Today’s text
Mark 11:7-10
Then they took the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on its back, and he mounted it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others greenery which they had cut in the fields. And those who went in front and those who followed were all shouting, 'Hosanna! Blessed is he who is coming in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of David our father! Hosanna in the highest heavens!'
Reflection
Those who shouted praise to God along the road had seen others ride into Jerusalem. Roman legions had marched into the city to take control, some riding snorting steeds, swords clattering as their horses climbed the rough road.
No one shouted praise to God for them. They came to occupy and pacify the population for the glory and enrichment of Rome. Power was their game, fear and force their way.
Then you come, Jesus, not on a snorting steed but a gentle young animal, and people throw their cloaks on the road and wave green branches from the trees, a symbol of peace, life and growth.
I remember the ancient story of Noah. Surviving the flood on his boat, he sends out a dove which returns with an olive branch, a sign of peace. The struggle with death had passed. The unruly waters would soon recede to their proper boundaries, and life could begin once more. A new start, a fresh beginning.
Ancient prophets, too, spoke of a king who would come humbly, mounted on a gentle beast instead of a war horse, to bring peace to a world accustomed to war and fear.
But our souls never become totally accustomed to fear and war. You created us in love to share the goodness of you who are the Source of all good, to share this good earth and whatever sweetness of grace we know in this life.
We are created for communion in such joy, and we hunger for deliverance from whatever powers, fears and bondage prevent our entry into the life for which our hearts long.
This is ancient, not new. The souls who watched you enter the city on a gentle beast felt it just as much as we.
Perhaps they looked at you riding into town and remembered the old prophesies and perhaps even old Noah.
But they didn’t need to remember any of this to be moved to joy and praise. They needed only to look at you and listen to their hearts to know that the communion of peace for which human hearts long was right there, on the dusty road.
The world and their hearts could begin again.
Make me a person of your humble peace.
Pr. David L. Miller
http://prayingthemystery.blogspot.com/
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Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Monday, March 26, 2012
Monday, March 26, 2012
Today’s text
Mark 11:1-3
When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, close by the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, 'Go to the village facing you, and as you enter it you will at once find a tethered colt that no one has yet ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone says to you, "What are you doing?" say, "The Master needs it and will send it back here at once." '
Reflection
The master needs it. Today, this moment …all that I am, all on which I lay my hands … the master needs it.
I hear these words, and my heart immediately elevates with joy. Why?
The master needs it.
The master needs me, my hands and heart, the tools I use, the words I speak, the actions of my hands, the expressions of my face. The master needs them, needs me for his purpose.
I feel honored, wanted, desired. But the joy springs from the deepest, most secret part of me--that place where your soul and my soul are indivisible, where my life is really your life bubbling up into this body I call ‘me,’ giving me existence and energy.
The master needs it. With this request, this invitation, you invite me to return the life you have first given me, to let that life flow back into you who are my Source.
A circle is brought to completion. You breathe life into me, and in seeking my partnership you invite me to return that life, that breath, and when I do … you breathe more breath, life and joy into me. And I know, I just know, for what am made.
The invitation to give my life, my hands, my heart to you this day draws me into an eternal circle of giving and receiving, in which there is no beginning and no end.
But it is true: You need me to give that life I am back to you to keep the circle of giving going … on and on. This circle is the way of life, and the joy it brings is the echo of our hearts telling us what we need to know.
Pr. David L. Miller
Friday, March 23, 2012
Friday, March 23, 2012
Today’s text
John 12:32-33
And when I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all people to myself.' By these words he indicated the kind of death he would die.
Reflection
The Spirit draws; the devil drives. This is old wisdom among spiritual directors.
The Spirit of God draws the soul by love, coaxing the heart to its true self, its true home. The Spirit moves us from the inside, drawing us to what we most need.
The spirit of the evil one drives the heart, whipping it along with accusations and the guilt of ‘shoulds’ so that we might satisfy some judge, whether internal or external.
We carry so many ‘shoulds’ from external voices we have internalized, voices of parents, teachers, mentors, friends and often adversaries. These voices may have given kindly advice about what is good and right, popular or seemingly wise.
We hear the voices thousands of times through the decades of living, too often in unhelpful ways. Our fears of inadequacy, our guilt about what we have done or not done, and our shame about who we are--all these turns gentle advice into a mass of shoulds, shaking accusing fingers at us.
“I should …. I should … I should.” The sentence always makes me take notice, whether I hear it from someone else or when it crosses my own lips.
Often, the should looks and sounds good, something worthwhile we might do or seek.
But the motivation comes not from the depth of one’s heart, from the love that is within us seeking expression. It comes from judgments of others (or self-judgment) and is not expressive of what the Spirit seeks to love out of us.
Jesus is lifted up on the cross, and the love that filled him flows out as surely as his lifeblood. He is lifted up, and the love in him draws hearts to him so they might know the love God is … for them.
Love does not whip us forward. It doesn’t move us by means of oughts and demands, guilt and obligation.
Love simply loves, moving love’s desire in open hearts. It invites us to come near because we want and need to do so. It is magnetic.
It doesn’t tell us what we should do. It asks, what do you want to do? What is in your heart? What is your joy? To what does love draw you?
'When I am lifted up I will draw all people to myself.' The drawing of love in a human soul is the presence of the living Christ coaxing us home to himself, to our true heart, to the person we really are.
Pr. David L. Miller
John 12:32-33
And when I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all people to myself.' By these words he indicated the kind of death he would die.
Reflection
The Spirit draws; the devil drives. This is old wisdom among spiritual directors.
The Spirit of God draws the soul by love, coaxing the heart to its true self, its true home. The Spirit moves us from the inside, drawing us to what we most need.
The spirit of the evil one drives the heart, whipping it along with accusations and the guilt of ‘shoulds’ so that we might satisfy some judge, whether internal or external.
We carry so many ‘shoulds’ from external voices we have internalized, voices of parents, teachers, mentors, friends and often adversaries. These voices may have given kindly advice about what is good and right, popular or seemingly wise.
We hear the voices thousands of times through the decades of living, too often in unhelpful ways. Our fears of inadequacy, our guilt about what we have done or not done, and our shame about who we are--all these turns gentle advice into a mass of shoulds, shaking accusing fingers at us.
“I should …. I should … I should.” The sentence always makes me take notice, whether I hear it from someone else or when it crosses my own lips.
Often, the should looks and sounds good, something worthwhile we might do or seek.
But the motivation comes not from the depth of one’s heart, from the love that is within us seeking expression. It comes from judgments of others (or self-judgment) and is not expressive of what the Spirit seeks to love out of us.
Jesus is lifted up on the cross, and the love that filled him flows out as surely as his lifeblood. He is lifted up, and the love in him draws hearts to him so they might know the love God is … for them.
Love does not whip us forward. It doesn’t move us by means of oughts and demands, guilt and obligation.
Love simply loves, moving love’s desire in open hearts. It invites us to come near because we want and need to do so. It is magnetic.
It doesn’t tell us what we should do. It asks, what do you want to do? What is in your heart? What is your joy? To what does love draw you?
'When I am lifted up I will draw all people to myself.' The drawing of love in a human soul is the presence of the living Christ coaxing us home to himself, to our true heart, to the person we really are.
Pr. David L. Miller
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Today’s text
John 12:26-28
Whoever serves me, must follow me, and my servant will be with me wherever I am. If anyone serves me, my Father will honour him. Now my soul is troubled. What shall I say: Father, save me from this hour? But it is for this very reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name! A voice came from heaven, 'I have glorified it, and I will again glorify it.'
Reflection
What would happen if we came to each day convinced that we were born for this hour, this time, the challenges of this particular day?
I remember the days following September 11, 2001. I was in New York City interviewing people, listening as they poured out immense pain and hungered for loved ones who never came home.
I traveled with a friend, Stephen, who was then the Bishop of the Metropolitan New York Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
For several days, we visited churches and schools, listening to stories of bitter loss, of loved ones whose bodies had been turned to ash in the inferno of the World Trade Center. We heard about children waiting at school house doors for a parent who never came to pick them up.
Today, I most remember Stephen’s words to gatherings of pastors and parochial school teachers. “You were baptized for this time,” he said. “You were born for this hour.”
“What shall I say: Father, save me from this hour? But it is for this very reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name!”
Stephen never cited these words of Jesus, spoken as he contemplated the suffering of the cross on which he would die. But he might have.
We, too, might remember them as we come to each new day, especially days when the stakes are high, the work hard, the pain deep and the challenge daunting. There is no shortage of days we prefer to skip because they are too difficult, too painful … or because we are weary.
But each new morning brings the day for which I was born, the time for which the divine Spirit fashioned me, the hour in which I am to glorify God by giving myself in love to the needs of this time, whatever they might be.
The people of New York were soul-weary from grief and fear as Stephen and I met them up and down Manhattan, in Harlem, Queens and across the East River in Brooklyn. But Stephen’s words stirred many to rise to the challenge of a day no one wanted, to the pain of an unspeakable hour.
These servants of God knew; they were born for this time, for the facing of this hour.
This hour has not passed. It is now, always now, the hour God is glorified in the loving commitment we bring to reveal the mercy of the divine heart.
For this hour I was born, Jesus says. His words are true every morning … for us.
Pr. David L. Miller
John 12:26-28
Whoever serves me, must follow me, and my servant will be with me wherever I am. If anyone serves me, my Father will honour him. Now my soul is troubled. What shall I say: Father, save me from this hour? But it is for this very reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name! A voice came from heaven, 'I have glorified it, and I will again glorify it.'
Reflection
What would happen if we came to each day convinced that we were born for this hour, this time, the challenges of this particular day?
I remember the days following September 11, 2001. I was in New York City interviewing people, listening as they poured out immense pain and hungered for loved ones who never came home.
I traveled with a friend, Stephen, who was then the Bishop of the Metropolitan New York Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
For several days, we visited churches and schools, listening to stories of bitter loss, of loved ones whose bodies had been turned to ash in the inferno of the World Trade Center. We heard about children waiting at school house doors for a parent who never came to pick them up.
Today, I most remember Stephen’s words to gatherings of pastors and parochial school teachers. “You were baptized for this time,” he said. “You were born for this hour.”
“What shall I say: Father, save me from this hour? But it is for this very reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name!”
Stephen never cited these words of Jesus, spoken as he contemplated the suffering of the cross on which he would die. But he might have.
We, too, might remember them as we come to each new day, especially days when the stakes are high, the work hard, the pain deep and the challenge daunting. There is no shortage of days we prefer to skip because they are too difficult, too painful … or because we are weary.
But each new morning brings the day for which I was born, the time for which the divine Spirit fashioned me, the hour in which I am to glorify God by giving myself in love to the needs of this time, whatever they might be.
The people of New York were soul-weary from grief and fear as Stephen and I met them up and down Manhattan, in Harlem, Queens and across the East River in Brooklyn. But Stephen’s words stirred many to rise to the challenge of a day no one wanted, to the pain of an unspeakable hour.
These servants of God knew; they were born for this time, for the facing of this hour.
This hour has not passed. It is now, always now, the hour God is glorified in the loving commitment we bring to reveal the mercy of the divine heart.
For this hour I was born, Jesus says. His words are true every morning … for us.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Today’s text
John 12:23-25
Jesus replied to them: Now the hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified. In all truth I tell you, unless a wheat grain falls into the earth and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies it yields a rich harvest. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
Reflection
I do not hate my life, Jesus, but I recognize hyperbole when I hear it and this is hyperbole, deliberate exaggeration to make a point.
Saints of all ages have known the truth of what you are saying. And in our best moment so do we. St. Francis said it well: “in giving we receive, in pardoning we are pardoned, and in dying we are born to eternal life.”
The willing heart is able to give itself away for the sake of another--a friend, a family member, a colleague in arms, even an enemy. In losing yourself, surrendering who you are to bless and give life to another, we enter eternal life, here and now.
My soul knows this, Jesus, though I easily forget and act as if life is about protecting myself and what is mine.
I enter a new consciousness when I relax my defensiveness and release my need to prove myself. With joy, I freely give myself, my time, my blessing, my acceptance and welcome to all I meet. I flow like a gentle, joyful stream, knowing I am a single current in a great river of divine grace that extends through this world and into every universe.
I enter every moment knowing that this is all I really have, this moment, knowing, too, that life is found in bringing my whole self to each moment, to attend t it, to give myself to it, to surrender to its needs and demands, … losing myself in the moment.
And I discover once more that in giving I receive, in accepting the soul of another I taste again your great acceptance of me, and I am new. The fresh breeze of new-born spring gentles my heart and lightens my step, my soul and makes sweet my words.
I ask you, Jesus: How can I hate life in this world when in this world I can taste such grace, this beauty which is life eternal?
But you are right: Such gracious freedom comes in giving up, in pardoning, in our willingness to give ourselves away for the sake of loving the world as you love it. It is then that we know: in losing we gain, in giving we receive; in dying to what we are, we tasting the life of eternity … now.
Pr. David L. Miller
John 12:23-25
Jesus replied to them: Now the hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified. In all truth I tell you, unless a wheat grain falls into the earth and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies it yields a rich harvest. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
Reflection
I do not hate my life, Jesus, but I recognize hyperbole when I hear it and this is hyperbole, deliberate exaggeration to make a point.
Saints of all ages have known the truth of what you are saying. And in our best moment so do we. St. Francis said it well: “in giving we receive, in pardoning we are pardoned, and in dying we are born to eternal life.”
The willing heart is able to give itself away for the sake of another--a friend, a family member, a colleague in arms, even an enemy. In losing yourself, surrendering who you are to bless and give life to another, we enter eternal life, here and now.
My soul knows this, Jesus, though I easily forget and act as if life is about protecting myself and what is mine.
I enter a new consciousness when I relax my defensiveness and release my need to prove myself. With joy, I freely give myself, my time, my blessing, my acceptance and welcome to all I meet. I flow like a gentle, joyful stream, knowing I am a single current in a great river of divine grace that extends through this world and into every universe.
I enter every moment knowing that this is all I really have, this moment, knowing, too, that life is found in bringing my whole self to each moment, to attend t it, to give myself to it, to surrender to its needs and demands, … losing myself in the moment.
And I discover once more that in giving I receive, in accepting the soul of another I taste again your great acceptance of me, and I am new. The fresh breeze of new-born spring gentles my heart and lightens my step, my soul and makes sweet my words.
I ask you, Jesus: How can I hate life in this world when in this world I can taste such grace, this beauty which is life eternal?
But you are right: Such gracious freedom comes in giving up, in pardoning, in our willingness to give ourselves away for the sake of loving the world as you love it. It is then that we know: in losing we gain, in giving we receive; in dying to what we are, we tasting the life of eternity … now.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Today’s text
John 12:20-24
Among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. These approached Philip, who came from Bethsaida in Galilee, and put this request to him, 'Sir, we should like to see Jesus.' Philip went to tell Andrew, and Andrew and Philip together went to tell Jesus. Jesus replied to them: Now the hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified. In all truth I tell you, unless a wheat grain falls into the earth and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies it yields a rich harvest.
Reflection
Did they find what they were looking for, Jesus?
These Greeks came seeking you. You used the moment to tell your friends that you were about to be glorified. Like a seed, you would fall into the earth and die and bear a rich harvest
We are not told if they ever saw you. We are shown.
