and petty, the every day wrangling of getting a few things done before surrendering to the clock. Nothing in me soars, hopes or expects to taste the greatness of being alive, of knowing wonder, of feeling moved by love, beauty, laughter or tears.
Cynicism reigns on such days. Life fades to gray. Happiness is a mere diversion from the conflicts, disappointments and the anxieties that rush through consciousness at warp speed, soon to be replaced by others, too many of which set up shop and stay for a while, souring the spirit.
But salvation does appear, sometimes from out of nowhere, when I least expect. It is then that all this fades, and life takes on color and again. Consolation fills gray desolate places, and vision lifts to see life and possibilities not there moments before.
The heart, the soul grows full of gratitude and rich with generosity. It is then that I know the goal of my faith, your goal Holy One, to bring all that is and all of me--all the time--into this wholeness of life where grace reigns and the heart is sure that this salvation, once tasted, will come full come.
I wake this day again in need of being saved. I suppose that’s pretty much true everyday. When one learns a melancholy spirit as a child, the notion of soul, this inevitable orientation toward life that shapes and colors all one sees, seems natural as breathing.
What is less automatic is living in the love that lifts the soul to song. That one must receive as a gift you can never control but only look for and be ready to receive when it appears.
So today I look and wait to taste again the salvation I need.
Come quickly, Lord Jesus.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Peter 1:8-9
You have not seen him, yet you love him; and still without seeing him you believe in him and so are already filled with a joy so glorious that it cannot be described; and you are sure of the goal of your faith, that is, the salvation of your souls.
Reflection
The soul seems like such an inconsequential reality. Some doubt that it is a reality at all. It’s an illusion, a puff of smoke, a fleeting intuition that one is more than mere molecules that chemistry and biology can explain.
But I often come to my day badly in need of being saved. My soul is sour, not hopeful; my orientation is towards things small and petty, the every day wrangling of getting a few things done before surrendering to the clock. Nothing in me soars, hopes or expects to taste the greatness of being alive, of knowing wonder, of feeling moved by love, beauty, laughter or tears.
Cynicism reigns on such days. Life fades to gray. Happiness is a mere diversion from the conflicts, disappointments and the anxieties that rush through consciousness at warp speed, soon to be replaced by others, too many of which set up shop and stay for a while, souring the spirit.
But salvation does appear, sometimes from out of nowhere, when I least expect. It is then that all this fades, and life takes on color and again. Consolation fills gray desolate places, and vision lifts to see life and possibilities not there moments before.
The heart, the soul grows full of gratitude and rich with generosity. It is then that I know the goal of my faith, your goal Holy One, to bring all that is and all of me--all the time--into this wholeness of life where grace reigns and the heart is sure that this salvation, once tasted, will come full come.
I wake this day again in need of being saved. I suppose that’s pretty much true everyday. When one learns a melancholy spirit as a child, the notion of soul, this inevitable orientation toward life that shapes and colors all one sees, seems natural as breathing.
What is less automatic is living in the love that lifts the soul to song. That one must receive as a gift you can never control but only look for and be ready to receive when it appears.
So today I look and wait to taste again the salvation I need.
Come quickly, Lord Jesus.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:8-9
You have not seen him, yet you love him; and still without seeing him you believe in him and so are already filled with a joy so glorious that it cannot be described; and you are sure of the goal of your faith, that is, the salvation of your souls.
Reflection
But I have seen you, Jesus.
I live in 21st century North America, not first century Palestine. I have not walked down dusty roads as did the privileged and fearful few who were your friends and followers.
I have not touched the literal flesh of your hand, watched the contour of your cheek when you smiled or reacted to the familiar timbre of your voice when happy or sad, angry or determined.
None of that lies within my experience.
But my stomach turns at the sound of these words, for I believe I have seen. I cannot read these words about not seeing without feeling false.
The scenes of your ministry are vivid enough in my imagination to provide moments of awareness in which I know, however partially, what it was like to walk with you, to be frightened by and for you, to bask in the warmth of your welcome and even to be corrected for my foolish fears and lack of care.
I have also seen your soul in the souls of people from more than one or two places and cultures, and I marvel at the vision, the willingness to bear pain, the hope and joy I have witnessed.
I believe you live because I have seen how you stir life and care even in souls who aren’t quite sure what to make of you.
You are not absent. You are not separate from the souls of men and women but dwell at depths unsearchable, and your presence streams out of us when the dams that block your way wear down.
I have seen your beauty, and it saves my soul each time I see it. It stirs your life in me, and I become a little more alive.
So I don’t want to hear about not seeing you. That is neither my perspective nor experience.
Instead, I will simply thank you for giving me enough vision to see what I need to see, and to know that it is you whom I see amid the faces.
Pr. David L. Miller
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:8-9
You have not seen him, yet you love him; and still without seeing him you believe in him and so are already filled with a joy so glorious that it cannot be described; and you are sure of the goal of your faith, that is, the salvation of your souls.
Reflection
But I have seen you, Jesus.
I live in 21st century North America, not first century Palestine. I have not walked down dusty roads as did the privileged and fearful few who were your friends and followers.
I have not touched the literal flesh of your hand, watched the contour of your cheek when you smiled or reacted to the familiar timbre of your voice when happy or sad, angry or determined.
None of that lies within my experience.
But my stomach turns at the sound of these words, for I believe I have seen. I cannot read these words about not seeing without feeling false.
The scenes of your ministry are vivid enough in my imagination to provide moments of awareness in which I know, however partially, what it was like to walk with you, to be frightened by and for you, to bask in the warmth of your welcome and even to be corrected for my foolish fears and lack of care.
I have also seen your soul in the souls of people from more than one or two places and cultures, and I marvel at the vision, the willingness to bear pain, the hope and joy I have witnessed.
I believe you live because I have seen how you stir life and care even in souls who aren’t quite sure what to make of you.
You are not absent. You are not separate from the souls of men and women but dwell at depths unsearchable, and your presence streams out of us when the dams that block your way wear down.
I have seen your beauty, and it saves my soul each time I see it. It stirs your life in me, and I become a little more alive.
So I don’t want to hear about not seeing you. That is neither my perspective nor experience.
Instead, I will simply thank you for giving me enough vision to see what I need to see, and to know that it is you whom I see amid the faces.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:6-7
This is a great joy to you, even though for a short time yet you must bear all sorts of trials; so that the worth of your faith, more valuable than gold, which is perishable even if it has been tested by fire, may be proved -- to your praise and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Reflection
What is the worth of our faith? What proves its value and praises you, dear Friend?
I have often seen the faith of souls who did not crumble under hardship. They kept hoping and looking for signs of your redeeming presence well beyond the limits of normal human patience.
Perhaps this is a primary proof of faith’s great value. We hope when no one and nothing else gives reason for hope. We look for the enduring presence of love when grief, loss or threat fill our senses.
Our souls lift to the future’s unseen, unknown hills, trusting that something, someone--You--will be there and we will know it, even though your nearness is not felt in the here and now.
Our faith brings with it an endurance, buoyancy, a sly wait-and-see smile that intuitively knows you are God, and you are not done.
It stands ready to break out in joy, with a heart that “knew all along” that you would answer with a love that constantly labors beyond the limits of our vision.
Today, well everyday, I need this faith, my Lord. It awakens in me a giddy joy quick to laugh and willing to wait and see what you yet will do.
That laughter is prayer of greatest praise for you, Loving Mystery. So today, let me laugh.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Peter 1:6-7
This is a great joy to you, even though for a short time yet you must bear all sorts of trials; so that the worth of your faith, more valuable than gold, which is perishable even if it has been tested by fire, may be proved -- to your praise and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Reflection
What is the worth of our faith? What proves its value and praises you, dear Friend?
I have often seen the faith of souls who did not crumble under hardship. They kept hoping and looking for signs of your redeeming presence well beyond the limits of normal human patience.
Perhaps this is a primary proof of faith’s great value. We hope when no one and nothing else gives reason for hope. We look for the enduring presence of love when grief, loss or threat fill our senses.
Our souls lift to the future’s unseen, unknown hills, trusting that something, someone--You--will be there and we will know it, even though your nearness is not felt in the here and now.
Our faith brings with it an endurance, buoyancy, a sly wait-and-see smile that intuitively knows you are God, and you are not done.
It stands ready to break out in joy, with a heart that “knew all along” that you would answer with a love that constantly labors beyond the limits of our vision.
Today, well everyday, I need this faith, my Lord. It awakens in me a giddy joy quick to laugh and willing to wait and see what you yet will do.
That laughter is prayer of greatest praise for you, Loving Mystery. So today, let me laugh.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:6-7
This is a great joy to you, even though for a short time yet you must bear all sorts of trials; so that the worth of your faith, more valuable than gold, which is perishable even if it has been tested by fire, may be proved -- to your praise and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Reflection
The fire that tests our faith burns more slowly and secretly today. Generations before us bore scars of rejection and bitter persecution. This still happens, though usually not in Western countries.
Those who endured such trials knew that faith is perishable. It must be struggled for or one soon sinks into the great mass of mediocrity, indistinguishable from the surrounding culture. Faith no longer shapes one’s words and acts. It devolves into meaningless belief without power to shape choices or determine who we are.
Consumerism may be the most dangerous fire for North Americans. Slowly, secretly and inevitably, it erodes awareness that we are beloved children of the Beloved One, called to live the love we receive.
Consumers know the world exists for them, and they demand their way, to get what they want when and where they want it. Our culture does an excellent job forming consumers. From an early age we learn life is about consuming things, finding happiness there.
For us, the earth, other people and even the Christ’s holy Church easily become commodities to be used for one’s one purposes. We come to each situation with the attitude that it exists for me, to deliver what I want, and when it doesn’t deliver frustration and anger quickly appear.
Consumerism is the bitter enemy of communion, and it is to communion that we are called.
Christ brings us into a communion of love, life and mission, communion in his life, shared with others. Our souls are made for this. It is holy, bringing consolation and joy.
Consumerism brings anxiety and unrest. It is never truly satisfied. It worships its whims and ability to satisfy them, often at the expense of others close at hand or the great mass of humanity far away who labor for near nothing to make our lives possible. It constantly justifies its anger and frustration, and it tears at the fabric of communion in Christ’s church, treating human souls as mere objects.
It constantly misses the truth: by love and for love we are made, and in loving communion we find ourselves and God. This faith is surrendered to the logic of the marketplace that makes everything an it and nothing is a thou.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Peter 1:6-7
This is a great joy to you, even though for a short time yet you must bear all sorts of trials; so that the worth of your faith, more valuable than gold, which is perishable even if it has been tested by fire, may be proved -- to your praise and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Reflection
The fire that tests our faith burns more slowly and secretly today. Generations before us bore scars of rejection and bitter persecution. This still happens, though usually not in Western countries.
Those who endured such trials knew that faith is perishable. It must be struggled for or one soon sinks into the great mass of mediocrity, indistinguishable from the surrounding culture. Faith no longer shapes one’s words and acts. It devolves into meaningless belief without power to shape choices or determine who we are.
Consumerism may be the most dangerous fire for North Americans. Slowly, secretly and inevitably, it erodes awareness that we are beloved children of the Beloved One, called to live the love we receive.
Consumers know the world exists for them, and they demand their way, to get what they want when and where they want it. Our culture does an excellent job forming consumers. From an early age we learn life is about consuming things, finding happiness there.
For us, the earth, other people and even the Christ’s holy Church easily become commodities to be used for one’s one purposes. We come to each situation with the attitude that it exists for me, to deliver what I want, and when it doesn’t deliver frustration and anger quickly appear.
Consumerism is the bitter enemy of communion, and it is to communion that we are called.
Christ brings us into a communion of love, life and mission, communion in his life, shared with others. Our souls are made for this. It is holy, bringing consolation and joy.
Consumerism brings anxiety and unrest. It is never truly satisfied. It worships its whims and ability to satisfy them, often at the expense of others close at hand or the great mass of humanity far away who labor for near nothing to make our lives possible. It constantly justifies its anger and frustration, and it tears at the fabric of communion in Christ’s church, treating human souls as mere objects.
It constantly misses the truth: by love and for love we are made, and in loving communion we find ourselves and God. This faith is surrendered to the logic of the marketplace that makes everything an it and nothing is a thou.
Pr. David L. Miller
Friday, November 06, 2009
Thursday, November 6, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:6-7
This is a great joy to you, even though for a short time yet you must bear all sorts of trials; so that the worth of your faith, more valuable than gold, which is perishable even if it has been tested by fire, may be proved -- to your praise and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Reflection
Trials come with the sunrise. Sleep is blessed respite for those who can, but anxiety and pain flood the conscious mind of the burdened before slumber leaves their eyes.
It is so for many, and certainly for those who fill my mind as quickly as I choke the alarm’s infernal buzzing. Their faces bring no new questions, only old unanswered ones.
Why this suffering? Why do those who already have too much on their plate get second and third helpings? Why do even the young suffer so much illness, depression, abuse and untimely death?
This is so gloomy compared to the joy you speak to my heart, Lord. Your words penetrate and clear away my questions without offering an answer.
“You must bear all sorts of trials.” Yes, we know. You need not tell us. But the hope we hold is “a great joy.”
Now that we most often don’t know. Hope gets hidden in the cloud of trial, and its joy is lost to us. We must struggle for it.
We must remind each other that You are not silent. Love speaks. It is near as the trembling flesh and quavering voice of those who know neither what to do or say to end our trials, but who come near, bearing the weight of their own humanity.
There will come a day when the separation of our mortality and your immortality is gone, when our ceaseless need and your constant love fully find each other at last.
I believe this not because words on a page tell me so, but because every experience of love and loss, trial and struggle reveals an objection and a hope written on my soul. Each trial awakens awareness that we hunger for more, for freedom from all that disfigures life and snatches it away.
This comes from you and is flagged into flame by the resurrection of Jesus. So that on days like today, I look at the present circumstance knowing, “this, too, will find redemption.”
I don’t know how, where or when. But it will, and I will fight to make it happen even if I don’t get to see it until the day you make all things new.
It is your fight, Holy One. Let me fight it with joyous hope, for I want to honor you.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Peter 1:6-7
This is a great joy to you, even though for a short time yet you must bear all sorts of trials; so that the worth of your faith, more valuable than gold, which is perishable even if it has been tested by fire, may be proved -- to your praise and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Reflection
Trials come with the sunrise. Sleep is blessed respite for those who can, but anxiety and pain flood the conscious mind of the burdened before slumber leaves their eyes.
It is so for many, and certainly for those who fill my mind as quickly as I choke the alarm’s infernal buzzing. Their faces bring no new questions, only old unanswered ones.
Why this suffering? Why do those who already have too much on their plate get second and third helpings? Why do even the young suffer so much illness, depression, abuse and untimely death?
This is so gloomy compared to the joy you speak to my heart, Lord. Your words penetrate and clear away my questions without offering an answer.
“You must bear all sorts of trials.” Yes, we know. You need not tell us. But the hope we hold is “a great joy.”
Now that we most often don’t know. Hope gets hidden in the cloud of trial, and its joy is lost to us. We must struggle for it.
We must remind each other that You are not silent. Love speaks. It is near as the trembling flesh and quavering voice of those who know neither what to do or say to end our trials, but who come near, bearing the weight of their own humanity.
There will come a day when the separation of our mortality and your immortality is gone, when our ceaseless need and your constant love fully find each other at last.
I believe this not because words on a page tell me so, but because every experience of love and loss, trial and struggle reveals an objection and a hope written on my soul. Each trial awakens awareness that we hunger for more, for freedom from all that disfigures life and snatches it away.
This comes from you and is flagged into flame by the resurrection of Jesus. So that on days like today, I look at the present circumstance knowing, “this, too, will find redemption.”
I don’t know how, where or when. But it will, and I will fight to make it happen even if I don’t get to see it until the day you make all things new.
It is your fight, Holy One. Let me fight it with joyous hope, for I want to honor you.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:3-5
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into a heritage that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away. It is reserved in heaven for you who are being kept safe by God's power through faith until the salvation which has been prepared is revealed at the final point of time.
Reflection
At the heart of our lives, Holy One, is a yearning for a great love, a love for which we stretch and grasp but which lies always beyond our reach. We hunger to unite as one with that love to fulfill this longing, an ache we did not choose but find within ourselves.
We yearn and stir with anxious agitation, hungry for final satisfaction of soul that can come only as we and that love are one love, abiding in each other so closely that we find that love within ourselves and find ourselves within that love, walls of separation finally gone.
I feel this better than I describe it, My Lord, for I know it within myself. And I know what it is that I describe--salvation, the final wholeness for which our human frame is made.
The word … salvation … has grown so trite and meaningless in our world. It is used for those who have made some kind of decision about who you are, those intended for heaven, those who will escape final punishment. It’s all so disconnected with what is most deeply rooted in us that you seem so intent on saving.
You would save our inmost being, that hunger for love (for you!) that you fashioned in us, a salvation that comes not from some decision of ours but only as we find and see and surrender to the presence of Love within our own being.
There are moments when your love and ours seem one, when your joy and mine are shared, when your struggle and my labor beat in time, singing a single tune. The heart falls quiet, at rest, and I realize I am possessed, indwelt by a Love I did not fashion. I find myself (yes, finally) in a space where your love surrounds and envelops me and all that is.