We see you give yourself to your mission of loving your own and loving them to the end. Dying on a cross, you give yourself to the task of revealing the Love who brings life from death.
From the seed of your life, Jesus, millions of souls have become human beings. Drawn by the Love who filled you, they came and they still come.
They are hungry. God, how hungry we are, every one of us. What brings us is not some doctrine about you or some truth you reveal.
What brings us is the Loving Mystery, the unspeakable, unimaginable God you bore in the depth of your soul. This Holy One pored from your every pour.
What pours from you is this One who is Love, the One who made us and all things, the One from whom we feel separate and sometimes so far away, the One who is the home human souls seek in every age.
This is what draws us to you, Jesus. This is what draws me. We want to come home, to feel at home, to feel connected once more--or for the first time--to this mysterious Love.
We want to feel the in-rush of life and love flowing into our hearts, minds and bodies from an invisible and Infinite Source and know, physically know that every moment we are connected with the Mystery from once we came to whom we go.
Then we will feel alive, filled with the fire of love and courage, fully aware that our finite lives grow from the soil of Infinite Love, just like the yellow daffodils spring through the forest floor and color the earth with hope.
The Greeks came to you. They believed that once they were near you, with you, looking into your eyes, listening to your words--and to the movement of their hearts in your presence--they would find what they were looking for, what we all are looking for.
They were right.
Pr. David L. Miller
John 12:20-24
Among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. These approached Philip, who came from Bethsaida in Galilee, and put this request to him, 'Sir, we should like to see Jesus.' Philip went to tell Andrew, and Andrew and Philip together went to tell Jesus. Jesus replied to them: Now the hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified. In all truth I tell you, unless a wheat grain falls into the earth and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies it yields a rich harvest.
Reflection
Did they find what they were looking for, Jesus?
These Greeks came seeking you. You used the moment to tell your friends that you were about to be glorified. Like a seed, you would fall into the earth and die and bear a rich harvest
We are not told if they ever saw you. We are shown.
We see you give yourself to your mission of loving your own and loving them to the end. Dying on a cross, you give yourself to the task of revealing the Love who brings life from death.
From the seed of your life, Jesus, millions of souls have become human beings. Drawn by the Love who filled you, they came and they still come.
They are hungry. God, how hungry we are, every one of us. What brings us is not some doctrine about you or some truth you reveal.
What brings us is the Loving Mystery, the unspeakable, unimaginable God you bore in the depth of your soul. This Holy One pored from your every pour.
What pours from you is this One who is Love, the One who made us and all things, the One from whom we feel separate and sometimes so far away, the One who is the home human souls seek in every age.
This is what draws us to you, Jesus. This is what draws me. We want to come home, to feel at home, to feel connected once more--or for the first time--to this mysterious Love.
We want to feel the in-rush of life and love flowing into our hearts, minds and bodies from an invisible and Infinite Source and know, physically know that every moment we are connected with the Mystery from once we came to whom we go.
Then we will feel alive, filled with the fire of love and courage, fully aware that our finite lives grow from the soil of Infinite Love, just like the yellow daffodils spring through the forest floor and color the earth with hope.
The Greeks came to you. They believed that once they were near you, with you, looking into your eyes, listening to your words--and to the movement of their hearts in your presence--they would find what they were looking for, what we all are looking for.
They were right.
Pr. David L. Miller
Friday, March 16, 2012
Friday, March 16, 2012
Today’s text
John 3:15-18
For this is how God loved the world: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. For God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but so that through him the world might be saved. No one who believes in him will be judged; but whoever does not believe is judged already, because that person does not believe in the Name of God's only Son.
Reflection
Today, I want to live. This is a silly thing to say when taken on a surface level. Who doesn’t want to live? Only those so sick or troubled that waking up each day has become a burden instead of a blessing.
Here I am, Lord, awake again, fingers on the keys, awaiting for some small movement in my soul so that my hands may serve their truest purpose--pounding out words that bear your presence, shaping thoughts that come from your heart, speaking truth that wing my soul into the depth of your heart that you may enfold me and give total healing.
You are the Presence who eagerly awaits our return that our whole being may be wrapped in love.
That is what I want and need every morning, everyday … to feel my whole being--all that I am or ever will be--transported and wrapped in a love that rejects no part of me, a love in which I am always welcome. I want to feel and know it to be true. I want to know that whatever I feel when I am wrapped and lifted by love is my true identity--and yours.
So lift me into yourself, into the Love who holds me every moment so I may know salvation, the experience and reality of eternal life. To know your love is the experience of life itself. Anything less than this is the experience of judgment, of separation from our true home, from whom we really are and from whom you really are, Holy One.
Judgment is not something you lay upon us. We do it to ourselves every moment we live in fear, every moment we imagine that we are separate from you, every moment I fail to realize that this hunger in me for you is not a sign of your absence but of your presence pulling at me to surrender to your love, to quit doing, quit trying so hard, quit imagining that you are far off … and just know that all that I am and ever will be rests in your gentle hands.
So live with joy, you say. Abandon all fear. Cast away every anxiety and just know: your beginning and your end, your days and your years are in my hands. Fear not. Today is a day to live, really live.
Pr. David L. Miller
John 3:15-18
For this is how God loved the world: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. For God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but so that through him the world might be saved. No one who believes in him will be judged; but whoever does not believe is judged already, because that person does not believe in the Name of God's only Son.
Reflection
Today, I want to live. This is a silly thing to say when taken on a surface level. Who doesn’t want to live? Only those so sick or troubled that waking up each day has become a burden instead of a blessing.
Here I am, Lord, awake again, fingers on the keys, awaiting for some small movement in my soul so that my hands may serve their truest purpose--pounding out words that bear your presence, shaping thoughts that come from your heart, speaking truth that wing my soul into the depth of your heart that you may enfold me and give total healing.
You are the Presence who eagerly awaits our return that our whole being may be wrapped in love.
That is what I want and need every morning, everyday … to feel my whole being--all that I am or ever will be--transported and wrapped in a love that rejects no part of me, a love in which I am always welcome. I want to feel and know it to be true. I want to know that whatever I feel when I am wrapped and lifted by love is my true identity--and yours.
So lift me into yourself, into the Love who holds me every moment so I may know salvation, the experience and reality of eternal life. To know your love is the experience of life itself. Anything less than this is the experience of judgment, of separation from our true home, from whom we really are and from whom you really are, Holy One.
Judgment is not something you lay upon us. We do it to ourselves every moment we live in fear, every moment we imagine that we are separate from you, every moment I fail to realize that this hunger in me for you is not a sign of your absence but of your presence pulling at me to surrender to your love, to quit doing, quit trying so hard, quit imagining that you are far off … and just know that all that I am and ever will be rests in your gentle hands.
So live with joy, you say. Abandon all fear. Cast away every anxiety and just know: your beginning and your end, your days and your years are in my hands. Fear not. Today is a day to live, really live.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Today’s text
John 3:15-18
For this is how God loved the world: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. For God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but so that through him the world might be saved. No one who believes in him will be judged; but whoever does not believe is judged already, because that person does not believe in the Name of God's only Son.
Reflection
God did not begin loving the world the day Jesus was born as the bearer of the divine heart. God loved the world--and me and you--from everlasting, from before the explosion of wonder that created the dazzling universe we know through our microscopes and telescopes.
Before that, before the yawning eons of time, before the first appearance of tender green life on this lovely planet, before it all there was the love whom God is. And that is all there was. Just Love. All that is born into being is the offspring, the child of Eternal Love.
The face of Eternal Love appears in the Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth, who does not judge but welcomes all that is--and me--to return home, to dwell in the Love that gave it birth so that life may be complete and the Creator’s joy might be full.
Truth is we have never been separate from this Love. The reality of our life is sustained by Love every moment.
But only those with eyes to see know and understand that we dwell each day in a sea of love, surrounding us and holding all that is in being. They taste salvation, the freedom to live and love, knowing Immeasurable Love holds them in every instant.
The Son of God is given to this world to reveal the Love that always was, the Love we fail to trust and believe on many days, condemning ourselves to live the lie that we are something less than loved, that struggle, judgment and failure is the truth of our identity.
It’s a lie. Our lives were born in the mystery of the Love who is God. Our being is an expression of that One Love.
The Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth, appears to call us back to ourselves, to our true identity, to feel once more (or for the first time) that the love I taste in my soul is the love that fills him, the love that is from everlasting to everlasting.
Every time we taste it within, every time we feel such love surrounding us we know the eternal life that is our destiny. Such is the sweetness of salvation.
Pr. David L. Miller
John 3:15-18
For this is how God loved the world: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. For God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but so that through him the world might be saved. No one who believes in him will be judged; but whoever does not believe is judged already, because that person does not believe in the Name of God's only Son.
Reflection
God did not begin loving the world the day Jesus was born as the bearer of the divine heart. God loved the world--and me and you--from everlasting, from before the explosion of wonder that created the dazzling universe we know through our microscopes and telescopes.
Before that, before the yawning eons of time, before the first appearance of tender green life on this lovely planet, before it all there was the love whom God is. And that is all there was. Just Love. All that is born into being is the offspring, the child of Eternal Love.
The face of Eternal Love appears in the Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth, who does not judge but welcomes all that is--and me--to return home, to dwell in the Love that gave it birth so that life may be complete and the Creator’s joy might be full.
Truth is we have never been separate from this Love. The reality of our life is sustained by Love every moment.
But only those with eyes to see know and understand that we dwell each day in a sea of love, surrounding us and holding all that is in being. They taste salvation, the freedom to live and love, knowing Immeasurable Love holds them in every instant.
The Son of God is given to this world to reveal the Love that always was, the Love we fail to trust and believe on many days, condemning ourselves to live the lie that we are something less than loved, that struggle, judgment and failure is the truth of our identity.
It’s a lie. Our lives were born in the mystery of the Love who is God. Our being is an expression of that One Love.
The Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth, appears to call us back to ourselves, to our true identity, to feel once more (or for the first time) that the love I taste in my soul is the love that fills him, the love that is from everlasting to everlasting.
Every time we taste it within, every time we feel such love surrounding us we know the eternal life that is our destiny. Such is the sweetness of salvation.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Today’s text
John 3:14-16
As Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so must the Son of man be lifted up so that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. For this is how God loved the world: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
Reflection
And what does this mean?
As I was a child, the meaning was clear. To believe was to accept that Jesus died for my sins. He was lifted up on the cross to bear my punishment and free me from God’s righteous condemnation.
This didn’t make sense to me, and I never really accepted it. My reasons varied through the years. I didn’t like the idea that God needed to kill Jesus to forgive me. Doesn’t that mean I am more loving than God since I can forgive--and sometimes do--without a lot of blood being spilled? I need no pound of flesh; why should God?
Did Jesus really die thinking he was paying God back for the world’s offenses?
My childhood understanding, still held my millions today, also put all the emphasis on one aspect of Jesus: the crucifixion, but without giving thought to why he was crucified.
Those who killed him cared not a wit about me and my sins. They just wanted him dead.
Why? What was so wrong with Jesus that they should go to the trouble and mess of executing him? Was the reason connected with who he was, what he said and how he lived?
Perhaps he was killed because of the sins of the world: because those in power recognized that the kingdom of God he preached was a threat to their own kingdoms and privileges. Perhaps his idea of a kingdom of love and justice, where the broken and lost are worth as much or more than billionaires, seemed crazy.
Perhaps he was disturbing because he wanted to turn the world upside down with his vision of divine love embracing everyone and all that is. Perhaps everything he was and all he stood for contradicted the way powerful people think, the way society is arranged for their benefit.
I can’t grasp all the reasons the powerful wanted to kill Jesus except that he was a threat to them, which means that the all-embracing love of God was a threat to them. His hungry love and burning hope for a kingdom from God knocked the foundation from beneath their ordered world.
So what does it mean to believe in Jesus?
It means believing into the world, the kingdom, the vision that filled and animated him. It means seeing and imagining that world and giving yourself to it--surrendering to divine love and grace, acceptance and justice, compassion and yearning--even when the wisdom of self-interest, consolidating your power and protecting your comfort contradict it.
Jesus way, the way of divine love, his vision of a kingdom of compassion, was so radical that the powers of his age, and ours, wanted to sweep it away.
To believe in Jesus means holding his vision in our hearts and living, as best we can, the love that was in him, even when it leads to crosses of our own sorrow.
Pr. David L. Miller
John 3:14-16
As Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so must the Son of man be lifted up so that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. For this is how God loved the world: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
Reflection
And what does this mean?
As I was a child, the meaning was clear. To believe was to accept that Jesus died for my sins. He was lifted up on the cross to bear my punishment and free me from God’s righteous condemnation.
This didn’t make sense to me, and I never really accepted it. My reasons varied through the years. I didn’t like the idea that God needed to kill Jesus to forgive me. Doesn’t that mean I am more loving than God since I can forgive--and sometimes do--without a lot of blood being spilled? I need no pound of flesh; why should God?
Did Jesus really die thinking he was paying God back for the world’s offenses?
My childhood understanding, still held my millions today, also put all the emphasis on one aspect of Jesus: the crucifixion, but without giving thought to why he was crucified.
Those who killed him cared not a wit about me and my sins. They just wanted him dead.
Why? What was so wrong with Jesus that they should go to the trouble and mess of executing him? Was the reason connected with who he was, what he said and how he lived?
Perhaps he was killed because of the sins of the world: because those in power recognized that the kingdom of God he preached was a threat to their own kingdoms and privileges. Perhaps his idea of a kingdom of love and justice, where the broken and lost are worth as much or more than billionaires, seemed crazy.
Perhaps he was disturbing because he wanted to turn the world upside down with his vision of divine love embracing everyone and all that is. Perhaps everything he was and all he stood for contradicted the way powerful people think, the way society is arranged for their benefit.
I can’t grasp all the reasons the powerful wanted to kill Jesus except that he was a threat to them, which means that the all-embracing love of God was a threat to them. His hungry love and burning hope for a kingdom from God knocked the foundation from beneath their ordered world.
So what does it mean to believe in Jesus?
It means believing into the world, the kingdom, the vision that filled and animated him. It means seeing and imagining that world and giving yourself to it--surrendering to divine love and grace, acceptance and justice, compassion and yearning--even when the wisdom of self-interest, consolidating your power and protecting your comfort contradict it.
Jesus way, the way of divine love, his vision of a kingdom of compassion, was so radical that the powers of his age, and ours, wanted to sweep it away.
To believe in Jesus means holding his vision in our hearts and living, as best we can, the love that was in him, even when it leads to crosses of our own sorrow.
Pr. David L. Miller
Friday, March 09, 2012
Friday, March 9, 2012
Today’s text
1 Corinthians 1:18-21
The message of the cross folly for those who are on the way to ruin, but for those of us who are on the road to salvation it is the power of God. As scripture says: I am going to destroy the wisdom of the wise and bring to nothing the understanding of any who understand. Where are the philosophers? Where are the experts? And where are the debaters of this age? Do you not see how God has shown up human wisdom as folly? Since in the wisdom of God the world was unable to recognize God through wisdom, it was God's own pleasure to save believers through the folly of the gospel.
Reflection
I believe the glory of God is witnessed in the palette of miraculous color splashing across the western sky as the sun sinks beneath the horizon. Beauty is there for any with eyes to see.
God drops a hint in every sunset, in every sunrise, nudging our consciousness toward awareness and wonder. Here is beauty, but it is a drop in the ocean of the Beauty who made all that is.
But who can see beauty in an executed man? Can anyone perceive the wisdom of God in the brutality of intentional, inhuman suffering?
The Christian claim is that the heart of God is unknown and ultimately unknowable except in the cross, in the surrender of Jesus to a death at the hands of those who were protecting their power and maintaining an orderly and servile society.
For Christians, the cross reveals the meaning of all things. But what do we really see?
A man, Jesus, dying, failing to flee the death he could see coming to him because the powers that be saw him as a threat, a potential insurrectionist.
It is always interesting that people in poorer cultures seem to understand the cross better than we who live in more developed economies. They look at Jesus hanging on his cross and ‘get it.’
I saw this in reporting trips years ago in places like El Salvador and Namibia, Nigeria and China.
The poor looked at Jesus on the cross and saw that ‘he is one of us,’ sharing the struggle of living in a difficult place and time, identifying with whose most forgotten and left out of the gold rush for this world’s goods.
They saw him take on the powers that favor the few and hold others down, challenging the powerful toward compassion and announcing an alternative kingdom where the blessings of God are shared by all so that the desire of God might become human reality.
Jesus’ death on the cross meant that he did not run from the suffering that came to him because he poured compassion on the poor and challenged those that have. He submitted to suffering as act of love for all that God loves--the poor, the rich, the haves, the have-nots, all of us.
They saw the power and glory of God in sunsets like the rest of us. But in the cross they saw the heart and desire of God to love us all into justice and life.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Corinthians 1:18-21
The message of the cross folly for those who are on the way to ruin, but for those of us who are on the road to salvation it is the power of God. As scripture says: I am going to destroy the wisdom of the wise and bring to nothing the understanding of any who understand. Where are the philosophers? Where are the experts? And where are the debaters of this age? Do you not see how God has shown up human wisdom as folly? Since in the wisdom of God the world was unable to recognize God through wisdom, it was God's own pleasure to save believers through the folly of the gospel.
Reflection
I believe the glory of God is witnessed in the palette of miraculous color splashing across the western sky as the sun sinks beneath the horizon. Beauty is there for any with eyes to see.
God drops a hint in every sunset, in every sunrise, nudging our consciousness toward awareness and wonder. Here is beauty, but it is a drop in the ocean of the Beauty who made all that is.
But who can see beauty in an executed man? Can anyone perceive the wisdom of God in the brutality of intentional, inhuman suffering?
The Christian claim is that the heart of God is unknown and ultimately unknowable except in the cross, in the surrender of Jesus to a death at the hands of those who were protecting their power and maintaining an orderly and servile society.
For Christians, the cross reveals the meaning of all things. But what do we really see?
A man, Jesus, dying, failing to flee the death he could see coming to him because the powers that be saw him as a threat, a potential insurrectionist.
It is always interesting that people in poorer cultures seem to understand the cross better than we who live in more developed economies. They look at Jesus hanging on his cross and ‘get it.’
I saw this in reporting trips years ago in places like El Salvador and Namibia, Nigeria and China.
The poor looked at Jesus on the cross and saw that ‘he is one of us,’ sharing the struggle of living in a difficult place and time, identifying with whose most forgotten and left out of the gold rush for this world’s goods.
They saw him take on the powers that favor the few and hold others down, challenging the powerful toward compassion and announcing an alternative kingdom where the blessings of God are shared by all so that the desire of God might become human reality.
Jesus’ death on the cross meant that he did not run from the suffering that came to him because he poured compassion on the poor and challenged those that have. He submitted to suffering as act of love for all that God loves--the poor, the rich, the haves, the have-nots, all of us.
They saw the power and glory of God in sunsets like the rest of us. But in the cross they saw the heart and desire of God to love us all into justice and life.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
Wednesday, March 7 2012
Today’s text
John 12:35-37
Jesus then said: The light will be with you only a little longer now. Go on your way while you have the light, or darkness will overtake you, and nobody who walks in the dark knows where he is going. While you still have the light, believe in the light so that you may become children of light. Having said this, Jesus left them and was hidden from their sight. Though they had been present when he gave so many signs, they did not believe in him ... .
Reflection
We see what is in us. If we are in touch with the love and kindness of God in our hearts, we will see that love and kindness everywhere. If our hearts are hard, we will see it nowhere … and find bitterness everywhere.
In the beginning, God created light and opened human eyes to the beauty of the world and the generosity of the God who is love, whose pleasure is giving life.
History is a story of God continuing to breathe life into to the world and into us, seeking to open closed eyes and hearts to the Divine Presence, to the loving generosity that can be found in every time and place.
Sometimes God is successful, sometimes not.
Sometimes human hearts turn from love, seeking themselves and their own power, their own glory. They find the world a distrustful and threatening place
Sometimes human hearts are broken so badly by the suffering and tragedies of this world that they can see nothing else. Sometimes this pain turns their hearts from every vain seeking of self, knowing only a love willing to suffer with others can heal the wounds of this earth.
Sometimes we see the breathtaking beauty of hearts that love this world and all in need and are moved to want this beauty more than anything else, sensing that this alone can heal us and calm our fears.
In every time, the light of God shines in every love, breathes in every beauty to awaken us to the light of God that shines most clearly and distinctly in our brother Jesus.
But if do not have this light and love within us we cannot see him.
Yet, do we not all have this light within us? Are we not all alive with the breath of God, animated by the One who breathes life into us and all creation in every moment?
And if so, then why did some see Jesus and believe and others did not? Why do some see and believe today … and others not?
Perhaps we need to have our hearts touched and moved by love for this world and all its beauty and struggle.
Perhaps opening our hearts to the presence of this wounded love within softens hearts and opens our eyes to see the fullness of this love in the face of our wounded brother, Jesus, who suffers for the sake of the world.
Perhaps then we shall see how this world and we are loved. Perhaps then we shall see his love everywhere and in everything.
Perhaps once we are in touch with the love of God who is the Source of our being we shall see the light that shines in every darkness, even ours.
Pr. David L. Miller
John 12:35-37
Jesus then said: The light will be with you only a little longer now. Go on your way while you have the light, or darkness will overtake you, and nobody who walks in the dark knows where he is going. While you still have the light, believe in the light so that you may become children of light. Having said this, Jesus left them and was hidden from their sight. Though they had been present when he gave so many signs, they did not believe in him ... .
Reflection
We see what is in us. If we are in touch with the love and kindness of God in our hearts, we will see that love and kindness everywhere. If our hearts are hard, we will see it nowhere … and find bitterness everywhere.
In the beginning, God created light and opened human eyes to the beauty of the world and the generosity of the God who is love, whose pleasure is giving life.
History is a story of God continuing to breathe life into to the world and into us, seeking to open closed eyes and hearts to the Divine Presence, to the loving generosity that can be found in every time and place.
Sometimes God is successful, sometimes not.
Sometimes human hearts turn from love, seeking themselves and their own power, their own glory. They find the world a distrustful and threatening place
Sometimes human hearts are broken so badly by the suffering and tragedies of this world that they can see nothing else. Sometimes this pain turns their hearts from every vain seeking of self, knowing only a love willing to suffer with others can heal the wounds of this earth.
Sometimes we see the breathtaking beauty of hearts that love this world and all in need and are moved to want this beauty more than anything else, sensing that this alone can heal us and calm our fears.
In every time, the light of God shines in every love, breathes in every beauty to awaken us to the light of God that shines most clearly and distinctly in our brother Jesus.
But if do not have this light and love within us we cannot see him.
Yet, do we not all have this light within us? Are we not all alive with the breath of God, animated by the One who breathes life into us and all creation in every moment?
And if so, then why did some see Jesus and believe and others did not? Why do some see and believe today … and others not?
Perhaps we need to have our hearts touched and moved by love for this world and all its beauty and struggle.
Perhaps opening our hearts to the presence of this wounded love within softens hearts and opens our eyes to see the fullness of this love in the face of our wounded brother, Jesus, who suffers for the sake of the world.
Perhaps then we shall see how this world and we are loved. Perhaps then we shall see his love everywhere and in everything.
Perhaps once we are in touch with the love of God who is the Source of our being we shall see the light that shines in every darkness, even ours.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Today’s text
1 Corinthians 1:18
The message of the cross folly for those who are on the way to ruin, but for those of us who are on the road to salvation it is the power of God.
Reflection
There is nothing attractive about the cross despite the millions of replicas we hang on our walls or around our neck. We may make it of gold or silver and adorn it with beautiful stones. Our artists contort and color it in ways that can erase its brutality.
But it remains a ghastly affront to human sensibilities, which was always its intention.
In the ancient world, the cruelty of hanging society’s offenders on a cross, slowly to die, kept people in line. It was an instrument of execution and social order that made it clear who was in charge and what would happen to you if you forgot.
Centuries later, we can’t imagine the ugliness or pain of such a death. The cross has become an amulet, a good luck charm we hold up against the struggles of our lives to shield ourselves from the pains of living.
But it doesn’t protect us from a thing.
The cross invites into those pains, to give ourselves to those struggles trusting that there is One who has gone there before us, One who did not avoid the pains of the lost and forgotten, One who brings life out of death and hope where none seems possible.
The cross of Christ invites us to the hope of life where life seems most lost and we feel most alone.
For we are not alone. The Holy One who is God walked in the way of the forsaken, the way of the cross, awakening the awareness that there is no place the power and love of God will not go, no power that divine love cannot conquer.
Pr. David L. Miller
1 Corinthians 1:18
The message of the cross folly for those who are on the way to ruin, but for those of us who are on the road to salvation it is the power of God.
Reflection
There is nothing attractive about the cross despite the millions of replicas we hang on our walls or around our neck. We may make it of gold or silver and adorn it with beautiful stones. Our artists contort and color it in ways that can erase its brutality.
But it remains a ghastly affront to human sensibilities, which was always its intention.
In the ancient world, the cruelty of hanging society’s offenders on a cross, slowly to die, kept people in line. It was an instrument of execution and social order that made it clear who was in charge and what would happen to you if you forgot.
Centuries later, we can’t imagine the ugliness or pain of such a death. The cross has become an amulet, a good luck charm we hold up against the struggles of our lives to shield ourselves from the pains of living.
But it doesn’t protect us from a thing.
The cross invites into those pains, to give ourselves to those struggles trusting that there is One who has gone there before us, One who did not avoid the pains of the lost and forgotten, One who brings life out of death and hope where none seems possible.
The cross of Christ invites us to the hope of life where life seems most lost and we feel most alone.
For we are not alone. The Holy One who is God walked in the way of the forsaken, the way of the cross, awakening the awareness that there is no place the power and love of God will not go, no power that divine love cannot conquer.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Today’s text
Mark 8:35
Anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.
Reflection
A great deal of ink has been spilled during the past 35 years about why churches are failing. I remember one particularly honest op-ed article written by an Arizona pastor 22 or 23 years ago. The headline, which he chose, was “Entertainment evangelism.”
He argued that congregations must engage people through music and various forms of entertainment because traditional church liturgies fail to attract people or to excite imaginations about the power of God and the truth of the gospel. Through forms of entertainment congregations can draw a crowd and share the message of Jesus.
A firestorm of reader criticism followed the appearance of the article, but many agreed with the writer’s argument that the church must be far more attractional, more contemporary in music and approach.
The focus was on speaking to and meeting the needs of worshipers through media they understood and would not dismiss. Congregations willing to do this will grow and remain significant in their communities, he said. Those who do not, well … their fate is sealed.
Looking at the ministry that occupies much of my days, I see that meeting needs is a large part of my day. But the needs I most typically meet are those to be found at the hospital beds and hidden behind the anxious faces that walk through my office door, seeking hope, consolation and a word of guidance about God’s presence amid the confusion of living.
Those are needs I believe Christ calls the fellowship of the church to address. But catering to the needs of consumer culture for amusement is as antithetical to the gospel call of Christ today as when I first read that article in the late 1980s.
Consumers come to church wanting to be amused, entertained. They come with an implicit demand (sometimes explicit) that their needs must be met or they will go away … to someplace that better meets their needs, however defined.
One sometimes hears echoes of this refrain when people leave one congregation for another, and there can, of course, be good reasons for leaving.
Attending to human needs for community and care amid the difficulties of life was central to Jesus’ ministry of revealing God’s kingdom.
But as often as not the consumerism rife in our society moves us to look at our congregations as one more place whose value is established by how well it serves me: Does it make me comfortable, does it suit my views and desires, does its teaching and celebrations touch my heart?
Consumers totally miss the call of Jesus. Consequently, a deep need in their soul goes unmet: the need to find oneself by giving oneself away to the mission of Jesus.
Life is found in surrender to the cause of God’s loving kingdom, the cause to which Jesus surrendered.
This paradox is the center of Jesus teaching. In losing ourselves, we find ourselves, in giving ourselves for the sake of God’s love we receive the self we truly are, in forgiving we find forgiveness and in dying we discover eternal life.
Gracious God, show me this day where I might give myself, my heart and mind, my soul and strength, that in giving myself away I may discover what it means to live.
Pr. David L. Miller
Mark 8:35
Anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.
Reflection
A great deal of ink has been spilled during the past 35 years about why churches are failing. I remember one particularly honest op-ed article written by an Arizona pastor 22 or 23 years ago. The headline, which he chose, was “Entertainment evangelism.”
He argued that congregations must engage people through music and various forms of entertainment because traditional church liturgies fail to attract people or to excite imaginations about the power of God and the truth of the gospel. Through forms of entertainment congregations can draw a crowd and share the message of Jesus.
A firestorm of reader criticism followed the appearance of the article, but many agreed with the writer’s argument that the church must be far more attractional, more contemporary in music and approach.
The focus was on speaking to and meeting the needs of worshipers through media they understood and would not dismiss. Congregations willing to do this will grow and remain significant in their communities, he said. Those who do not, well … their fate is sealed.
Looking at the ministry that occupies much of my days, I see that meeting needs is a large part of my day. But the needs I most typically meet are those to be found at the hospital beds and hidden behind the anxious faces that walk through my office door, seeking hope, consolation and a word of guidance about God’s presence amid the confusion of living.
Those are needs I believe Christ calls the fellowship of the church to address. But catering to the needs of consumer culture for amusement is as antithetical to the gospel call of Christ today as when I first read that article in the late 1980s.
Consumers come to church wanting to be amused, entertained. They come with an implicit demand (sometimes explicit) that their needs must be met or they will go away … to someplace that better meets their needs, however defined.
One sometimes hears echoes of this refrain when people leave one congregation for another, and there can, of course, be good reasons for leaving.
Attending to human needs for community and care amid the difficulties of life was central to Jesus’ ministry of revealing God’s kingdom.
But as often as not the consumerism rife in our society moves us to look at our congregations as one more place whose value is established by how well it serves me: Does it make me comfortable, does it suit my views and desires, does its teaching and celebrations touch my heart?
Consumers totally miss the call of Jesus. Consequently, a deep need in their soul goes unmet: the need to find oneself by giving oneself away to the mission of Jesus.
Life is found in surrender to the cause of God’s loving kingdom, the cause to which Jesus surrendered.
This paradox is the center of Jesus teaching. In losing ourselves, we find ourselves, in giving ourselves for the sake of God’s love we receive the self we truly are, in forgiving we find forgiveness and in dying we discover eternal life.