This is salvation, and the joy it brings need not be forced or even requested. It is just there before any asking can occur.
I suppose something like this is what you have prepared and laid up in heaven for us. But great as this will be, I think I might recognize it. For, I have known it here and now, kneeling and lighting a candle and discovering a joy within that spills from your heart and into my own, sensing that we are not two, but one.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Peter 1:3-5
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into a heritage that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away. It is reserved in heaven for you who are being kept safe by God's power through faith until the salvation which has been prepared is revealed at the final point of time.
Reflection
At the heart of our lives, Holy One, is a yearning for a great love, a love for which we stretch and grasp but which lies always beyond our reach. We hunger to unite as one with that love to fulfill this longing, an ache we did not choose but find within ourselves.
We yearn and stir with anxious agitation, hungry for final satisfaction of soul that can come only as we and that love are one love, abiding in each other so closely that we find that love within ourselves and find ourselves within that love, walls of separation finally gone.
I feel this better than I describe it, My Lord, for I know it within myself. And I know what it is that I describe--salvation, the final wholeness for which our human frame is made.
The word … salvation … has grown so trite and meaningless in our world. It is used for those who have made some kind of decision about who you are, those intended for heaven, those who will escape final punishment. It’s all so disconnected with what is most deeply rooted in us that you seem so intent on saving.
You would save our inmost being, that hunger for love (for you!) that you fashioned in us, a salvation that comes not from some decision of ours but only as we find and see and surrender to the presence of Love within our own being.
There are moments when your love and ours seem one, when your joy and mine are shared, when your struggle and my labor beat in time, singing a single tune. The heart falls quiet, at rest, and I realize I am possessed, indwelt by a Love I did not fashion. I find myself (yes, finally) in a space where your love surrounds and envelops me and all that is.
This is salvation, and the joy it brings need not be forced or even requested. It is just there before any asking can occur.
I suppose something like this is what you have prepared and laid up in heaven for us. But great as this will be, I think I might recognize it. For, I have known it here and now, kneeling and lighting a candle and discovering a joy within that spills from your heart and into my own, sensing that we are not two, but one.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:3-5
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into a heritage that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away. It is reserved in heaven for you who are being kept safe by God's power through faith until the salvation which has been prepared is revealed at the final point of time.
Reflection
How might I be different if I consistently believed that I am “kept safe” by your power? My mind would entertain far fewer anxious thoughts. My anxious heart would find rest even when threat is near, for you, Holy One, are here, always holding us.
The things that happen to all human beings can and will happen to me. I expect no special protection from the pains of mortality and finitude. The last day provides ample evidence that those nearest me possess no special exemption.
For one, insidious decline brings greater confinement. She must be tied down lest she hurt herself, while those who love her best look on, helpless to do anything for the person who most taught them how to be human.
For others, financial and housing set-backs reveal that they have less influence over what happens to them and their families than they want, need or imagined they had. The weakness of the flesh is their daily bread.
Undeniable threat and inevitable loss loom near. And for some, the only assurance is greater grief.
Safety is not the condition for any of those who faces appear in my morning mind.
But even these, you tell me, are kept safe in your power. Even now, even these rest in the hand of grace from which they will not be snatched. Even in unsafest condition, the power and grace you are can and will be known.
Trust, you say. Have faith. Tears are laced with grace. Threat has its moment. Sorrow endures an evening, but grace will have its say, and its final day holds no setting of the sun. It will not fade once begun.
For I am. And I am love unbounded. Morning will come … and stay. Even in grief, grace will mark your cheeks, and the hope held in your heart will hold you.
As do I.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Peter 1:3-5
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into a heritage that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away. It is reserved in heaven for you who are being kept safe by God's power through faith until the salvation which has been prepared is revealed at the final point of time.
Reflection
How might I be different if I consistently believed that I am “kept safe” by your power? My mind would entertain far fewer anxious thoughts. My anxious heart would find rest even when threat is near, for you, Holy One, are here, always holding us.
The things that happen to all human beings can and will happen to me. I expect no special protection from the pains of mortality and finitude. The last day provides ample evidence that those nearest me possess no special exemption.
For one, insidious decline brings greater confinement. She must be tied down lest she hurt herself, while those who love her best look on, helpless to do anything for the person who most taught them how to be human.
For others, financial and housing set-backs reveal that they have less influence over what happens to them and their families than they want, need or imagined they had. The weakness of the flesh is their daily bread.
Undeniable threat and inevitable loss loom near. And for some, the only assurance is greater grief.
Safety is not the condition for any of those who faces appear in my morning mind.
But even these, you tell me, are kept safe in your power. Even now, even these rest in the hand of grace from which they will not be snatched. Even in unsafest condition, the power and grace you are can and will be known.
Trust, you say. Have faith. Tears are laced with grace. Threat has its moment. Sorrow endures an evening, but grace will have its say, and its final day holds no setting of the sun. It will not fade once begun.
For I am. And I am love unbounded. Morning will come … and stay. Even in grief, grace will mark your cheeks, and the hope held in your heart will hold you.
As do I.
Pr. David L. Miller
Friday, October 30, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:3-5
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into a heritage that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away. It is reserved in heaven for you … .
Reflection
I don’t think much about heaven, my Lord, except at funerals when I must stand and speak … or listen myself for words of hope.
The rest of the time the idea seldom enters my mind, although I am more sure of it as the years pass. Perhaps it is because I am closer to the time when I, too, will be gathered to the parade of generations who have gone before, who have dwelt this earth, lived their lives and fallen away. I, too, will take my place.
When I think of this a strange love appears in my heart for that great multitude and especially for those whose faces quickly come to mind, especially my father. I miss him at this time of year as All Saints approaches; he is one of my saints.
I think he would be surprised to think that I hold him responsible for the faith that burns today in my heart. He faced his end with a doubting faith, and I could not take his doubts away. I could only love him, telling him that he should rest and let me believe for him. I wanted him to have utter assurance, but I doubt I was able to provide that at the end.
Still, he believed and hoped, and he knew, truly knew, the beauty of eternity, the treasure that doesn’t fade shining through this translucent world. He had few words for this. It fell to me to name that beauty for him, the beauty of sunrise and set, of hills and green, of cattle and living things scattered on hills beneath an everlasting blue sky of wonder.
And he gave this wonder to me, along with the intuition of a Heart from which such glory springs. That would be your heart, Dearest Friend.
You are that Heart of infinte generosity and love that shines through and stirs hope even in old dying men … and me.
So when I think of a heritage laid up for me I can imagine it only in terms of the love and hope I know here and now because of faces like my father’s and what they gave me, often without even knowing it.
What awaits is completion of what already is, and I have tasted enough to know there are some things for which I have no words.
So let my silence praise you.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Peter 1:3-5
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into a heritage that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away. It is reserved in heaven for you … .
Reflection
I don’t think much about heaven, my Lord, except at funerals when I must stand and speak … or listen myself for words of hope.
The rest of the time the idea seldom enters my mind, although I am more sure of it as the years pass. Perhaps it is because I am closer to the time when I, too, will be gathered to the parade of generations who have gone before, who have dwelt this earth, lived their lives and fallen away. I, too, will take my place.
When I think of this a strange love appears in my heart for that great multitude and especially for those whose faces quickly come to mind, especially my father. I miss him at this time of year as All Saints approaches; he is one of my saints.
I think he would be surprised to think that I hold him responsible for the faith that burns today in my heart. He faced his end with a doubting faith, and I could not take his doubts away. I could only love him, telling him that he should rest and let me believe for him. I wanted him to have utter assurance, but I doubt I was able to provide that at the end.
Still, he believed and hoped, and he knew, truly knew, the beauty of eternity, the treasure that doesn’t fade shining through this translucent world. He had few words for this. It fell to me to name that beauty for him, the beauty of sunrise and set, of hills and green, of cattle and living things scattered on hills beneath an everlasting blue sky of wonder.
And he gave this wonder to me, along with the intuition of a Heart from which such glory springs. That would be your heart, Dearest Friend.
You are that Heart of infinte generosity and love that shines through and stirs hope even in old dying men … and me.
So when I think of a heritage laid up for me I can imagine it only in terms of the love and hope I know here and now because of faces like my father’s and what they gave me, often without even knowing it.
What awaits is completion of what already is, and I have tasted enough to know there are some things for which I have no words.
So let my silence praise you.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:3-4
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into a heritage that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away.
Reflection
What is this lightness of being, this unbidden appearance of joy? It comes when I expected nothing, creeping unheard into my being. No signal marked its approach. I could not run to welcome the sunrise amid the night of soul of recent weeks.
Nothing sudden occurs, no great and shining moment, no reversal of fortune or deliverance from challenge. Nothing. But joy comes, welling within, lifting and filling the heart that it becomes, again, an engine of energy and gracious good will.
Hectoring inner voices fall silent. Their ghosts disappear, leaving no fear of their return.
Hope fills their place, and promise colors the day and each new encounter. Anticipation lives were avoidance and dread cast their dreary shadow.
There will be joy. There will be grace. This I know without knowing how I know.
Surely, I am deluded. But this freshness is as undeniable as the unrelenting sadness that had turned all days gray. I choose to deny neither. Honesty requires this much.
Strangely, there is no need in me to grasp this new birth that quietly appears from the grace of your Mystery. This is new.
I feel no desire to hold it fast lest it escape me, and I fall again into the darkness. My soul knows only rest and confidence. I have no idea what the day will bring. I know only the unwavering assurance that you will abide my being, unshakable and sure.
Darkness comes and darkness goes, but you abide, Holy One. New birth will come out of the darkness, and I cannot command its time.
“Patience,” you whisper. “The day will come.”
I can only await the sunrise, oppressed by the darkness, yes, but knowing the freshness of unspoilt morning will again be born in a time of your choosing.
Wait, trust, the day will come. Even now.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Peter 1:3-4
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into a heritage that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away.
Reflection
What is this lightness of being, this unbidden appearance of joy? It comes when I expected nothing, creeping unheard into my being. No signal marked its approach. I could not run to welcome the sunrise amid the night of soul of recent weeks.
Nothing sudden occurs, no great and shining moment, no reversal of fortune or deliverance from challenge. Nothing. But joy comes, welling within, lifting and filling the heart that it becomes, again, an engine of energy and gracious good will.
Hectoring inner voices fall silent. Their ghosts disappear, leaving no fear of their return.
Hope fills their place, and promise colors the day and each new encounter. Anticipation lives were avoidance and dread cast their dreary shadow.
There will be joy. There will be grace. This I know without knowing how I know.
Surely, I am deluded. But this freshness is as undeniable as the unrelenting sadness that had turned all days gray. I choose to deny neither. Honesty requires this much.
Strangely, there is no need in me to grasp this new birth that quietly appears from the grace of your Mystery. This is new.
I feel no desire to hold it fast lest it escape me, and I fall again into the darkness. My soul knows only rest and confidence. I have no idea what the day will bring. I know only the unwavering assurance that you will abide my being, unshakable and sure.
Darkness comes and darkness goes, but you abide, Holy One. New birth will come out of the darkness, and I cannot command its time.
“Patience,” you whisper. “The day will come.”
I can only await the sunrise, oppressed by the darkness, yes, but knowing the freshness of unspoilt morning will again be born in a time of your choosing.
Wait, trust, the day will come. Even now.
Pr. David L. Miller
Thursday, October 22, 2009
October 22, 2009
Reflection
The color of paradise
The trees grow bright with praise, lit from within by colors no hand can produce, except yours, Loving Mystery.
Fall comes demanding poetry to capture the colors. But our flat souls lie content with mere prose, words that tear and strain to describe the beauty our eyes caress--and this feeling that arises from a place we cannot name, except that it is in us.
Awaking, I open the door and smell the earth, moist and fresh. My heart rises for reasons it refuses to tell me, but I know: all is well and will be so.
This lightness of being … and hope is the greatest I have known in days, and it comes at the end of things.
Summer is gone. Autumn comes reminding me again that all things end. The warm sun wanes, and winter (too soon to come) must be endured … again, until I am no more.
But the colors speak, an impressionist’s palette of burnished red and gold constantly remixed, shimmering fire and translucent gold, falling by the millions in piles school children shuffle through on their way to more mundane concerns.
Gold leaf covers the back patio inches deep awakening a quiet joy I can neither bid nor stop. Its source is as mysterious as the hand who paints the earth on this October morning.
Too soon it will all be gone. The colors will fade to brown and be swept into gutters. Cold rains will turn the decaying mass to thick dark sludge as we enter winter’s trudge.
But today I have seen the brilliance, the colors lit from within by the uncreated light of the One who is Being itself. I have seen, and having seen I cannot be the same.
Eternity appeared on Janes Avenue, and I was there. And more: the Spirit who paints cool fall days gave me eyes to see the fire that burns in the Heart of Love for whom I most hunger.
That Mystery paints the day with brilliance and wonder, so that with eyes of the heart, we may see the beauty of the One who treasures and holds us, who decorates fall days with the light of eternity that we may know we are made for more than just trudging through our days.
We are made to know more love, more beauty, more wonder than we can imagine. We are made for the More that shines through autumn days and in the beauty of our brother Jesus, who is lit from within by the Love that will not let us fall into the gutter and be swept away.
Some say the life of faith is about avoiding sin and being righteous … that this most glorifies God. But the glory of fall days suggests otherwise.
Maybe our life is about seeing and knowing the More that shines through every beauty, every love, every caring word--and every fresh, moist Autumn morning that awakens the awareness that all is, indeed, well.
And it is, for we rest in the hands of the Maker of the Morning, who decorates the day with the color of paradise.
And in seeing this, our little lives are colored with the beauty we see, alight with a glory beyond all time.
Pr. David L. Miller
The color of paradise
The trees grow bright with praise, lit from within by colors no hand can produce, except yours, Loving Mystery.
Fall comes demanding poetry to capture the colors. But our flat souls lie content with mere prose, words that tear and strain to describe the beauty our eyes caress--and this feeling that arises from a place we cannot name, except that it is in us.
Awaking, I open the door and smell the earth, moist and fresh. My heart rises for reasons it refuses to tell me, but I know: all is well and will be so.
This lightness of being … and hope is the greatest I have known in days, and it comes at the end of things.
Summer is gone. Autumn comes reminding me again that all things end. The warm sun wanes, and winter (too soon to come) must be endured … again, until I am no more.
But the colors speak, an impressionist’s palette of burnished red and gold constantly remixed, shimmering fire and translucent gold, falling by the millions in piles school children shuffle through on their way to more mundane concerns.
Gold leaf covers the back patio inches deep awakening a quiet joy I can neither bid nor stop. Its source is as mysterious as the hand who paints the earth on this October morning.
Too soon it will all be gone. The colors will fade to brown and be swept into gutters. Cold rains will turn the decaying mass to thick dark sludge as we enter winter’s trudge.
But today I have seen the brilliance, the colors lit from within by the uncreated light of the One who is Being itself. I have seen, and having seen I cannot be the same.
Eternity appeared on Janes Avenue, and I was there. And more: the Spirit who paints cool fall days gave me eyes to see the fire that burns in the Heart of Love for whom I most hunger.
That Mystery paints the day with brilliance and wonder, so that with eyes of the heart, we may see the beauty of the One who treasures and holds us, who decorates fall days with the light of eternity that we may know we are made for more than just trudging through our days.
We are made to know more love, more beauty, more wonder than we can imagine. We are made for the More that shines through autumn days and in the beauty of our brother Jesus, who is lit from within by the Love that will not let us fall into the gutter and be swept away.
Some say the life of faith is about avoiding sin and being righteous … that this most glorifies God. But the glory of fall days suggests otherwise.
Maybe our life is about seeing and knowing the More that shines through every beauty, every love, every caring word--and every fresh, moist Autumn morning that awakens the awareness that all is, indeed, well.
And it is, for we rest in the hands of the Maker of the Morning, who decorates the day with the color of paradise.
And in seeing this, our little lives are colored with the beauty we see, alight with a glory beyond all time.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Today's text
1 Peter 1:1-2
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into a heritage that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away.’s
Reflection
Only you are never spoilt or fade away. We rise and fall. We draw breath and grow quiet. The earth changes, erodes, erupts and reshapes itself in the constant movement of nature, unresting, unceasing, day to day, age to age.
Eons pass. The new that comes allows faint memory of the joys and sorrows of the millions who have gone before, of the earth they knew.
It is the nature of things, and we find ourselves thrown into it, taking our place in the chain of ever-changing generations, rising up with promise only to fade away.
This should be a council of despair to my soul. But it is not, for eternity is known amid the temporal and dying, the unchanging is felt in and through all that changes. You who are n ever spoilt or soiled, you who never fade away are tasted amid all that fails and falls.
Life is known by those for whom death is certain. Of this, I am certain, eve now.
For even now I know life, not as biological fact but as the eternal stirring of your grace and beauty in the tears of hope that are my morning praise to you.
Even here, even now, that which does not fade or fail, spoil or decay dwells in my inner experience of joy and hope … and the love that I know you to be, through and through.
What I taste is but a taste. Yet, it is real, and it is now. And my prayer to know the joyous consolation of your life within my mind and heart finds its answer.