Gracious God, show me this day where I might give myself, my heart and mind, my soul and strength, that in giving myself away I may discover what it means to live.
Pr. David L. Miller
Friday, February 24, 2012
February 24, 2012
Waiting for Spring, Lent & Loss
Reflection
Jerry and Denise were our neighbors during my final year of seminary. Dixie and I lived in a faded pink house near the end of Wartburg Place, on a ridge in the southeast corner of Dubuque, Iowa. The house was badly in need of everything, but it had a nice view and the rent was cheap.
Jerry and Denise lived upstairs with their daughter, Toby, who was much quieter than our two children, which was one reason we had little in common with them. To us, they seemed, well, above us, looking down.
We were all cordial, making the best our situation and the common entrance we shared, but we seldom talked and never socialized. But life happens, losses occur and souls connect in unexpected ways.
Jerry called last week wanting to talk. Life had, indeed, happened. The second anniversary of Denise’s death was upon him.
Death, or at least loss, comes in many forms, and it had come to him. He’d lost the marriage that had sustained him, the future he’d imagined and he was enduring professional loss, too. His way of working and doing ministry didn’t feel real or authentic anymore, if ever it had. He wondered
if he had sold out and lost his soul—his truest heart—somewhere in the course of 30 years of waging ministry.
His voice had changed, too, or maybe what changed was the way I hear. He’d also seem so sure of himself. Now he was searching for what comes next, not knowing. He’d taken a part-time call to a congregation on the west coast as he waits and watches … for spring.
Spring comes when green shoots break through cold winter’s crust of loss, and you begin to feel alive again. You may not get back everything you’ve lost and or want—and the scars from your wounds always remain. But a path of promise opens up and invites you to risk living and loving in a new way, a way you may have never considered.
Life comes out of death, like crocuses pushing through the snow.
Christian tradition calls this the paschal mystery. This is what Lent is about. We walk through Christ’s passage through death to resurrected life. Along the way we see many losses. He loses favor and welcome, friends and family, the feeling of God’s nearness and ultimately he loses his life in an act of callous brutality.
But in utter love and incomprehensibility, God brings new life out of the wounds that kill body and soul. This movement through loss to life is not something that happens just for Jesus in the Resurrection. It is the central dynamic of life in Christ. It is our life … and certainly Jerry’s.
Out of death comes life, out of loss comes newness, but there is that hard time of waiting and watching for spring. Faith is this watching and waiting for God to work this miracle one more time.
Sometimes loss cuts so deeply or weighs so heavily that our wounds seem beyond any healing God can offer. But the paschal mystery invites us to trust that all our losses and all our sorrows will be gathered up and transformed into something more immensely beautiful--and alive--than we can imagine.
One deep spiritual practice for Lent is to practice the paschal mystery by:
Naming our deaths--What deaths and losses have you experienced in the last year--the loss of youth, health, relationships, security, wholeness, job, dreams, loved ones, or perhaps the loss of the kind of faith and ideas about God you once held?
Refuse to cling--Release to God what has been lost. Give thanks for how it blessed you. What are you holding onto that you need to let go? What makes it hard to release it?
Grieve what has been lost--Allow yourself the sadness, remorse, guilt, anger and all the feelings that are part of grief. Offer them all to God in prayer.
Claim your births--What signs of new birth or new beginnings appear as you experienced deaths and losses and began to let go? Claim the spirit of the new life, the new reality that is appearing.
Pray--Regularly pray for God to bring new life out of loss: “Loving God, in your mercy carry me forward when I lack the strength and courage to go on. When I am in pain, when I feel lost, when I am losing hold of myself and all I treasure, help me trust that all the deaths I die will bear me deeper into your life.”
Pr David L. Miller
Reflection
Jerry and Denise were our neighbors during my final year of seminary. Dixie and I lived in a faded pink house near the end of Wartburg Place, on a ridge in the southeast corner of Dubuque, Iowa. The house was badly in need of everything, but it had a nice view and the rent was cheap.
Jerry and Denise lived upstairs with their daughter, Toby, who was much quieter than our two children, which was one reason we had little in common with them. To us, they seemed, well, above us, looking down.
We were all cordial, making the best our situation and the common entrance we shared, but we seldom talked and never socialized. But life happens, losses occur and souls connect in unexpected ways.
Jerry called last week wanting to talk. Life had, indeed, happened. The second anniversary of Denise’s death was upon him.
Death, or at least loss, comes in many forms, and it had come to him. He’d lost the marriage that had sustained him, the future he’d imagined and he was enduring professional loss, too. His way of working and doing ministry didn’t feel real or authentic anymore, if ever it had. He wondered
if he had sold out and lost his soul—his truest heart—somewhere in the course of 30 years of waging ministry.
His voice had changed, too, or maybe what changed was the way I hear. He’d also seem so sure of himself. Now he was searching for what comes next, not knowing. He’d taken a part-time call to a congregation on the west coast as he waits and watches … for spring.
Spring comes when green shoots break through cold winter’s crust of loss, and you begin to feel alive again. You may not get back everything you’ve lost and or want—and the scars from your wounds always remain. But a path of promise opens up and invites you to risk living and loving in a new way, a way you may have never considered.
Life comes out of death, like crocuses pushing through the snow.
Christian tradition calls this the paschal mystery. This is what Lent is about. We walk through Christ’s passage through death to resurrected life. Along the way we see many losses. He loses favor and welcome, friends and family, the feeling of God’s nearness and ultimately he loses his life in an act of callous brutality.
But in utter love and incomprehensibility, God brings new life out of the wounds that kill body and soul. This movement through loss to life is not something that happens just for Jesus in the Resurrection. It is the central dynamic of life in Christ. It is our life … and certainly Jerry’s.
Out of death comes life, out of loss comes newness, but there is that hard time of waiting and watching for spring. Faith is this watching and waiting for God to work this miracle one more time.
Sometimes loss cuts so deeply or weighs so heavily that our wounds seem beyond any healing God can offer. But the paschal mystery invites us to trust that all our losses and all our sorrows will be gathered up and transformed into something more immensely beautiful--and alive--than we can imagine.
One deep spiritual practice for Lent is to practice the paschal mystery by:
Naming our deaths--What deaths and losses have you experienced in the last year--the loss of youth, health, relationships, security, wholeness, job, dreams, loved ones, or perhaps the loss of the kind of faith and ideas about God you once held?
Refuse to cling--Release to God what has been lost. Give thanks for how it blessed you. What are you holding onto that you need to let go? What makes it hard to release it?
Grieve what has been lost--Allow yourself the sadness, remorse, guilt, anger and all the feelings that are part of grief. Offer them all to God in prayer.
Claim your births--What signs of new birth or new beginnings appear as you experienced deaths and losses and began to let go? Claim the spirit of the new life, the new reality that is appearing.
Pray--Regularly pray for God to bring new life out of loss: “Loving God, in your mercy carry me forward when I lack the strength and courage to go on. When I am in pain, when I feel lost, when I am losing hold of myself and all I treasure, help me trust that all the deaths I die will bear me deeper into your life.”
Pr David L. Miller
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Today’s text
2 Corinthians 4:5-6
It is not ourselves that we are proclaiming, but Christ Jesus as the Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. It is God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' that has shone into our hearts to enlighten them with the knowledge of God's glory, the glory on the face of Christ.
Reflection
Say the word glory and images of light fill the mind--the blinding brilliance of mid-day, sunburst through clouds at the close of the day, the splendid play of every-changing hues as the sun slowly fills … or recedes from the Grand Canyon.
The Bible suggests dozens of images like this. In the beginning, God creates a world of wonder and beauty, calling light out of the darkness of nothingness.
Moses ascends a mountain to commune with God and returns, his face alight from the reflected glow of his encounter.
The glory of the Lord comes to shine on those who dwell in the land of darkness, the prophet Isaiah says.
.
Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist, praises God for the boy’s birth and the mission he will pursue. “The dawn from on high will shine upon us,” his soul sings.
And when old Simeon holds the infant Jesus in the temple, he looks at the child’s face and knows that this one is “a light to enlighten the nations and the glory of your (God’s) people Israel.”
Glory is light, the light of God’s face, the revelation of God’s heart, the presence of God’s saving power shining on those whose hearts are heavy, those who hunger for life to be made new and fresh and free from all that hinders its shining.
Such glory shines in Jesus, a strange glory, though. For it is not seen most clearly in the bright light of success and adulation, not in popular acclaim and the celebration of the masses, but in surrender to the degrading suffering for the sake of divine love.
We do not reflect this glory as human beings. We do not merely mirror its reflection.
Gazing into the face of Jesus, seeing who he is, his words and works of divine love, his willing suffering unto death, his complete and utter trust of the heavenly Father--the light of his glory shines from the depth of our very being.
We become as he is, alight from within with the wonder of the Loving Mystery of God.
The daily invitation is to follow this Christ who shines with God’s glory.
Follow him into the places you have been led to give yourself. In surrender to those tasks, those people and those challenges, the glory of God will shine in dark places, and the light of God shining in Jesus face … will shine also in ours.
And once again, we shall see the glory of the uncreated light of the unimaginable God.
Pr. David L. Miller
2 Corinthians 4:5-6
It is not ourselves that we are proclaiming, but Christ Jesus as the Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. It is God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' that has shone into our hearts to enlighten them with the knowledge of God's glory, the glory on the face of Christ.
Reflection
Say the word glory and images of light fill the mind--the blinding brilliance of mid-day, sunburst through clouds at the close of the day, the splendid play of every-changing hues as the sun slowly fills … or recedes from the Grand Canyon.
The Bible suggests dozens of images like this. In the beginning, God creates a world of wonder and beauty, calling light out of the darkness of nothingness.
Moses ascends a mountain to commune with God and returns, his face alight from the reflected glow of his encounter.
The glory of the Lord comes to shine on those who dwell in the land of darkness, the prophet Isaiah says.
.
Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist, praises God for the boy’s birth and the mission he will pursue. “The dawn from on high will shine upon us,” his soul sings.
And when old Simeon holds the infant Jesus in the temple, he looks at the child’s face and knows that this one is “a light to enlighten the nations and the glory of your (God’s) people Israel.”
Glory is light, the light of God’s face, the revelation of God’s heart, the presence of God’s saving power shining on those whose hearts are heavy, those who hunger for life to be made new and fresh and free from all that hinders its shining.
Such glory shines in Jesus, a strange glory, though. For it is not seen most clearly in the bright light of success and adulation, not in popular acclaim and the celebration of the masses, but in surrender to the degrading suffering for the sake of divine love.
We do not reflect this glory as human beings. We do not merely mirror its reflection.
Gazing into the face of Jesus, seeing who he is, his words and works of divine love, his willing suffering unto death, his complete and utter trust of the heavenly Father--the light of his glory shines from the depth of our very being.
We become as he is, alight from within with the wonder of the Loving Mystery of God.
The daily invitation is to follow this Christ who shines with God’s glory.
Follow him into the places you have been led to give yourself. In surrender to those tasks, those people and those challenges, the glory of God will shine in dark places, and the light of God shining in Jesus face … will shine also in ours.
And once again, we shall see the glory of the uncreated light of the unimaginable God.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Today’s text
2 Corinthians 4:5-6
It is not ourselves that we are proclaiming, but Christ Jesus as the Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. It is God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' that has shone into our hearts to enlighten them with the knowledge of God's glory, the glory on the face of Christ.
Reflection
Illumine my heart, Holy One. Let your light shine out of my darkness. The day comes, but there is little light in me. My spirit is heavy. Gladness eludes me. Energy flags. My spirit is as dreary as this winter day.
I long for smiles that tell me all is well and all will be so. I hunger for my heart to smile and breathe freely, but I am burdened by the weight of the moment.
Responsibilities encumber my heart, duties deaden the spirit, my failures hurt those I love, and a nagging inner voice tells me that more is expected of me than I want to give. There’s that old persistent feeling that I am not ‘making it.’
But this is only a moment, and moments are like waves on the ocean. They rise and fall. There is a crest and trough on each of the innumerable waves that dance on the deep, none of which should be taken with ultimate seriousness. Each soon passes.
Beneath the restless surface the deep is quiet, steady, moving but slowly, unperturbed by the agitation of waves moved by every breath of air.
You, Loving Presence, are the deep, untroubled by fleeting moments.
Your light, to mix the metaphor, shines even when I do not see or feel it, even when the drabness of present moments blind my eyes and weigh my soul.
You shine and will shine in and on me, quieting my soul and bringing the joy that frees me to live, to give, to try, to fail, to get up and go again.
Soon, I will shut this machine down and leave. I will go to people weighed down by disease or discouragement or sorrow. I will take up responsibilities that feel too heavy and duties that can deaden the spirit. I will give my mind and skill to situations that will be little improved by my presence.
But I will go with a word of blessing and with the blessed communion of bread and wine through which you give us yourself, O Lord.
And I will trust that the light shines out of the darkness will shine also on me and in me, somewhere, as I go my way.
So I go.
Pr. David L. Miller
2 Corinthians 4:5-6
It is not ourselves that we are proclaiming, but Christ Jesus as the Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. It is God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' that has shone into our hearts to enlighten them with the knowledge of God's glory, the glory on the face of Christ.
Reflection
Illumine my heart, Holy One. Let your light shine out of my darkness. The day comes, but there is little light in me. My spirit is heavy. Gladness eludes me. Energy flags. My spirit is as dreary as this winter day.
I long for smiles that tell me all is well and all will be so. I hunger for my heart to smile and breathe freely, but I am burdened by the weight of the moment.
Responsibilities encumber my heart, duties deaden the spirit, my failures hurt those I love, and a nagging inner voice tells me that more is expected of me than I want to give. There’s that old persistent feeling that I am not ‘making it.’
But this is only a moment, and moments are like waves on the ocean. They rise and fall. There is a crest and trough on each of the innumerable waves that dance on the deep, none of which should be taken with ultimate seriousness. Each soon passes.
Beneath the restless surface the deep is quiet, steady, moving but slowly, unperturbed by the agitation of waves moved by every breath of air.
You, Loving Presence, are the deep, untroubled by fleeting moments.
Your light, to mix the metaphor, shines even when I do not see or feel it, even when the drabness of present moments blind my eyes and weigh my soul.
You shine and will shine in and on me, quieting my soul and bringing the joy that frees me to live, to give, to try, to fail, to get up and go again.
Soon, I will shut this machine down and leave. I will go to people weighed down by disease or discouragement or sorrow. I will take up responsibilities that feel too heavy and duties that can deaden the spirit. I will give my mind and skill to situations that will be little improved by my presence.
But I will go with a word of blessing and with the blessed communion of bread and wine through which you give us yourself, O Lord.
And I will trust that the light shines out of the darkness will shine also on me and in me, somewhere, as I go my way.
So I go.
Pr. David L. Miller
Monday, February 13, 2012
Monday, February 13, 2012
Today’s text
2 Corinthians 4:5-6
It is not ourselves that we are proclaiming, but Christ Jesus as the Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. It is God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' that has shone into our hearts to enlighten them with the knowledge of God's glory, the glory on the face of Christ.Reflection
There is a oneness in Christian faith that transcends the dualism of our common patterns of believing. Typically, we imagine a god ‘out there,’ separate from ourselves. Just so, we place ourselves in the difficult position of trying to work up belief that this god is real, that he exists.