So blessed are you, for you do not let death have its way in human souls. You give life and then life eternal to dead, here and now, and a hungry assurance that what I taste will be forever.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Peter 1:1-2
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into a heritage that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away.’s
Reflection
Only you are never spoilt or fade away. We rise and fall. We draw breath and grow quiet. The earth changes, erodes, erupts and reshapes itself in the constant movement of nature, unresting, unceasing, day to day, age to age.
Eons pass. The new that comes allows faint memory of the joys and sorrows of the millions who have gone before, of the earth they knew.
It is the nature of things, and we find ourselves thrown into it, taking our place in the chain of ever-changing generations, rising up with promise only to fade away.
This should be a council of despair to my soul. But it is not, for eternity is known amid the temporal and dying, the unchanging is felt in and through all that changes. You who are n ever spoilt or soiled, you who never fade away are tasted amid all that fails and falls.
Life is known by those for whom death is certain. Of this, I am certain, eve now.
For even now I know life, not as biological fact but as the eternal stirring of your grace and beauty in the tears of hope that are my morning praise to you.
Even here, even now, that which does not fade or fail, spoil or decay dwells in my inner experience of joy and hope … and the love that I know you to be, through and through.
What I taste is but a taste. Yet, it is real, and it is now. And my prayer to know the joyous consolation of your life within my mind and heart finds its answer.
So blessed are you, for you do not let death have its way in human souls. You give life and then life eternal to dead, here and now, and a hungry assurance that what I taste will be forever.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:1-2
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead
Reflection
It is at the point of hope that we are most vulnerable, Holy One.
The hope born in us is simple, yet all eternity will not be enough to satisfy it. We hope to know you, and you are inexhaustible.
You are the inexhaustible fountain of life from which all that lives flows. You are the fount of mercy who has mercy even on that which does not yet exist.
How can one have mercy on the nonexistent? I don’t know, but you do.
You look upon the infinite possibilities of life and color and beauty within yourself, and in mercy you make them come to life. Such is the source of my own being, from within you who are Being.
You had mercy on me before I existed. Seeing the possibility of my life, your mercy willed that I should be and know the joy and mystery of just being alive--and of knowing that I had nothing to be bringing myself to be. All is gift.
The inexhaustible flow of your life cannot be dammed or held captive by the cold clutch of death. You bring my brother, Jesus, again to life.
Seeing this, the soul leaps and knows that hope is no illusion. It finds its Source in the Source of Inexhaustible Mercy, in you.
Tasting the sweet surprise of being alive, we sample your mercy. We know you. Hearing the ever-fresh news of Jesus resurrection, we feel hope for all eternity flicker to life in our souls. We know you.
This is our living hope: to know you completely, with a knowledge felt in one’s uttermost depths. I know you as the Inexhaustible Fountain of the life that is in me. I know you as the Infinite Mercy who gives me life again and again that my soul may not die.
The evil one attacks at exactly this spot, seeking to erode the hope of knowing you today.
Surely, today is not special, he taunts. Surely, the pettiness of routine, the crush of deadlines and the challenge of difficult circumstances will push aside all else. Surely, my only real hope is just getting through the thicket of daily detail and making to evening.
But a living hope seeks you in every moment.
So today, I claim again the sweet surprise of being alive with a life I did not make. Today, I claim again the presence of your risen life in my heart and the lives of so many others.
Today, I feel once more that you, Holy Mystery, are the Inexhaustible Fountain of living Mercy that will not let me die.
Today, hope will live in me because you live.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Peter 1:1-2
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead
Reflection
It is at the point of hope that we are most vulnerable, Holy One.
The hope born in us is simple, yet all eternity will not be enough to satisfy it. We hope to know you, and you are inexhaustible.
You are the inexhaustible fountain of life from which all that lives flows. You are the fount of mercy who has mercy even on that which does not yet exist.
How can one have mercy on the nonexistent? I don’t know, but you do.
You look upon the infinite possibilities of life and color and beauty within yourself, and in mercy you make them come to life. Such is the source of my own being, from within you who are Being.
You had mercy on me before I existed. Seeing the possibility of my life, your mercy willed that I should be and know the joy and mystery of just being alive--and of knowing that I had nothing to be bringing myself to be. All is gift.
The inexhaustible flow of your life cannot be dammed or held captive by the cold clutch of death. You bring my brother, Jesus, again to life.
Seeing this, the soul leaps and knows that hope is no illusion. It finds its Source in the Source of Inexhaustible Mercy, in you.
Tasting the sweet surprise of being alive, we sample your mercy. We know you. Hearing the ever-fresh news of Jesus resurrection, we feel hope for all eternity flicker to life in our souls. We know you.
This is our living hope: to know you completely, with a knowledge felt in one’s uttermost depths. I know you as the Inexhaustible Fountain of the life that is in me. I know you as the Infinite Mercy who gives me life again and again that my soul may not die.
The evil one attacks at exactly this spot, seeking to erode the hope of knowing you today.
Surely, today is not special, he taunts. Surely, the pettiness of routine, the crush of deadlines and the challenge of difficult circumstances will push aside all else. Surely, my only real hope is just getting through the thicket of daily detail and making to evening.
But a living hope seeks you in every moment.
So today, I claim again the sweet surprise of being alive with a life I did not make. Today, I claim again the presence of your risen life in my heart and the lives of so many others.
Today, I feel once more that you, Holy Mystery, are the Inexhaustible Fountain of living Mercy that will not let me die.
Today, hope will live in me because you live.
Pr. David L. Miller
Friday, October 16, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:1-2
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Reflection
Morning is the time for new birth, though you are not confined to the rhythms and seasons of my life, Holy One. You can make new birth occur any where, any time. That is your way and power, and you almost always surprise.
But morning is a time of hope for newness in my heart. Daylight appears with the longing that maybe today I can get it right, do all I need to do, complete my labors and come to the day’s end with a peaceful heart.
It’s a nifty formula, if entirely misguided. My hope is premised on me getting things done, organizing my life so that the nagging anxiety of uncompleted tasks is put to bed by the work of my mind and hands.
The whole effort of trying to still my soul is moved by my fear of failing, of looking and being inadequate, unprepared and foolish.
How’s that for getting down to basics?
New birth is not found in my efforts. All I can do is anxiety management, but what I want and need is to end the anxiety altogether. This can happen only if I become someone new, someone other than whom I too often am.
Someone new must be born (again) within me. Even now, that happens. You, Jesus, come to me, come in me, in the morning light, changing my heart. No, you give me a new heart. The heart of my soul turns from worry over myself to simple trust in the Love who is the Father.
I become as you are. You trust the Love who is always enough, knowing that all that really needs to be done is not what the anxious mind suggests. All that matters is to express whatever this Love moves in heart and mind.
That is enough for the day, for any day.
You knew this every day.
So be born again in me, Lord Jesus, that my heart may be ever new.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Peter 1:1-2
Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Reflection
Morning is the time for new birth, though you are not confined to the rhythms and seasons of my life, Holy One. You can make new birth occur any where, any time. That is your way and power, and you almost always surprise.
But morning is a time of hope for newness in my heart. Daylight appears with the longing that maybe today I can get it right, do all I need to do, complete my labors and come to the day’s end with a peaceful heart.
It’s a nifty formula, if entirely misguided. My hope is premised on me getting things done, organizing my life so that the nagging anxiety of uncompleted tasks is put to bed by the work of my mind and hands.
The whole effort of trying to still my soul is moved by my fear of failing, of looking and being inadequate, unprepared and foolish.
How’s that for getting down to basics?
New birth is not found in my efforts. All I can do is anxiety management, but what I want and need is to end the anxiety altogether. This can happen only if I become someone new, someone other than whom I too often am.
Someone new must be born (again) within me. Even now, that happens. You, Jesus, come to me, come in me, in the morning light, changing my heart. No, you give me a new heart. The heart of my soul turns from worry over myself to simple trust in the Love who is the Father.
I become as you are. You trust the Love who is always enough, knowing that all that really needs to be done is not what the anxious mind suggests. All that matters is to express whatever this Love moves in heart and mind.
That is enough for the day, for any day.
You knew this every day.
So be born again in me, Lord Jesus, that my heart may be ever new.
Pr. David L. Miller
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:1-2
Peter, apostle of Jesus Christ, to all those living as aliens in the Dispersion of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen, in the foresight of God the Father, to be made holy by the Spirit, obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance.
Reflection
Now, I return to work after a week of respite, wondering if I can hold the slender insights that appeared during these days away from the stress that steals my soul.
My soul has known no rest, no peace in my normal labors. The peace that passes all understanding has passed me by altogether. It has been utterly beyond my reach, belonging to a world far removed from the one I have inhabited in recent weeks.