Faith becomes believing in the reality of this god. And if we get that far, we go on to ascribe things to the character of this god--goodness, forgiveness, care purity, judgment or whatever.
No matter what characteristics you ascribe this god remains distant, ‘out there.”
This is an exercise in spiritual apartheid. This god and I are separate, not together. I am here and this god is ‘over there,’ and I have to struggle to jump the broad divide between us.
With this god, we cannot share the intimate communion of those who feel and know--in utter simplicity--what is in the other’s heart.
I have little interest in this ‘out there’ god, although I surely believe that God transcends and is so much greater than us.
What I want … and what we are given … is so much better, and so much more lovingly intimate. For what we are given is not a what to believe in but a who to indwell our souls.
The glory of God shines in every morsel of creation and in the morning light of blessedly new days. This glory shines in our hearts--and in the face of Jesus.
It glistens in his every word and deed, in his glowing compassion and in his desire to enlighten human souls to the grace of the One whose love shines on good and evil alike.
We are invited by the Loving Mystery of God to look at Jesus, again and again, and to know … the beauty of his grace and the life that is in him … is the glory of God’s own heart.
In this knowing, we know one more thing.
The glory we see in him is alive also in us. That glory of God’s loving Spirit allows us to see God’s glory shining in Jesus … and in gentle morning light … and in the beauty of human souls and … well, you get the idea.
This is no ‘out there’ god. This is the Loving Mystery who is right here, awakening love in my heart and yours.
This One is as close as our breath, as near as the beating of our soul’s own loving. In this loving, his Spirit communes with our spirit, giving us close, intimate knowledge that the glory of God is the love that refuses to stay ‘out there.’
Pr. David L. Miller
2 Corinthians 4:5-6
It is not ourselves that we are proclaiming, but Christ Jesus as the Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. It is God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' that has shone into our hearts to enlighten them with the knowledge of God's glory, the glory on the face of Christ.Reflection
There is a oneness in Christian faith that transcends the dualism of our common patterns of believing. Typically, we imagine a god ‘out there,’ separate from ourselves. Just so, we place ourselves in the difficult position of trying to work up belief that this god is real, that he exists.
Faith becomes believing in the reality of this god. And if we get that far, we go on to ascribe things to the character of this god--goodness, forgiveness, care purity, judgment or whatever.
No matter what characteristics you ascribe this god remains distant, ‘out there.”
This is an exercise in spiritual apartheid. This god and I are separate, not together. I am here and this god is ‘over there,’ and I have to struggle to jump the broad divide between us.
With this god, we cannot share the intimate communion of those who feel and know--in utter simplicity--what is in the other’s heart.
I have little interest in this ‘out there’ god, although I surely believe that God transcends and is so much greater than us.
What I want … and what we are given … is so much better, and so much more lovingly intimate. For what we are given is not a what to believe in but a who to indwell our souls.
The glory of God shines in every morsel of creation and in the morning light of blessedly new days. This glory shines in our hearts--and in the face of Jesus.
It glistens in his every word and deed, in his glowing compassion and in his desire to enlighten human souls to the grace of the One whose love shines on good and evil alike.
We are invited by the Loving Mystery of God to look at Jesus, again and again, and to know … the beauty of his grace and the life that is in him … is the glory of God’s own heart.
In this knowing, we know one more thing.
The glory we see in him is alive also in us. That glory of God’s loving Spirit allows us to see God’s glory shining in Jesus … and in gentle morning light … and in the beauty of human souls and … well, you get the idea.
This is no ‘out there’ god. This is the Loving Mystery who is right here, awakening love in my heart and yours.
This One is as close as our breath, as near as the beating of our soul’s own loving. In this loving, his Spirit communes with our spirit, giving us close, intimate knowledge that the glory of God is the love that refuses to stay ‘out there.’
Pr. David L. Miller
Friday, February 10, 2012
Friday, February 10, 2012
Today’s text
Mark 1: 40-42
A man suffering from a virulent skin-disease came to him and pleaded on his knees saying, 'If you are willing, you can cleanse me.' Feeling sorry for him, Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him and said to him, 'I am willing. Be cleansed.' And at once the skin-disease left him and he was cleansed.
Reflection
What would you know if all you ever knew about God was this short text? What is given to you here?
I frequently asked this when teaching people how to meditate with the Bible. I encourage them to listen to what is said to and in them as they let the words and images come alive within them.
If all you ever had of the Scripture was this story, what would you know?
More than can be written here, frankly. For, the soul of God is on display in Jesus outstretched hand and in his words, “I am willing.’
Healing, making the broken whole--this is the desire of God. This is what God wants to do. No, this is who God is, the substance of divine Being.
The nature and heart of the Loving Mystery of God is compressed into one action, Jesus outstretched hand touching the untouchable, healing the discouraged and broken, consoling the broken hearted and loving those who imagine love is beyond them and always will be.
The heart of God becomes incarnate and walks the earth in our brother, Jesus, and what do we see?
Not fire and brimstone, not anger and judgment but utter compassion for a wounded humanity. We see the desire to reach into the depth of our souls and make whole all that is broken.
Our place in the story is kneeling at the feet of Jesus, bearing the wounds of our lives and begging, “If you want to, you can make me whole. You can cleanse me and make me new.”
We hunger for that newness to wash over us again. We want to live and breathe and smile the purest joy of gratitude for our lives and for being able to feel the fullness of divine love.
As we put ourselves at Jesus’ feet, humbly seeking from the fountain of life and love, we know. We know he is willing, so willingly we return again and again to seek the love that makes us whole.
I wonder about the look on Jesus’ face as he saw the man fall at his feet. He looked with compassion at him, we are told. When I imagine that, I see his face looking at me with the compassion that is the face of God.
Pr. David L. Miller
Mark 1: 40-42
A man suffering from a virulent skin-disease came to him and pleaded on his knees saying, 'If you are willing, you can cleanse me.' Feeling sorry for him, Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him and said to him, 'I am willing. Be cleansed.' And at once the skin-disease left him and he was cleansed.
Reflection
What would you know if all you ever knew about God was this short text? What is given to you here?
I frequently asked this when teaching people how to meditate with the Bible. I encourage them to listen to what is said to and in them as they let the words and images come alive within them.
If all you ever had of the Scripture was this story, what would you know?
More than can be written here, frankly. For, the soul of God is on display in Jesus outstretched hand and in his words, “I am willing.’
Healing, making the broken whole--this is the desire of God. This is what God wants to do. No, this is who God is, the substance of divine Being.
The nature and heart of the Loving Mystery of God is compressed into one action, Jesus outstretched hand touching the untouchable, healing the discouraged and broken, consoling the broken hearted and loving those who imagine love is beyond them and always will be.
The heart of God becomes incarnate and walks the earth in our brother, Jesus, and what do we see?
Not fire and brimstone, not anger and judgment but utter compassion for a wounded humanity. We see the desire to reach into the depth of our souls and make whole all that is broken.
Our place in the story is kneeling at the feet of Jesus, bearing the wounds of our lives and begging, “If you want to, you can make me whole. You can cleanse me and make me new.”
We hunger for that newness to wash over us again. We want to live and breathe and smile the purest joy of gratitude for our lives and for being able to feel the fullness of divine love.
As we put ourselves at Jesus’ feet, humbly seeking from the fountain of life and love, we know. We know he is willing, so willingly we return again and again to seek the love that makes us whole.
I wonder about the look on Jesus’ face as he saw the man fall at his feet. He looked with compassion at him, we are told. When I imagine that, I see his face looking at me with the compassion that is the face of God.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Today’s text
Mark 2:1-5
When he returned to Capernaum, some time later word went round that he was in the house; and so many people collected that there was no room left, even in front of the door. He was preaching the word to them when some people came bringing him a paralytic carried by four men, but as they could not get the man to him through the crowd, they stripped the roof over the place where Jesus was; and when they had made an opening, they lowered the stretcher on which the paralytic lay. Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralytic, 'My child, your sins are forgiven.'
Reflection
Moments come when time freezes and revelation appears.
The story stops when Jesus glances up and sees a man being lowered from the roof of reeds.
He doesn’t see the man, who is still above him. He doesn’t see his face or his condition. He sees the others, the paralytic’s friends who have taken this step.
They hold ropes fastened to the stretcher, which they carefully lower lest the stretcher tip throwing their friend to the ground with a thump.
This image is transparent to their souls, and this is what Jesus sees.
He sees their faith, and his mouth falls open in that universal ‘ohh’ that occurs at the sight of telling beauty.
I remember when I first saw the turquoise wonder of Lake Victoria, a freezing pearl framed by the Canadian Rockies. I remember the first time I stood on a Sudanese hill and surveyed a gentle bend in the Nile River as it pushed its way north.
I felt that “ohh,” but much more I feel it when I encounter beauty of soul.
It takes one’s breath as love or hope, faith or generosity of surprising magnitude startles you into the awareness of the wonder that lives in the human heart, a beauty that lies dormant waiting to be awakened so that it may grace the world.
That is what you saw Jesus, and it moved you just as it moves me.
You saw their faith, certainly their love for the paralytic, too, but it is their faith that most moved you.
Theirs was the faith that dares to believe there is a power of grace and love alive on this earth that can generously give healing to bodies and souls. They believed the power of this grace and love--the power of an all-generous God--filled you.
They trusted what was in you, the passion of your heart.
The beauty of their hearts touched the beauty of your own. Their faith and the loving power in you were not two different things but the presence of one thing--the divine Spirit.
And that Spirit made them your true brothers, whom you recognized with a word of joy, “ohh.”
May I see such beauty this day … and awaken also that word of joyous surprise in you.
Pr. David L. Miller
Mark 2:1-5
When he returned to Capernaum, some time later word went round that he was in the house; and so many people collected that there was no room left, even in front of the door. He was preaching the word to them when some people came bringing him a paralytic carried by four men, but as they could not get the man to him through the crowd, they stripped the roof over the place where Jesus was; and when they had made an opening, they lowered the stretcher on which the paralytic lay. Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralytic, 'My child, your sins are forgiven.'
Reflection
Moments come when time freezes and revelation appears.
The story stops when Jesus glances up and sees a man being lowered from the roof of reeds.
He doesn’t see the man, who is still above him. He doesn’t see his face or his condition. He sees the others, the paralytic’s friends who have taken this step.
They hold ropes fastened to the stretcher, which they carefully lower lest the stretcher tip throwing their friend to the ground with a thump.
This image is transparent to their souls, and this is what Jesus sees.
He sees their faith, and his mouth falls open in that universal ‘ohh’ that occurs at the sight of telling beauty.
I remember when I first saw the turquoise wonder of Lake Victoria, a freezing pearl framed by the Canadian Rockies. I remember the first time I stood on a Sudanese hill and surveyed a gentle bend in the Nile River as it pushed its way north.
I felt that “ohh,” but much more I feel it when I encounter beauty of soul.
It takes one’s breath as love or hope, faith or generosity of surprising magnitude startles you into the awareness of the wonder that lives in the human heart, a beauty that lies dormant waiting to be awakened so that it may grace the world.
That is what you saw Jesus, and it moved you just as it moves me.
You saw their faith, certainly their love for the paralytic, too, but it is their faith that most moved you.
Theirs was the faith that dares to believe there is a power of grace and love alive on this earth that can generously give healing to bodies and souls. They believed the power of this grace and love--the power of an all-generous God--filled you.
They trusted what was in you, the passion of your heart.
The beauty of their hearts touched the beauty of your own. Their faith and the loving power in you were not two different things but the presence of one thing--the divine Spirit.
And that Spirit made them your true brothers, whom you recognized with a word of joy, “ohh.”
May I see such beauty this day … and awaken also that word of joyous surprise in you.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Today’s text
Mark 9:2-4
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and led them up a high mountain on their own by themselves. There in their presence he was transfigured: his clothes became brilliantly white, whiter than any earthly bleacher could make them. Elijah appeared to them with Moses; and they were talking to Jesus.
Reflection
Much is made of mountain top experiences. Too many sermons are preached urging us not to stay up there too long, lest we confuse the mountain top with reality.
But if you don’t mind, I am going to stay here, on the mountain top with Jesus, as he shines brilliantly white, glistening like crystal waters in mid-day sun.
I like who I am when I stand in this presence. I like what I feel and how I see.
I want nothing but to be with him and know that he is all I need. I sense, no, I am certain that life is to stand in the circle of the light shed from his apparition.
There is no fear there, no worries about self, no fears of life and death, even of one’s own death, for the brilliance of his shining reveals that all is life in him, awakening the joy of eternal life within one’s own being.
The mountain top is the place where life is awakened in the soul. It is not a flight from reality, but an elevation into the eternal life for which we were made and for which we are intended.
It is the place where God gives that which God most hungers to give--the divine life of the Holy Trinity, that dancing play of love and joy in which we simply know (finally) ourselves and the loving beauty of God.
The mountain top is not a flight into illusion but the only place we know what is most real and true.
What some call ‘real life’ is a drab imposter. Reality is what we see in the light that shines from the face of Jesus.
Pr. David L. Miller
Mark 9:2-4
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and led them up a high mountain on their own by themselves. There in their presence he was transfigured: his clothes became brilliantly white, whiter than any earthly bleacher could make them. Elijah appeared to them with Moses; and they were talking to Jesus.
Reflection
Much is made of mountain top experiences. Too many sermons are preached urging us not to stay up there too long, lest we confuse the mountain top with reality.
But if you don’t mind, I am going to stay here, on the mountain top with Jesus, as he shines brilliantly white, glistening like crystal waters in mid-day sun.
I like who I am when I stand in this presence. I like what I feel and how I see.
I want nothing but to be with him and know that he is all I need. I sense, no, I am certain that life is to stand in the circle of the light shed from his apparition.
There is no fear there, no worries about self, no fears of life and death, even of one’s own death, for the brilliance of his shining reveals that all is life in him, awakening the joy of eternal life within one’s own being.
The mountain top is the place where life is awakened in the soul. It is not a flight from reality, but an elevation into the eternal life for which we were made and for which we are intended.
It is the place where God gives that which God most hungers to give--the divine life of the Holy Trinity, that dancing play of love and joy in which we simply know (finally) ourselves and the loving beauty of God.
The mountain top is not a flight into illusion but the only place we know what is most real and true.
What some call ‘real life’ is a drab imposter. Reality is what we see in the light that shines from the face of Jesus.
Pr. David L. Miller
Thursday, February 02, 2012
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Today’s text
Mark 1:29-31
And at once on leaving the synagogue, he went with James and John straight to the house of Simon and Andrew. Now Simon's mother-in-law was in bed and feverish, and at once they told him about her. He went in to her, took her by the hand and helped her up. And the fever left her and she began to serve them.
Reflection
A portrait of my desire … and of the church appears here. The woman rises. We don’t even know her name, but she is us, or at least me.
I feel a gentle smile as she rises from her mat and goes about her business, quietly serving with unhurried grace. There is no trace of anxiety or concern for approval in her. I sense no concern in her for how she is perceived or with whether anyone notices what she is doing.
But she is notices. She is aware, quietly mindful of her quiet motions as she goes about her hospitality for the needs of her visitors. Gentle joy lights her face as she attends to them.
She is given to that which has been given her to do and to be. She lives what she is. In this simplicity, there is the joy of being that manifestation of grace that God fashioned her to be.