Now, I see that your peace has eluded me because I was dwelling, by choice, in fear, in a home of my own making, a place where I could protect myself from the judgments of others. I was not true to my own heart, the heart that is in me when I know you as all-surpassing love.
I have known grace and peace in abundance, and reading these words (from 1 Peter) I am captured by the generosity of heart of the writer. But this generosity has its Source in the surging waters of your abundance, in the incomprehensibility of your divine kindness.
May grace and peace be yours--be mine--in abundance. This is your heart speaking to this oft-despairing soul so needy and resistant to trusting your kindness.
Lacking trust, I protect myself from others, from their views and judgments, not revealing the heart of this soul of mine, where I know you as the Love you are. Amid difference and controversy, I seek reasons others may find convincing or worthy of respect, knowing all the while that I am being false to my truest self, to the soul that I am, to the Love that dwells there, to You.
I know no peace, no rest, because I am not living in your love but in an illusion I create for my own protection. You make a home for me in which to abide, and I try to build my own.
I know why. The home you make for me is the way of Jesus, my brother. Sprinkled with his blood, I have his life, his Spirit, a paschal spirit in which the way of life is letting go, releasing control, refusing my normal strategies of self-protection and relying on your love alone.
The way to new life is through death, the way to joy is through sorrow, the way to assurance is abandonment of the supports and protective walls I build for myself. Abundant peace arises from frightening vulnerability. This is the blood-sprinkled way into which my life has been initiated.
Seven days away has taught me this … again.
I ache for the abundance of peace you promise, Loving One, but the way to this home scares me. May my hope and aching need prove stronger than my fear.
May I trust you to be the abundant home I crave, and let go of all that is not you.
Pr. David L. Miller
Note: Thanks for blessing me with your notes, letting me know that you are still receiving … and welcoming these posts. May God’s peace rest upon you all.
1 Peter 1:1-2
Peter, apostle of Jesus Christ, to all those living as aliens in the Dispersion of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen, in the foresight of God the Father, to be made holy by the Spirit, obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance.
Reflection
Now, I return to work after a week of respite, wondering if I can hold the slender insights that appeared during these days away from the stress that steals my soul.
My soul has known no rest, no peace in my normal labors. The peace that passes all understanding has passed me by altogether. It has been utterly beyond my reach, belonging to a world far removed from the one I have inhabited in recent weeks.
Now, I see that your peace has eluded me because I was dwelling, by choice, in fear, in a home of my own making, a place where I could protect myself from the judgments of others. I was not true to my own heart, the heart that is in me when I know you as all-surpassing love.
I have known grace and peace in abundance, and reading these words (from 1 Peter) I am captured by the generosity of heart of the writer. But this generosity has its Source in the surging waters of your abundance, in the incomprehensibility of your divine kindness.
May grace and peace be yours--be mine--in abundance. This is your heart speaking to this oft-despairing soul so needy and resistant to trusting your kindness.
Lacking trust, I protect myself from others, from their views and judgments, not revealing the heart of this soul of mine, where I know you as the Love you are. Amid difference and controversy, I seek reasons others may find convincing or worthy of respect, knowing all the while that I am being false to my truest self, to the soul that I am, to the Love that dwells there, to You.
I know no peace, no rest, because I am not living in your love but in an illusion I create for my own protection. You make a home for me in which to abide, and I try to build my own.
I know why. The home you make for me is the way of Jesus, my brother. Sprinkled with his blood, I have his life, his Spirit, a paschal spirit in which the way of life is letting go, releasing control, refusing my normal strategies of self-protection and relying on your love alone.
The way to new life is through death, the way to joy is through sorrow, the way to assurance is abandonment of the supports and protective walls I build for myself. Abundant peace arises from frightening vulnerability. This is the blood-sprinkled way into which my life has been initiated.
Seven days away has taught me this … again.
I ache for the abundance of peace you promise, Loving One, but the way to this home scares me. May my hope and aching need prove stronger than my fear.
May I trust you to be the abundant home I crave, and let go of all that is not you.
Pr. David L. Miller
Note: Thanks for blessing me with your notes, letting me know that you are still receiving … and welcoming these posts. May God’s peace rest upon you all.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
October 11, 2009
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:1-2
Peter, apostle of Jesus Christ, to all those living as aliens in the Dispersion of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen, in the foresight of God the Father, to be made holy by the Spirit, obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance.
Reflection
I have heard the cry of refugees, living “behind the wire” of cold camps far from home. “When?” they all ask silently or aloud, fearing the answer. I never had an answer to give them, not the one I wanted to give.
I wanted to say, “Soon; the time is near,” but I could not. I didn’t know, so I shook my head and stared at the dead dust on my shoes into which their lives had descended with no end point in sight.
They yearned for what every refugee wants: home.
So do I, my Lord. I hunger for home. It’s not a new feeling, even the intensity of this distress is not unknown to me, but it has been a great while since it has been so strong.
My dispersion is not one of geography but of heart. I am what I am not; and what I am not, that is what I am.
I dwell far from home, from the heart of love where I know peace, where I rest secure in the heart of my soul … and you. When I find and enter my truest heart I discover yours also.
I am at peace, content to be who I am, neither more nor less, and the demands of others to be what they need or want me to be flies away. It does not matter.
All that matters is the dwelling, the abiding, the resting in that secret soul where I know who I am in the warm light of your smile.
My tears are not yet those of fullest joy. I stand at the portal, yearning to enter, to come home to myself and to you. But I still am an exile from the home I seek.
What keeps me out? What prevents me from entering? This is a mystery to me, for even now I see your smile, Blessed Mystery. Your hand extends to sprinkle me with the blood, the life of Jesus, who always knew his heart and yours, never knowing this distance I feel except, perhaps, in the final hours of his torture.
You want to sprinkle me with his life, his consciousness, the graced awareness of his identity as your beloved, your special servant. The heart that is his you would give to me. You have chosen me for this.
Move my soul to enter the blessedness you hungrily give. I want to come home.
Take from me every word and desire that hides and protects me from the judgments of others, for in fear I turn from being the heart that I am and become an exile from myself and the great bounty of your heart, my home.
Pr. David L. Miller
Note: I have made few posts in recent monthes as I wrote a book, Marks of the Christian Life, soon to be released by Augsburg Fortress. Please let me know if you are still receiving and find these posts useful.
Today’s text
1 Peter 1:1-2
Peter, apostle of Jesus Christ, to all those living as aliens in the Dispersion of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen, in the foresight of God the Father, to be made holy by the Spirit, obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance.
Reflection
I have heard the cry of refugees, living “behind the wire” of cold camps far from home. “When?” they all ask silently or aloud, fearing the answer. I never had an answer to give them, not the one I wanted to give.
I wanted to say, “Soon; the time is near,” but I could not. I didn’t know, so I shook my head and stared at the dead dust on my shoes into which their lives had descended with no end point in sight.
They yearned for what every refugee wants: home.
So do I, my Lord. I hunger for home. It’s not a new feeling, even the intensity of this distress is not unknown to me, but it has been a great while since it has been so strong.
My dispersion is not one of geography but of heart. I am what I am not; and what I am not, that is what I am.
I dwell far from home, from the heart of love where I know peace, where I rest secure in the heart of my soul … and you. When I find and enter my truest heart I discover yours also.
I am at peace, content to be who I am, neither more nor less, and the demands of others to be what they need or want me to be flies away. It does not matter.
All that matters is the dwelling, the abiding, the resting in that secret soul where I know who I am in the warm light of your smile.
My tears are not yet those of fullest joy. I stand at the portal, yearning to enter, to come home to myself and to you. But I still am an exile from the home I seek.
What keeps me out? What prevents me from entering? This is a mystery to me, for even now I see your smile, Blessed Mystery. Your hand extends to sprinkle me with the blood, the life of Jesus, who always knew his heart and yours, never knowing this distance I feel except, perhaps, in the final hours of his torture.
You want to sprinkle me with his life, his consciousness, the graced awareness of his identity as your beloved, your special servant. The heart that is his you would give to me. You have chosen me for this.
Move my soul to enter the blessedness you hungrily give. I want to come home.
Take from me every word and desire that hides and protects me from the judgments of others, for in fear I turn from being the heart that I am and become an exile from myself and the great bounty of your heart, my home.
Pr. David L. Miller
Note: I have made few posts in recent monthes as I wrote a book, Marks of the Christian Life, soon to be released by Augsburg Fortress. Please let me know if you are still receiving and find these posts useful.
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Today’s text
Ephesians 1:9,10
He has let us know the mystery of his purpose, according to his good pleasure which he determined beforehand in Christ, for him to act upon when the times had run their course: that he would bring everything together under Christ, as head, everything in the heavens and everything on earth
Reflection
Have the times run their course, my Friend? Have we arrived at the day when you will bring everything together under Christ?