Her soul is quiet, at peace, having known the Spirit of Love lifting her into herself, She lives this self not worrying whether it is enough just to be who she is, giving what she has been given to give.
Only Love, which is to say only the Divine Spirit can do this in a human heart.
This points the way for me and for all.
Her gentle grace draws me. The peace she exudes, her quiet givnen-ness to the grace in her is my desire.
She has no thought of success or failure, of ‘making it’ or of proving herself to some judge, and so many judges hold sway over our souls. There are judges from our past or present, judges outside of us and those terrible judges that inhabit our minds.
On our very best days, we are like the woman, free from the judges and the anxieties they provoke. Then we grow weary or troubles come, and the judges take over our minds. I begin to live as if it is not enough just to be and to give what God has put in my soul.
This is no way to live, of course. It is not real life at all.
And it’s so much less than the quiet, gentle light I see on the woman’s face as she serves, Jesus having lifted her into life. She is a portrait of The Spirit of Life seeks to awaken in human hearts, mine and yours.
And that is what the church is: a communion of hearts having been lifted by the Divine Spirit of Love in Jesus, sent to live out the mystery and goodness of what is in them.
Pr. David L. Miller
Mark 1:29-31
And at once on leaving the synagogue, he went with James and John straight to the house of Simon and Andrew. Now Simon's mother-in-law was in bed and feverish, and at once they told him about her. He went in to her, took her by the hand and helped her up. And the fever left her and she began to serve them.
Reflection
A portrait of my desire … and of the church appears here. The woman rises. We don’t even know her name, but she is us, or at least me.
I feel a gentle smile as she rises from her mat and goes about her business, quietly serving with unhurried grace. There is no trace of anxiety or concern for approval in her. I sense no concern in her for how she is perceived or with whether anyone notices what she is doing.
But she is notices. She is aware, quietly mindful of her quiet motions as she goes about her hospitality for the needs of her visitors. Gentle joy lights her face as she attends to them.
She is given to that which has been given her to do and to be. She lives what she is. In this simplicity, there is the joy of being that manifestation of grace that God fashioned her to be.
Her soul is quiet, at peace, having known the Spirit of Love lifting her into herself, She lives this self not worrying whether it is enough just to be who she is, giving what she has been given to give.
Only Love, which is to say only the Divine Spirit can do this in a human heart.
This points the way for me and for all.
Her gentle grace draws me. The peace she exudes, her quiet givnen-ness to the grace in her is my desire.
She has no thought of success or failure, of ‘making it’ or of proving herself to some judge, and so many judges hold sway over our souls. There are judges from our past or present, judges outside of us and those terrible judges that inhabit our minds.
On our very best days, we are like the woman, free from the judges and the anxieties they provoke. Then we grow weary or troubles come, and the judges take over our minds. I begin to live as if it is not enough just to be and to give what God has put in my soul.
This is no way to live, of course. It is not real life at all.
And it’s so much less than the quiet, gentle light I see on the woman’s face as she serves, Jesus having lifted her into life. She is a portrait of The Spirit of Life seeks to awaken in human hearts, mine and yours.
And that is what the church is: a communion of hearts having been lifted by the Divine Spirit of Love in Jesus, sent to live out the mystery and goodness of what is in them.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Today’s text
Mark 1:29-31
And at once on leaving the synagogue, he went with James and John straight to the house of Simon and Andrew. Now Simon's mother-in-law was in bed and feverish, and at once they told him about her. He went in to her, took her by the hand and helped her up. And the fever left her and she began to serve them.
Reflection
Healing comes we know that what is in Jesus is also in us.
It comes when the divine Spirit that moves Jesus’ compassion and power awakens the divine Spirit within us.
Healing is this awakening.
The divine Spirit of love and power resides in us. Its seeds are planted in our creation. It is breathed into us by virtue of our humanity. In the beginning, God breathed life into creation, our holy texts tell us.
This means every human soul is alive with the Spirit, the breath of God, the One who is love and power, mercy and compassion, whose will is life for all that is.
Such is the Spirit that makes us alive, but most often it is buried or caged within our fears and prejudices that it no longer flows freely through our bodies and souls, animating our actions and feelings.
Momentary emotional states--fear, threat, stress and the pains of woundedness--hide the essential truth of our existence from awareness. We live believing these fleeting feeling states are our reality, our truth--that this is who we are.
Confusion results: First, I am my fear, then my joy. I am my victory and then my defeat, my success and then my sadness and stress.
Hidden beneath this illusion is my reality. I am a manifestation of the life and love of God. My breath is the breath of the Immortal and Immeasurable One. This always remains, hidden deep in our interiority, waiting its awakening.
Awakening comes in the presence of One who is filled and animated by the Divine Spirit. This is not strange or even unusual. We have felt it. We come alive and are freed to give ourselves to the tasks of our lives (like Simon’s mother-in-law) when we are in the presence of someone or something in whom we feel the Divine Spirit of love and freedom.
The Divine Spirit enlivens us when we are in the presence of the Presence.
Some blessed souls manifest the Presence more fully and beautifully, awakening life in others. They are graces, sacraments of God’s life stirring us to the life and joy God intends.
The Spirit of the Loving Wonder comes to fullest human expression in our brother Jesus. This is what makes him Son of God, Messiah and Savior. When we come into his presence--or his presence comes to us--his Spirit awakens the Spirit within us.
Then it is: the fever of life leaves us, and we come alive.
Pr. David L. Miller
Mark 1:29-31
And at once on leaving the synagogue, he went with James and John straight to the house of Simon and Andrew. Now Simon's mother-in-law was in bed and feverish, and at once they told him about her. He went in to her, took her by the hand and helped her up. And the fever left her and she began to serve them.
Reflection
Healing comes we know that what is in Jesus is also in us.
It comes when the divine Spirit that moves Jesus’ compassion and power awakens the divine Spirit within us.
Healing is this awakening.
The divine Spirit of love and power resides in us. Its seeds are planted in our creation. It is breathed into us by virtue of our humanity. In the beginning, God breathed life into creation, our holy texts tell us.
This means every human soul is alive with the Spirit, the breath of God, the One who is love and power, mercy and compassion, whose will is life for all that is.
Such is the Spirit that makes us alive, but most often it is buried or caged within our fears and prejudices that it no longer flows freely through our bodies and souls, animating our actions and feelings.
Momentary emotional states--fear, threat, stress and the pains of woundedness--hide the essential truth of our existence from awareness. We live believing these fleeting feeling states are our reality, our truth--that this is who we are.
Confusion results: First, I am my fear, then my joy. I am my victory and then my defeat, my success and then my sadness and stress.
Hidden beneath this illusion is my reality. I am a manifestation of the life and love of God. My breath is the breath of the Immortal and Immeasurable One. This always remains, hidden deep in our interiority, waiting its awakening.
Awakening comes in the presence of One who is filled and animated by the Divine Spirit. This is not strange or even unusual. We have felt it. We come alive and are freed to give ourselves to the tasks of our lives (like Simon’s mother-in-law) when we are in the presence of someone or something in whom we feel the Divine Spirit of love and freedom.
The Divine Spirit enlivens us when we are in the presence of the Presence.
Some blessed souls manifest the Presence more fully and beautifully, awakening life in others. They are graces, sacraments of God’s life stirring us to the life and joy God intends.
The Spirit of the Loving Wonder comes to fullest human expression in our brother Jesus. This is what makes him Son of God, Messiah and Savior. When we come into his presence--or his presence comes to us--his Spirit awakens the Spirit within us.
Then it is: the fever of life leaves us, and we come alive.
Pr. David L. Miller
Friday, January 27, 2012
Friday, January 27, 2012
Today’s text
Mark 1:23-27
And at once in their synagogue there was a man with an unclean spirit, and he shouted, 'What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are: the Holy One of God.' But Jesus rebuked it saying, 'Be quiet! Come out of him!' And the unclean spirit threw the man into convulsions and with a loud cry went out of him. The people were so astonished that they started asking one another what it all meant, saying, 'Here is a teaching that is new, and with authority behind it: he gives orders even to unclean spirits and they obey him.'
Reflection
Astonishment holds no interest for me. I don’t care about it. I don’t wonder in amazement that Jesus did startling things. Nor do I spend a moment trying to understand how he acted with such power or even to believe that he did.
The same is true of rationalizations about what was really happening. Was it demon or some form of mental illness or maybe epilepsy that seized this poor fellow?
None of this captures my interest. The questions bore me and waste the time of any who care to take them on.
What matters to me is what happened to the man. What did Jesus do for him?
This answer is not hard to find … or to want for yourself.
He freed him to live.
He took away the bondage that kept his heart and mind--not to mention his body--from running free as the wind, from sucking up each daily breath with gratitude and joy. He released him from the angry rants that drove all human communion and consolation far away.
He restored him to the ordinary graces of human community where we live and love, struggle and fear, sin and forgive, laugh and cry, suffer and die.
With an angry voice, he drove away the hindrance that kept human souls from throwing their arms around him to receive as a brother, a friend, a soul worth knowing loving.
He ripped away the barrier to loving acceptance and grace, so that he might know the simple sacramental joy of being human and sharing the love that God is.
Jesus did for him the same thing he hungers to do for us.
So speak to our bondage, Jesus. Drive off the demons of our fears and wounds, the burdens of our failures and sins and restore a community of love among us that we might truly live.
For by experience I know … this is what you do and who you are.
Pr. David L. Miller
Mark 1:23-27
And at once in their synagogue there was a man with an unclean spirit, and he shouted, 'What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are: the Holy One of God.' But Jesus rebuked it saying, 'Be quiet! Come out of him!' And the unclean spirit threw the man into convulsions and with a loud cry went out of him. The people were so astonished that they started asking one another what it all meant, saying, 'Here is a teaching that is new, and with authority behind it: he gives orders even to unclean spirits and they obey him.'
Reflection
Astonishment holds no interest for me. I don’t care about it. I don’t wonder in amazement that Jesus did startling things. Nor do I spend a moment trying to understand how he acted with such power or even to believe that he did.
The same is true of rationalizations about what was really happening. Was it demon or some form of mental illness or maybe epilepsy that seized this poor fellow?
None of this captures my interest. The questions bore me and waste the time of any who care to take them on.
What matters to me is what happened to the man. What did Jesus do for him?
This answer is not hard to find … or to want for yourself.
He freed him to live.
He took away the bondage that kept his heart and mind--not to mention his body--from running free as the wind, from sucking up each daily breath with gratitude and joy. He released him from the angry rants that drove all human communion and consolation far away.
He restored him to the ordinary graces of human community where we live and love, struggle and fear, sin and forgive, laugh and cry, suffer and die.
With an angry voice, he drove away the hindrance that kept human souls from throwing their arms around him to receive as a brother, a friend, a soul worth knowing loving.
He ripped away the barrier to loving acceptance and grace, so that he might know the simple sacramental joy of being human and sharing the love that God is.
Jesus did for him the same thing he hungers to do for us.
So speak to our bondage, Jesus. Drive off the demons of our fears and wounds, the burdens of our failures and sins and restore a community of love among us that we might truly live.
For by experience I know … this is what you do and who you are.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Tuesday, January 26, 2012
Today’s text
Mark 1:21-22
They went as far as Capernaum, and at once on the Sabbath he went into the synagogue and began to teach. And his teaching made a deep impression on them because, unlike the scribes, he taught them with authority.
Reflection
Sometimes you just know, and knowing … you speak with simplicity and power. Words ring true, with truth arising not from books or reading but from the depth of a soul that feels life and pain, hope and the Love who is God.
Such was your soul, Jesus. All that is human--all that is in us--was felt and treasured, cherished and held at the depth of your heart, where your human heart and the heart of the Divine Mystery met.
You spoke of what you knew, not what you learned; of what you felt, not what others thought you should say. There was no need for others to authenticate your words or meaning, for they flowed from that point where your soul and the soul of God were one.
I know that point. I have been there; most of us have at one time or another. And I know when I feel someone is speaking truth that appears when all artificiality is stripped away, and we say what we are, what we truly see and know.
But only love, immortal and immeasurable love allows us entry into such depth of soul where truth is known and true authority is found. Only when we can look at our lives and hearts, our failures and fears with love … and not denial or the desire to escape … do we arrive at the place where truth … where God is found.
You lived in that place, Jesus. Embracing the realities of your life and ours, welcoming the lives of needy, craving human souls into the love you knew within, you brought human experience and the experience of God together--and you spoke what you felt and knew … so that we might know what you know, and speak with the authority found only in loving.
Pr. David L. Miller
Mark 1:21-22
They went as far as Capernaum, and at once on the Sabbath he went into the synagogue and began to teach. And his teaching made a deep impression on them because, unlike the scribes, he taught them with authority.
Reflection
Sometimes you just know, and knowing … you speak with simplicity and power. Words ring true, with truth arising not from books or reading but from the depth of a soul that feels life and pain, hope and the Love who is God.
Such was your soul, Jesus. All that is human--all that is in us--was felt and treasured, cherished and held at the depth of your heart, where your human heart and the heart of the Divine Mystery met.
You spoke of what you knew, not what you learned; of what you felt, not what others thought you should say. There was no need for others to authenticate your words or meaning, for they flowed from that point where your soul and the soul of God were one.
I know that point. I have been there; most of us have at one time or another. And I know when I feel someone is speaking truth that appears when all artificiality is stripped away, and we say what we are, what we truly see and know.
But only love, immortal and immeasurable love allows us entry into such depth of soul where truth is known and true authority is found. Only when we can look at our lives and hearts, our failures and fears with love … and not denial or the desire to escape … do we arrive at the place where truth … where God is found.
You lived in that place, Jesus. Embracing the realities of your life and ours, welcoming the lives of needy, craving human souls into the love you knew within, you brought human experience and the experience of God together--and you spoke what you felt and knew … so that we might know what you know, and speak with the authority found only in loving.
Pr. David L. Miller
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Today’s text
Mark 1:14-18
After John had been arrested, Jesus went into Galilee. There he proclaimed the gospel from God saying, 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent, and believe the gospel.' As he was walking along by the Lake of Galilee he saw Simon and Simon's brother Andrew casting a net in the lake -- for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, 'Come after me and I will make you into fishers of people.' And immediately they left their boats and followed him.
Reflection
I think it was your smile. That was why they came … immediately.
These words say nothing about your mood, Jesus. They offer no descriptions of the look on your face as you spoke. But I see you, and I see a smile.
Joy flashes through you as you invite these men to follow you into a new way of seeing and being, into the reality you hunger to reveal--the rule of the God who loves all that is made … and me.
I can’t know why these first followers dropped what they were doing to follow you. But I feel your joy. I see your joy, a smile. Physical pleasure passes through you as you invite your first followers to come and see what you are all about.
I know a gentle joy as your words roll around in my head, and I imagine the scene by the lake. It is just before dawn. A new day is about to break. You walk by, asking these common souls to follow along and to see it, to have their minds and hearts awakened to a radiant vision of God’s loving desire for every living thing.
You invite them to open their eyes to see and trust that this reality is near. It will change them. No longer will they look at world as a place of struggle for daily bread, a veil of contradictions and disappointments in which you are on your own, where the best you can do is to maximize your pleasures.
This is not life, not living. Living is to see the Incomprehensible One pouring the divine soul into the narrowness of earth, into the confines of human hearts, into ordinary and otherwise forgettable moments. The Loving Mystery who is God is near, coming to fill all that is with all that he is.