I haven’t yet read the paper, but I am certain the front page will tell me the news: “not yet.” No, not yet. The time has not arrived that will put at peace the tortured, divided world that, at once, longs for harmony but fails to know what makes for peace.
But here, in this oft-tortured heart of mine, there is, for once, no division. Only joy.
No, not the noise of happiness and good fortune, but the quiet giddiness that I know a secret and that secret is you, a love, a center of infinite gravity pulling, towing, drawing all life into yourself.
And for these morning moments, I am so drawn, knowing peace of heart, quiet of mind, joy of soul and the secret.
Time and history is a one-act play with one plot and a single motive force. You labor in all time and space to draw all things into the harmony of flesh and spirit, matter and divinity that is the life of Christ. He is the face of the future which all will become.
And the motive force is one: a love that cannot let go and let be, but which hungers for all and for me.
And for this morning at least, you’ve got me.
Thank you.
Pr. David L. Miller
Ephesians 1:9,10
He has let us know the mystery of his purpose, according to his good pleasure which he determined beforehand in Christ, for him to act upon when the times had run their course: that he would bring everything together under Christ, as head, everything in the heavens and everything on earth
Reflection
Have the times run their course, my Friend? Have we arrived at the day when you will bring everything together under Christ?
I haven’t yet read the paper, but I am certain the front page will tell me the news: “not yet.” No, not yet. The time has not arrived that will put at peace the tortured, divided world that, at once, longs for harmony but fails to know what makes for peace.
But here, in this oft-tortured heart of mine, there is, for once, no division. Only joy.
No, not the noise of happiness and good fortune, but the quiet giddiness that I know a secret and that secret is you, a love, a center of infinite gravity pulling, towing, drawing all life into yourself.
And for these morning moments, I am so drawn, knowing peace of heart, quiet of mind, joy of soul and the secret.
Time and history is a one-act play with one plot and a single motive force. You labor in all time and space to draw all things into the harmony of flesh and spirit, matter and divinity that is the life of Christ. He is the face of the future which all will become.
And the motive force is one: a love that cannot let go and let be, but which hungers for all and for me.
And for this morning at least, you’ve got me.
Thank you.
Pr. David L. Miller
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Today’s text
Romans 12:1
I urge you, then, brothers, remembering the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, dedicated and acceptable to God; that is the kind of worship for you, as sensible people.
Reflection
I wake again into a world where you are, Holy One. I light three small candles and kneel. Lacking adequate words to thank you, I mumble my prayer in language that strains to say what I am really feeling or what I most need.
But I hope my posture, humble before you, is better prayer than the weak words with which I try to express my need to know you loving and near. May my body praise you when my words cannot say enough. And they never do.
Kneeling, I present myself before you in effect saying, “Take me this day. Do what you will with this life. It’s yours.” Then, I remember Dimce, who was so more given to you than am I.
The front curl of his wavy brown hair danced up and down as he drew a series of intersecting lines on a succession of paper napkins. We sat in a café in Skopje, Macedonia, on a sunny mid-April day.
Dimce was the business manager of a non-profit agency that dug wells in poor villages in his country. But this day he was diagramming how he managed the flow of food and supplies from ports in Greece and Albania, through rugged mountain passes to refugee camps that housed more than 80,000 in Macedonia.
Eighty thousand lives depended on his incomprehensible scribble that looked like the diagram of a football play drawn in the dirt by a demented 11 year-old in his backyard.
Most impressive, though, was Dimce himself. He never looked up. He extended his diagram from one rumpled napkin to the next, explaining all the while but he never looked at me. Not once.
He was given, totally surrendered to a life-giving task that had become a holy obsession. Holy, indeed, since creating and nurturing life to fullness and joy is God’s work, God’s only work. Dimce was given to that holy labor, body and soul.
I think of him, My Lord, and so many others who taught me without having any idea that I would remember them long after. He did not give you a part of himself, nor did he surrender some small pleasure to discipline himself or to identify with your sacrificial love as we do in Lent.
His gave himself to your life-giving labor of love for the world. And there was no doubt in my mind that this is what he wanted to do. A deep desire within his soul moved him, not some external compulsion or law.
I wonder, from what life-giving spring does this desire spring afresh?
It is you, loving God. It is always you. Give me that desire. Awaken me each day to your mercies that I may be as surrendered to your life-giving ways as is Dimce. He is a portrait of all that you are. Would to God that I should glow with such beauty.
Pr. David L. Miller
Romans 12:1
I urge you, then, brothers, remembering the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, dedicated and acceptable to God; that is the kind of worship for you, as sensible people.
Reflection
I wake again into a world where you are, Holy One. I light three small candles and kneel. Lacking adequate words to thank you, I mumble my prayer in language that strains to say what I am really feeling or what I most need.
But I hope my posture, humble before you, is better prayer than the weak words with which I try to express my need to know you loving and near. May my body praise you when my words cannot say enough. And they never do.
Kneeling, I present myself before you in effect saying, “Take me this day. Do what you will with this life. It’s yours.” Then, I remember Dimce, who was so more given to you than am I.
The front curl of his wavy brown hair danced up and down as he drew a series of intersecting lines on a succession of paper napkins. We sat in a café in Skopje, Macedonia, on a sunny mid-April day.
Dimce was the business manager of a non-profit agency that dug wells in poor villages in his country. But this day he was diagramming how he managed the flow of food and supplies from ports in Greece and Albania, through rugged mountain passes to refugee camps that housed more than 80,000 in Macedonia.
Eighty thousand lives depended on his incomprehensible scribble that looked like the diagram of a football play drawn in the dirt by a demented 11 year-old in his backyard.
Most impressive, though, was Dimce himself. He never looked up. He extended his diagram from one rumpled napkin to the next, explaining all the while but he never looked at me. Not once.
He was given, totally surrendered to a life-giving task that had become a holy obsession. Holy, indeed, since creating and nurturing life to fullness and joy is God’s work, God’s only work. Dimce was given to that holy labor, body and soul.
I think of him, My Lord, and so many others who taught me without having any idea that I would remember them long after. He did not give you a part of himself, nor did he surrender some small pleasure to discipline himself or to identify with your sacrificial love as we do in Lent.
His gave himself to your life-giving labor of love for the world. And there was no doubt in my mind that this is what he wanted to do. A deep desire within his soul moved him, not some external compulsion or law.
I wonder, from what life-giving spring does this desire spring afresh?
It is you, loving God. It is always you. Give me that desire. Awaken me each day to your mercies that I may be as surrendered to your life-giving ways as is Dimce. He is a portrait of all that you are. Would to God that I should glow with such beauty.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Today’s text
Romans 12:1
I urge you, then, brothers, remembering the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, dedicated and acceptable to God; that is the kind of worship for you, as sensible people.
Reflection
Remembering the mercies of God … . The morning comes, dearest Jesus. The day holds the promise of blessing and hope. I hunger to taste again our blessing. And I hope that I may be an expression of your unceasing grace, a soul through whom the grace of all eternity flows, a river of peace, cooling the fevered lives of others that they may bask in the joy you intend for them.
But if so, the day must begin with an act of memory. Not just any memory, but the recollection of your mercies.
So I remember. There are so many, but today I remember just one, driving to Dubuque, Iowa, and parking my car in from of Martin Luther’s statue at Wartburg Theological Seminary. It was an act of faint hope on my part.
Sitting silently in the car, looking the statue and tall tower rising over the beckoning doorway of the school, I hungered to enter, but my hope was far weaker than the sinking awareness that I could ever walk through those doors.
A college drop-out, I made cheese, sold cars and worked in a drapery hardware factory. I found myself, my heart in none of them, and the longer I worked at each I longed. I hungered for another kind of life I could barely imagine even existed.
And that life was in wrapped up in the gospel of a love I also could not imagine. But that love burned in me. Not that I was so generous or giving, Jesus. I was not, but love for you and for the mysteries of your life burned in me.
I hungered not just to know more. I also burned, truly burned to know the love that you are that my soul might rest in the gentle consolation of simply being loved with that love for which my insatiable soul longed.
This burning moved me beyond my fears to embrace my hopes. No, that’s not quite right. Through the restless burning of my soul you moved me beyond my fears to throw myself into the hope you implanted in me
Loving Mystery, you were … and are … that hope that burns in us, moving us to reach beyond our fears and all that holds us back from deeper knowing and serving of you.
That burning made me so restless, so uncomfortable, so wanting … more that I pushed through my fears. I forgot about how much work it would be, how much money it would take, how impossible it all seemed as my wife and I planned for our first child.
And I walked into those beckoning doors to enter a world of studying and serving and struggling to know the love for which I and all are intended.
This is your mercy to me, Loving God. You refused to leave me to my fears. You made my heart relentlessly restless so that I might enter the hope you had in me, the hope fanned by those drives to Dubuque when I sat and stared.
The day begins, and I remember your mercy, a mercy that made me uncomfortable but moved me to trust your guiding and to walk into the warmth of your eternal embrace.
Pr. David L. Miller
Romans 12:1
I urge you, then, brothers, remembering the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, dedicated and acceptable to God; that is the kind of worship for you, as sensible people.
Reflection
Remembering the mercies of God … . The morning comes, dearest Jesus. The day holds the promise of blessing and hope. I hunger to taste again our blessing. And I hope that I may be an expression of your unceasing grace, a soul through whom the grace of all eternity flows, a river of peace, cooling the fevered lives of others that they may bask in the joy you intend for them.
But if so, the day must begin with an act of memory. Not just any memory, but the recollection of your mercies.
So I remember. There are so many, but today I remember just one, driving to Dubuque, Iowa, and parking my car in from of Martin Luther’s statue at Wartburg Theological Seminary. It was an act of faint hope on my part.
Sitting silently in the car, looking the statue and tall tower rising over the beckoning doorway of the school, I hungered to enter, but my hope was far weaker than the sinking awareness that I could ever walk through those doors.
A college drop-out, I made cheese, sold cars and worked in a drapery hardware factory. I found myself, my heart in none of them, and the longer I worked at each I longed. I hungered for another kind of life I could barely imagine even existed.
And that life was in wrapped up in the gospel of a love I also could not imagine. But that love burned in me. Not that I was so generous or giving, Jesus. I was not, but love for you and for the mysteries of your life burned in me.
I hungered not just to know more. I also burned, truly burned to know the love that you are that my soul might rest in the gentle consolation of simply being loved with that love for which my insatiable soul longed.
This burning moved me beyond my fears to embrace my hopes. No, that’s not quite right. Through the restless burning of my soul you moved me beyond my fears to throw myself into the hope you implanted in me
Loving Mystery, you were … and are … that hope that burns in us, moving us to reach beyond our fears and all that holds us back from deeper knowing and serving of you.
That burning made me so restless, so uncomfortable, so wanting … more that I pushed through my fears. I forgot about how much work it would be, how much money it would take, how impossible it all seemed as my wife and I planned for our first child.
And I walked into those beckoning doors to enter a world of studying and serving and struggling to know the love for which I and all are intended.
This is your mercy to me, Loving God. You refused to leave me to my fears. You made my heart relentlessly restless so that I might enter the hope you had in me, the hope fanned by those drives to Dubuque when I sat and stared.
The day begins, and I remember your mercy, a mercy that made me uncomfortable but moved me to trust your guiding and to walk into the warmth of your eternal embrace.
Pr. David L. Miller
Thursday, June 04, 2009
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Today’s text
John 3:3-9
Jesus answered: In all truth I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above. Nicodemus said, 'How can anyone who is already old be born? Is it possible to go back into the womb again and be born?' Jesus replied: In all truth I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born through water and the Spirit; what is born of human nature is human; what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be surprised when I say: You must be born from above. The wind blows where it pleases; you can hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.'
Reflection
The wind blows where it wills. We do not see from where it comes or whither it goes, but we do hear it. We sense and feel it and can flow with its currents … or resist.
So it is with those who are born from above, from your Spirit, my Lord.
They are made young again. They are fresh and hope-filled by the Spirit within them, possessing eyes and ears to perceive where you blow and how. They know: the Spirit blows and it will, never ceasing.
It gives life wherever it finds the slightest opening, for that Spirit is the living breath of the Ever-living God, of you, Holy Mystery.
Those born of your Spirit are the truly blessed. They hear and are moved by the currents of your life present in all that is and lives. They are made new, seeing and feeling the fresh breeze of your loving nearness blowing through once stale, lifeless halls of soul.
It’s true: once old, one can be born again, and again, and again. The soul can be young again and forever, standing in the fresh breeze of your blowing. For the Spirit opens eyes to see your creative love and joy in everything the eye takes in--sky and trees, faces and all matter.
So blow, Spirit, blow that I may be forever young. Born from above, let me feel your rule of love and beauty even when others imagine that only cynical and skeptical eyes can see.
Open my eyes to the dearest freshness of your love blowing in every place and circumstance.
Pr. David L. Miller
John 3:3-9
Jesus answered: In all truth I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above. Nicodemus said, 'How can anyone who is already old be born? Is it possible to go back into the womb again and be born?' Jesus replied: In all truth I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born through water and the Spirit; what is born of human nature is human; what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be surprised when I say: You must be born from above. The wind blows where it pleases; you can hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.'
Reflection
The wind blows where it wills. We do not see from where it comes or whither it goes, but we do hear it. We sense and feel it and can flow with its currents … or resist.
So it is with those who are born from above, from your Spirit, my Lord.
They are made young again. They are fresh and hope-filled by the Spirit within them, possessing eyes and ears to perceive where you blow and how. They know: the Spirit blows and it will, never ceasing.
It gives life wherever it finds the slightest opening, for that Spirit is the living breath of the Ever-living God, of you, Holy Mystery.
Those born of your Spirit are the truly blessed. They hear and are moved by the currents of your life present in all that is and lives. They are made new, seeing and feeling the fresh breeze of your loving nearness blowing through once stale, lifeless halls of soul.
It’s true: once old, one can be born again, and again, and again. The soul can be young again and forever, standing in the fresh breeze of your blowing. For the Spirit opens eyes to see your creative love and joy in everything the eye takes in--sky and trees, faces and all matter.
So blow, Spirit, blow that I may be forever young. Born from above, let me feel your rule of love and beauty even when others imagine that only cynical and skeptical eyes can see.
Open my eyes to the dearest freshness of your love blowing in every place and circumstance.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Today’s text
John 3:3-10
Jesus answered: In all truth I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above. Nicodemus said, 'How can anyone who is already old be born? Is it possible to go back into the womb again and be born?' Jesus replied: In all truth I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born through water and the Spirit; what is born of human nature is human; what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be surprised when I say: You must be born from above. The wind blows where it pleases; you can hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. 'How is that possible?' asked Nicodemus. Jesus replied, 'You are the Teacher of Israel, and you do not know these things!'
Reflection
Morning comes, and you awaken in me desire for the life that I want, Loving Mystery. You show it to me here. But I struggle to describe it, quickly dismissing words that come to mind. all inadequate and inaccurate.
Still, I see what it is to be born from above.
There are souls I have encountered whose eyes seemed fixed on a far point, a horizon lost to the rest of us. Their minds awakened, they take in a world most can not imagine. And their gaze rests there, drinking in a distant beauty whose light reaches into here and now, calming their heart and illumining their face with a quiet joy.
Centered on this vision, their days are less distressed by the winds of anxiety that scatters normal consciousness. They seem certain that what they know is the real and the true, even if no one else confirms it. They are born from above.
This is my prayer, to be as they, to be held in rapt attention by the uncreated beauty that shines from that far point through what is created, in blessed moments appearing also to … and in … me.
Awaken me by your elusive Spirit, Loving Mystery, to a world beyond the noise of clamoring egos and the din of the latest thing.
Fix my eyes on that far point that I, too, may see the present beauty awaiting to born in all that lives.
Pr. David L. Miller
John 3:3-10
Jesus answered: In all truth I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above. Nicodemus said, 'How can anyone who is already old be born? Is it possible to go back into the womb again and be born?' Jesus replied: In all truth I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born through water and the Spirit; what is born of human nature is human; what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be surprised when I say: You must be born from above. The wind blows where it pleases; you can hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. 'How is that possible?' asked Nicodemus. Jesus replied, 'You are the Teacher of Israel, and you do not know these things!'
Reflection
Morning comes, and you awaken in me desire for the life that I want, Loving Mystery. You show it to me here. But I struggle to describe it, quickly dismissing words that come to mind. all inadequate and inaccurate.
Still, I see what it is to be born from above.
There are souls I have encountered whose eyes seemed fixed on a far point, a horizon lost to the rest of us. Their minds awakened, they take in a world most can not imagine. And their gaze rests there, drinking in a distant beauty whose light reaches into here and now, calming their heart and illumining their face with a quiet joy.
Centered on this vision, their days are less distressed by the winds of anxiety that scatters normal consciousness. They seem certain that what they know is the real and the true, even if no one else confirms it. They are born from above.
This is my prayer, to be as they, to be held in rapt attention by the uncreated beauty that shines from that far point through what is created, in blessed moments appearing also to … and in … me.
Awaken me by your elusive Spirit, Loving Mystery, to a world beyond the noise of clamoring egos and the din of the latest thing.
Fix my eyes on that far point that I, too, may see the present beauty awaiting to born in all that lives.
Pr. David L. Miller
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