Repent of your tarnished and cramped vision of life and trust that it is true. Come, follow and see. Your mind will expand; your heart will grow a few new rooms where hope and love can breathe. You will find the reason you are alive.
Little wonder you smiled Jesus. You knew, you saw, you felt the kingdom of God’s rule. It filled you. So invited them to come, see and learn to live.
I have no idea what those fishermen saw in the moment you called them. But I see and feel your joy, your smile, and I know what draws me and why I arrive at Sunday worship with joy.
I want to know what is behind your smile. I want to see what you saw and feel what you felt as you invited them to follow. I want a piece of the joy that flashes through you as you invite them to come along for the ride. I want a piece of this for myself, and I know … you are only too glad to share it.
Pr. David L. Miller
Mark 1:14-18
After John had been arrested, Jesus went into Galilee. There he proclaimed the gospel from God saying, 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent, and believe the gospel.' As he was walking along by the Lake of Galilee he saw Simon and Simon's brother Andrew casting a net in the lake -- for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, 'Come after me and I will make you into fishers of people.' And immediately they left their boats and followed him.
Reflection
I think it was your smile. That was why they came … immediately.
These words say nothing about your mood, Jesus. They offer no descriptions of the look on your face as you spoke. But I see you, and I see a smile.
Joy flashes through you as you invite these men to follow you into a new way of seeing and being, into the reality you hunger to reveal--the rule of the God who loves all that is made … and me.
I can’t know why these first followers dropped what they were doing to follow you. But I feel your joy. I see your joy, a smile. Physical pleasure passes through you as you invite your first followers to come and see what you are all about.
I know a gentle joy as your words roll around in my head, and I imagine the scene by the lake. It is just before dawn. A new day is about to break. You walk by, asking these common souls to follow along and to see it, to have their minds and hearts awakened to a radiant vision of God’s loving desire for every living thing.
You invite them to open their eyes to see and trust that this reality is near. It will change them. No longer will they look at world as a place of struggle for daily bread, a veil of contradictions and disappointments in which you are on your own, where the best you can do is to maximize your pleasures.
This is not life, not living. Living is to see the Incomprehensible One pouring the divine soul into the narrowness of earth, into the confines of human hearts, into ordinary and otherwise forgettable moments. The Loving Mystery who is God is near, coming to fill all that is with all that he is.
Repent of your tarnished and cramped vision of life and trust that it is true. Come, follow and see. Your mind will expand; your heart will grow a few new rooms where hope and love can breathe. You will find the reason you are alive.
Little wonder you smiled Jesus. You knew, you saw, you felt the kingdom of God’s rule. It filled you. So invited them to come, see and learn to live.
I have no idea what those fishermen saw in the moment you called them. But I see and feel your joy, your smile, and I know what draws me and why I arrive at Sunday worship with joy.
I want to know what is behind your smile. I want to see what you saw and feel what you felt as you invited them to follow. I want a piece of the joy that flashes through you as you invite them to come along for the ride. I want a piece of this for myself, and I know … you are only too glad to share it.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Today’s text
From a sermon by St. Leo the Great (pope, 391/400-461)
The Lord has made known his salvation; in the sight of the nations he has revealed his justice. This came to be fulfilled, as we know, from the time when the star beckoned the three wise men out of their distant country and led them to recognize and adore the King of heaven and earth. The obedience of the star calls us to imitate its humble service: to be servants, as best we can, of the grace that invites all men to serve Christ.
Reflection
It is easy to imagine the wise men, three … or however many there may have been, trekking across dry, rugged landscape on their camels. The figures are well known from children’s books and engraved figures that sit on our tables or beside the Christmas tree.
They are symbols, surely, of the human heart’s hunger for home, for the soul’s desire to taste and see something transcendent. The wise men travel in search of something that awakens the heart. They want, they need to feel the illumination of being in touch with life’s center.
They journey in search of the center of their hearts, hoping to see and touch something that awakens greatest depth of warmth and love, something that will penetrate that untouchable central point in their souls so they might feel truly alive and well, fully whole and loved.
They go step by step, slowly, not jumping quickly to end. Each little step on the rocky road of the journey must be seen and considered, lived, loved and attended to with such care as they have.
Each one must be lived and not avoided. And they never know which step will be the one that brings them to their journey’s goal, to the manager, where the heart finds it has arrived home at the feet of the Love that called them on this journey in the first place.
Neither do we. So we, when wise like they, attend to each step, hoping the next step or three will bring us again to our goal, to the manager, where the heart’s need and the heart of God meet.
Pr. David L. Miller
From a sermon by St. Leo the Great (pope, 391/400-461)
The Lord has made known his salvation; in the sight of the nations he has revealed his justice. This came to be fulfilled, as we know, from the time when the star beckoned the three wise men out of their distant country and led them to recognize and adore the King of heaven and earth. The obedience of the star calls us to imitate its humble service: to be servants, as best we can, of the grace that invites all men to serve Christ.
Reflection
It is easy to imagine the wise men, three … or however many there may have been, trekking across dry, rugged landscape on their camels. The figures are well known from children’s books and engraved figures that sit on our tables or beside the Christmas tree.
They are symbols, surely, of the human heart’s hunger for home, for the soul’s desire to taste and see something transcendent. The wise men travel in search of something that awakens the heart. They want, they need to feel the illumination of being in touch with life’s center.
They journey in search of the center of their hearts, hoping to see and touch something that awakens greatest depth of warmth and love, something that will penetrate that untouchable central point in their souls so they might feel truly alive and well, fully whole and loved.
They go step by step, slowly, not jumping quickly to end. Each little step on the rocky road of the journey must be seen and considered, lived, loved and attended to with such care as they have.
Each one must be lived and not avoided. And they never know which step will be the one that brings them to their journey’s goal, to the manager, where the heart finds it has arrived home at the feet of the Love that called them on this journey in the first place.
Neither do we. So we, when wise like they, attend to each step, hoping the next step or three will bring us again to our goal, to the manager, where the heart’s need and the heart of God meet.
Pr. David L. Miller
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Friday, December 29, 2011
Today’s text
From a sermon by Saint Leo the Great (pope, 391/400-461)
Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God’s kingdom.
Reflection
The greatest dignity of the human soul is to bear the nature and substance of God--to know oneself as part of the body of God, sharing in God’s life. I know this dignity and joy and would know it fully, which is why I am here, writing again.
In you, Holy One, I live and move and have my being. I come here to consent to you one more time, as I do again and again. I acknowledge you as the Maker and Lover of my being.
Thank you for my life, for the breath I breathe that it not my own, but gift. Thank you for the love that is Love, which is to say … You, which I bear in my tiny heart.
I come here again to allow your immensity greater access to my little life. I come so that you might fill me with the love that is your nature and substance.
This filling appears to be a lifetime project. I pretend to be more advanced in this process than I am, but I am constantly a beginner. That’s all I will ever be.
I know the immensity of your fullness of the Love you are, only to feel cold and unfulfilled the next hour.
I see again the image that appeared at Christmas. I see all that is surrounded by you. I see how you contain us--and everything, every world, every cell, every leaf and snowflake. You encircle and envelop us like the air, like the rays of the sun, like the waters of sea.
I see your silent immensity, a constant flow of liquid love, seeking entry into the narrow confines of our being that you may flow into and through us.
Your substance seeks entry that you may seep--or rush!--into the interior of who and what we are … that we may become what you are, fully sharing your nature. And in precious moments, the Love you are fills me, and I taste your nature as it becomes the substance and of my own heart.
Then, it is, that I know my dignity as a bearer of the Divine Wonder. Then, it is, that all that is in me--struggles and failures, sin and confusion, even the longing ache of my unfulfilled life--are washed away.
All that is left is the joy of knowing you.
Pr. David L. Miller
From a sermon by Saint Leo the Great (pope, 391/400-461)
Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God’s kingdom.
Reflection
The greatest dignity of the human soul is to bear the nature and substance of God--to know oneself as part of the body of God, sharing in God’s life. I know this dignity and joy and would know it fully, which is why I am here, writing again.
In you, Holy One, I live and move and have my being. I come here to consent to you one more time, as I do again and again. I acknowledge you as the Maker and Lover of my being.
Thank you for my life, for the breath I breathe that it not my own, but gift. Thank you for the love that is Love, which is to say … You, which I bear in my tiny heart.
I come here again to allow your immensity greater access to my little life. I come so that you might fill me with the love that is your nature and substance.
This filling appears to be a lifetime project. I pretend to be more advanced in this process than I am, but I am constantly a beginner. That’s all I will ever be.
I know the immensity of your fullness of the Love you are, only to feel cold and unfulfilled the next hour.
I see again the image that appeared at Christmas. I see all that is surrounded by you. I see how you contain us--and everything, every world, every cell, every leaf and snowflake. You encircle and envelop us like the air, like the rays of the sun, like the waters of sea.
I see your silent immensity, a constant flow of liquid love, seeking entry into the narrow confines of our being that you may flow into and through us.
Your substance seeks entry that you may seep--or rush!--into the interior of who and what we are … that we may become what you are, fully sharing your nature. And in precious moments, the Love you are fills me, and I taste your nature as it becomes the substance and of my own heart.
Then, it is, that I know my dignity as a bearer of the Divine Wonder. Then, it is, that all that is in me--struggles and failures, sin and confusion, even the longing ache of my unfulfilled life--are washed away.
All that is left is the joy of knowing you.
Pr. David L. Miller
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Today’s text
From a treatise against the heresy of Noetus by Saint Hippolytus (priest, 170-235)
God gave utterance to his voice, engendering light from light, and then he sent his own mind into the world as its Lord. Visible before God alone and not to the world, God made him visible so that the world could be saved by seeing him. This mind that entered our world was made known as the Son of God.
Reflection
All the world came into being through you, in you and for you, O Christ. There is nothing that does not bear the mark and resemblance of you who are before time and beyond imagination.
Yet, you are as close as the goodness flowing through the beauty of all things, each thing revealing the mind of the Maker.
You are the mind of God, the intelligence and intention of the Infinite Source of Being, the Loving Mystery, the Eternal Wonder my naming cannot catch or fathom.
The immensity of your heart, O God, dwells in this child, this infant Christ, a peasant’s child. And that heart embraces all creation. It reaches out to see all that is made and to love it, to delight in it, to treasure it, to bless it, to desire fullness of life for all it sees.
I do not believe Jesus understood the mysteries of science, the depth of the farthest galaxies or the intricacies of the grass and flowers that spoke to him of the wonder of God.
Being the mind of God did not mean he possessed superior knowledge beyond that of any other peasant of his day. He was and remained human.
But truly so, in ways we are not, except in the blessed flashes of graced moments.
What he knew, O Lord was you. He had your mind, he was your mind, and your mind is a mind of love that hungers for the earth to sing its beauty and every human soul to bubble with joy.
This is your mind, O God, the mind that is in Christ--and in me.
You, Christ, are the Son of God for you stand in constant communion with the Mystery who is love, the Source who is infinite, the grace from whom springs every beauty of creation. God is how we name this wonder, whose mind you are.
In revealing the mind of God, you also show us also ourselves. You show us the person we become when, in those flashes of graced moments, your mind is born again in us, in moments when we feel the rush of love and gratitude for life and all that lives, when we are amazed at beauty, moved beyond ourselves to compassion and angered by all that wounds and disfigures created goodness.
So come, Lord Jesus. Let us look upon you again as you rest in Mary’s lap. Open our eyes to see that you are the loving beauty of the Father. And in seeing, may the mind that is in you be born again in us that we, like you, might be truly human.
Pr. David L. Miller
From a treatise against the heresy of Noetus by Saint Hippolytus (priest, 170-235)
God gave utterance to his voice, engendering light from light, and then he sent his own mind into the world as its Lord. Visible before God alone and not to the world, God made him visible so that the world could be saved by seeing him. This mind that entered our world was made known as the Son of God.
Reflection
All the world came into being through you, in you and for you, O Christ. There is nothing that does not bear the mark and resemblance of you who are before time and beyond imagination.
Yet, you are as close as the goodness flowing through the beauty of all things, each thing revealing the mind of the Maker.
You are the mind of God, the intelligence and intention of the Infinite Source of Being, the Loving Mystery, the Eternal Wonder my naming cannot catch or fathom.
The immensity of your heart, O God, dwells in this child, this infant Christ, a peasant’s child. And that heart embraces all creation. It reaches out to see all that is made and to love it, to delight in it, to treasure it, to bless it, to desire fullness of life for all it sees.
I do not believe Jesus understood the mysteries of science, the depth of the farthest galaxies or the intricacies of the grass and flowers that spoke to him of the wonder of God.
Being the mind of God did not mean he possessed superior knowledge beyond that of any other peasant of his day. He was and remained human.
But truly so, in ways we are not, except in the blessed flashes of graced moments.
What he knew, O Lord was you. He had your mind, he was your mind, and your mind is a mind of love that hungers for the earth to sing its beauty and every human soul to bubble with joy.
This is your mind, O God, the mind that is in Christ--and in me.
You, Christ, are the Son of God for you stand in constant communion with the Mystery who is love, the Source who is infinite, the grace from whom springs every beauty of creation. God is how we name this wonder, whose mind you are.
In revealing the mind of God, you also show us also ourselves. You show us the person we become when, in those flashes of graced moments, your mind is born again in us, in moments when we feel the rush of love and gratitude for life and all that lives, when we are amazed at beauty, moved beyond ourselves to compassion and angered by all that wounds and disfigures created goodness.
So come, Lord Jesus. Let us look upon you again as you rest in Mary’s lap. Open our eyes to see that you are the loving beauty of the Father. And in seeing, may the mind that is in you be born again in us that we, like you, might be truly human.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Today’s text
From a commentary on Luke by Saint Ambrose (bishop, 337/340-397)
You are blessed because you have heard and believed. A soul that believes both conceives and brings forth the Word of God and acknowledges his works. Let Mary’s soul be in each of you to proclaim the greatness of the Lord. Let her spirit be in each to rejoice in the Lord. Christ has only one mother in the flesh, but we all bring forth Christ in faith.
Reflection
I am fascinated by this mystery. You whom heaven and earth cannot contain dwells also within this heart of mine in light and love, in peace and purpose--and sometimes in frustration.
Frustration comes when I fail to express the heart of Christ in words and deeds of blessing. It comes when my fingers do not return often to these black keys to praise you, Holy One.
It comes when I turn from the depth of my heart to the details of the day, failing to see and seek what is in my heart. For your heart resides here within my own. It is known in the hunger to bless and the eagerness to proclaim that you are love--and that this love is what we most need to know and feel.
Frustration come when anxious chatter and furious figuring obscures the grace that we know and are when we gather around your word and open our hands to receive simple bread and words of blessing.
This grace is what matters among us. It is all that really matters to me. All else is distraction, the annoying clatter of faithless worry.
You live in this heart, and you are not all comfort and peace. Sometimes you are a prod, a frustration, an irritant that demands attention and expression.
Long ago you became my life and joy, a joy I know when I name your love and share your presence. Tension and disquiet build when even for a day or two I don’t say what I see and feel, blessing another soul with the love you are within me.
Then you become an uncomfortable presence. The discomfort disappears only when I do acts of blessing or speak words of love and praise of you who are the highest and best, the most lovely and wonderful--and yet who dwells within.
Did I give you birth by having faith? I cannot claim any merit in my own faith. I am not entirely sure how I got it other than by the example of parents and the witness of teachers, pastors and friends, old and young.
This faith is not something other than you, my Lord. My faith is you, present within, trusting the Eternal Father in me even as you trusted and called out to the Loving Mystery during the days of your earthly pilgrimage.
How, then, do I ‘bring forth Christ in faith,’ giving you birth again in my flesh? How do any of us do so if our faith is your presence already within? What can we do? What is your call?
Perhaps it is just to return to the places of your presence--to your word, to the worshiping community, to the voices of your grace.
Return again and again and listen. Listen for the Love who awakens love within--and trust that this is the eternal love of God who is pleased to dwell in you.
Each time this happens, each time Love is born within, Christmas comes again.
Pr. David L. Miller
From a commentary on Luke by Saint Ambrose (bishop, 337/340-397)
You are blessed because you have heard and believed. A soul that believes both conceives and brings forth the Word of God and acknowledges his works. Let Mary’s soul be in each of you to proclaim the greatness of the Lord. Let her spirit be in each to rejoice in the Lord. Christ has only one mother in the flesh, but we all bring forth Christ in faith.
Reflection
I am fascinated by this mystery. You whom heaven and earth cannot contain dwells also within this heart of mine in light and love, in peace and purpose--and sometimes in frustration.
Frustration comes when I fail to express the heart of Christ in words and deeds of blessing. It comes when my fingers do not return often to these black keys to praise you, Holy One.
It comes when I turn from the depth of my heart to the details of the day, failing to see and seek what is in my heart. For your heart resides here within my own. It is known in the hunger to bless and the eagerness to proclaim that you are love--and that this love is what we most need to know and feel.
Frustration come when anxious chatter and furious figuring obscures the grace that we know and are when we gather around your word and open our hands to receive simple bread and words of blessing.
This grace is what matters among us. It is all that really matters to me. All else is distraction, the annoying clatter of faithless worry.
You live in this heart, and you are not all comfort and peace. Sometimes you are a prod, a frustration, an irritant that demands attention and expression.
Long ago you became my life and joy, a joy I know when I name your love and share your presence. Tension and disquiet build when even for a day or two I don’t say what I see and feel, blessing another soul with the love you are within me.
Then you become an uncomfortable presence. The discomfort disappears only when I do acts of blessing or speak words of love and praise of you who are the highest and best, the most lovely and wonderful--and yet who dwells within.
Did I give you birth by having faith? I cannot claim any merit in my own faith. I am not entirely sure how I got it other than by the example of parents and the witness of teachers, pastors and friends, old and young.
This faith is not something other than you, my Lord. My faith is you, present within, trusting the Eternal Father in me even as you trusted and called out to the Loving Mystery during the days of your earthly pilgrimage.
How, then, do I ‘bring forth Christ in faith,’ giving you birth again in my flesh? How do any of us do so if our faith is your presence already within? What can we do? What is your call?
Perhaps it is just to return to the places of your presence--to your word, to the worshiping community, to the voices of your grace.
Return again and again and listen. Listen for the Love who awakens love within--and trust that this is the eternal love of God who is pleased to dwell in you.
Each time this happens, each time Love is born within, Christmas comes again.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Today’s text
From a letter by Saint Leo the Great (pope, 391/400-461)
But through this wonderful blending the mystery of new birth shone upon us, so that through the same Spirit by whom Christ was conceived and brought forth we too might be born again in a spiritual birth; and in consequence the evangelist declares the faithful to ‘have been born not of blood nor of desire of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.’
Reflection
Be born in us, O Lord. This is my prayer as Christmas comes near. Be born again in the dark mystery of my heart. Illumine my soul with the light of your loving presence.
Be born in me that my coldness might be overwhelmed by your warmth,
that my confusion might be washed away by the certainty of a love that always was and always will be,
that my mortality might be filled with your immortality,
that my narrow heart might be expanded by the immensity of your all-encompassing, unfailing compassion.
Let Christmas come and banish all sadness. Let every soul see the cold winter world drenched in sunlight. Fill us with the joyful awareness that the golden rays of your divine love are filling every dark corner of creation.
Be born us. Raise us from the lethargy of grief, from preoccupation with what we have lost and from anxious fears of what we must face. Let us feel your love deep within that we may know that you are in us.
Then we shall know that you are greater than every sadness, stronger than the anxieties that erode our joy and more powerful than the forces of death that steal hope and cloud the future.
Make my soul like bright winter morning. I gaze out the back window of the house. The sun pours joy on the patio. It may be cold, but the world is clothed in light, joyous light, hilarious light. It laughs and plays.
It seeks out every cold corner. It does not force its way in, but silently rushes forward at unimaginable speed, lest the darkness get away and hide somewhere beyond its reach. But there is no such place.
You are light, O Lord, the light of onrushing love. And your light lives within me, or how could I know you? How could I be moved to praise you, to hope for you, to call out for you?
My prayer has long since been answered. You already have been born in me. And what is born in me--in us--is light, the light of eternal day, the joyous light of winter mornings playing on the patio.
It comes and reminds me that you, who come in Jesus, indwell my soul, seeking out every dark corner, every fearful place, every sadness over loss, every wound that hinders joy and purpose, every doubt that you, my Lord, are something less than all-embracing love.
And when my heart knows this, you are born again, not in Bethlehem, but in this soul, which is your holy purpose--and my great joy.
Pr. David L. Miller
From a letter by Saint Leo the Great (pope, 391/400-461)
But through this wonderful blending the mystery of new birth shone upon us, so that through the same Spirit by whom Christ was conceived and brought forth we too might be born again in a spiritual birth; and in consequence the evangelist declares the faithful to ‘have been born not of blood nor of desire of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.’
Reflection
Be born in us, O Lord. This is my prayer as Christmas comes near. Be born again in the dark mystery of my heart. Illumine my soul with the light of your loving presence.
Be born in me that my coldness might be overwhelmed by your warmth,
that my confusion might be washed away by the certainty of a love that always was and always will be,
that my mortality might be filled with your immortality,
that my narrow heart might be expanded by the immensity of your all-encompassing, unfailing compassion.
Let Christmas come and banish all sadness. Let every soul see the cold winter world drenched in sunlight. Fill us with the joyful awareness that the golden rays of your divine love are filling every dark corner of creation.
Be born us. Raise us from the lethargy of grief, from preoccupation with what we have lost and from anxious fears of what we must face. Let us feel your love deep within that we may know that you are in us.
Then we shall know that you are greater than every sadness, stronger than the anxieties that erode our joy and more powerful than the forces of death that steal hope and cloud the future.
Make my soul like bright winter morning. I gaze out the back window of the house. The sun pours joy on the patio. It may be cold, but the world is clothed in light, joyous light, hilarious light. It laughs and plays.
It seeks out every cold corner. It does not force its way in, but silently rushes forward at unimaginable speed, lest the darkness get away and hide somewhere beyond its reach. But there is no such place.
You are light, O Lord, the light of onrushing love. And your light lives within me, or how could I know you? How could I be moved to praise you, to hope for you, to call out for you?
My prayer has long since been answered. You already have been born in me. And what is born in me--in us--is light, the light of eternal day, the joyous light of winter mornings playing on the patio.
It comes and reminds me that you, who come in Jesus, indwell my soul, seeking out every dark corner, every fearful place, every sadness over loss, every wound that hinders joy and purpose, every doubt that you, my Lord, are something less than all-embracing love.
And when my heart knows this, you are born again, not in Bethlehem, but in this soul, which is your holy purpose--and my great joy.
Pr. David L. Miller
Monday, December 19, 2011
Monday, December 19, 2011
Today's text
From the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965)
He sent his Son, the eternal Word who enlightens all [people], to dwell among [human beings] and make known to them the innermost things of God. Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, sent as a man to [all people] speaks the words of God, and brings to perfection the saving work that the Father gave him to do. To see him is to see the Father also.
Reflection
I wonder about the work the Jesus the Christ was given to do. What is that work?
Many of the ways Western Christianity has emphasized in recent centuries make no sense to me. They never did. As a boy, I heard the idea that God sent Jesus to be strung up on a cross to pay the price of human sin, so that God, the Father, might be satisfied.
It made no sense. It God less forgiving than I was, and anything that does that must be mistaken.
This traditional “atonement theology” burns at the heart of virtually all conservative preachers and movements. It is at their core. But if to be Christian one must believe that this is Jesus work, well, I am not a Christian.
But I am, profoundly so, and I am more so as the years go by.
But this year again I come to the cradle of Bethlehem with the same question: How does this child, this Jesus help me? How does he help anyone? What difference does he make for those who are dying … or watching a loved one fade away? What does he mean for people I know who may be losing their little daughter? And what difference does this child make in a world where a billion or more are hungry today, or even starving?
Jesus is born to peasant parents with no prospects that they or he will amount to much, just more child in a world of poor children. The only thing that has changed in this regard is there now are far more poor children.
So what difference does Jesus “work” make; what work does he do?
The grand theories of theologians hold scant hold on my mind and less on my soul. They do not excite the imagination or touch the heart.
What does, however, is standing close to manger of Jesus and imagining that this child is the eternal desire of God for me and for all.
God’s eternal desire is to unite the great and uncreated divine heart with our created hearts, so that the Infinite Source of loving joy might pour through us. The loving and infinite God, who is everywhere as present, seeks to unite the created soul with the eternal heart of God--and has been doing so since before the beginning of time. All progress in humanity and grace is the product of such divine effort and presence.
This was God’s desire, an eternal desire, which has nothing to do with human sin and imperfection.
God’s great heart always seeks to give itself away for the sake of creating free and full communion of love and joy between himself and the created order. This is not the result of sin and human error. It is the eternal desire of God whose will is and always was love, and love wants but one thing--to unite with the beloved.
In Jesus, the eternal divine desire is fulfilled; the union of God’s heart and a human heart appears most clearly. And I see--no, I feel--that this child, this Jesus, shows me the union of Heart with heart, of Love with love, of Divinity with humanity, the union God is working to make happen in me … and in all.
When I look again at the child, when with shepherds I draw near the manger, listening again to the story … a love is awakened. I should say Love is awakened. God is born again in me. The heart of God is awakened in the narrow confines of my heart.
And at one and the same moment, my humanity and the great heart of the Divine Wonder dance with joy.
Pr. David L. Miller
From the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965)
He sent his Son, the eternal Word who enlightens all [people], to dwell among [human beings] and make known to them the innermost things of God. Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, sent as a man to [all people] speaks the words of God, and brings to perfection the saving work that the Father gave him to do. To see him is to see the Father also.
Reflection
I wonder about the work the Jesus the Christ was given to do. What is that work?
Many of the ways Western Christianity has emphasized in recent centuries make no sense to me. They never did. As a boy, I heard the idea that God sent Jesus to be strung up on a cross to pay the price of human sin, so that God, the Father, might be satisfied.
It made no sense. It God less forgiving than I was, and anything that does that must be mistaken.
This traditional “atonement theology” burns at the heart of virtually all conservative preachers and movements. It is at their core. But if to be Christian one must believe that this is Jesus work, well, I am not a Christian.
But I am, profoundly so, and I am more so as the years go by.
But this year again I come to the cradle of Bethlehem with the same question: How does this child, this Jesus help me? How does he help anyone? What difference does he make for those who are dying … or watching a loved one fade away? What does he mean for people I know who may be losing their little daughter? And what difference does this child make in a world where a billion or more are hungry today, or even starving?
Jesus is born to peasant parents with no prospects that they or he will amount to much, just more child in a world of poor children. The only thing that has changed in this regard is there now are far more poor children.
So what difference does Jesus “work” make; what work does he do?
The grand theories of theologians hold scant hold on my mind and less on my soul. They do not excite the imagination or touch the heart.
What does, however, is standing close to manger of Jesus and imagining that this child is the eternal desire of God for me and for all.
God’s eternal desire is to unite the great and uncreated divine heart with our created hearts, so that the Infinite Source of loving joy might pour through us. The loving and infinite God, who is everywhere as present, seeks to unite the created soul with the eternal heart of God--and has been doing so since before the beginning of time. All progress in humanity and grace is the product of such divine effort and presence.
This was God’s desire, an eternal desire, which has nothing to do with human sin and imperfection.
God’s great heart always seeks to give itself away for the sake of creating free and full communion of love and joy between himself and the created order. This is not the result of sin and human error. It is the eternal desire of God whose will is and always was love, and love wants but one thing--to unite with the beloved.
In Jesus, the eternal divine desire is fulfilled; the union of God’s heart and a human heart appears most clearly. And I see--no, I feel--that this child, this Jesus, shows me the union of Heart with heart, of Love with love, of Divinity with humanity, the union God is working to make happen in me … and in all.
When I look again at the child, when with shepherds I draw near the manger, listening again to the story … a love is awakened. I should say Love is awakened. God is born again in me. The heart of God is awakened in the narrow confines of my heart.
And at one and the same moment, my humanity and the great heart of the Divine Wonder dance with joy.
Pr. David L. Miller
Friday, December 16, 2011
Friday, December 16, 2011
Today’s text
From a treatise Against Heresies by Saint Irenaeus (bishop, second century C.E.)
The Spirit prepares man to receive the Son of God, the Son leads him to the Father, and the Father freeing him from change and decay, bestows the eternal life that comes to everyone from seeing God. As those who see light are in the light sharing its brilliance, so those who see God are in God sharing his glory, and that glory gives them life. To see God is to share in his life.
Reflection
Seeing is all I want on most days. I want to see God. I want to be moved by the presence of the Holy One. This vision transports me beyond daily anxieties to a different space, a transformed consciousness in which fear cannot exist and daily anxieties cannot be found.
For the duration of this blessed vision of the Blessed, nothing else matters. Life’s purpose is clear, and the heart is at rest because it has arrived home. We see the loveliness we seek, the beauty from which we came. We experience the wonder toward which we move, until the day we fall asleep in the arms of the Blessed Mystery you are, my Lord.
Thank for you this vision, this awareness.
Through these tears, I move back through my week and see again where I have seen you. Sometimes I have seen with physical vision only because my spiritual eyes were blinded by anxious preoccupation with daily concerns.
I saw you on Wednesday, at a funeral. I stood and spoke, remembering a holy moment between me and a dying man.
He spoke his need for faith and hope, and I knew what to say. “Remember. Remember all the grace and beauty you have seen and known in your days, all the love you have given and received.”
Small pictures, I said; each one is a snapshot of the great love with which you are loved, a love stronger than death. Every graced moment is the Spirit leading us to the Son who is God’s eternal Word, spoken in time. Each one is a gift of eternal life right here and now, for those with eyes to see, each a share in God’s glory
Look and see, I said. And if I had held a mirror to my face, I would have seen the face of my brother, Jesus, calling him to the Father, for I had become the face of the Eternal Glory. I had seen light, and for a blessed moment shined with its brilliance.
There is no pride in this, only humility and the joy of being a small part of a great and holy purpose, a tiny flame in the immensity of God’s heart.
Thursday I saw you, again, My Lord, in an old woman’s wrinkled face. She had just turned 90, though she looks younger. There were many hard days in my life, she said to friends. But looking back, she continued, I know how good my life has been, what a wonderful life I have had.
There was no regret in her words or her eyes, only gratitude. She had seen your light in her life, and now in the shadows of old age, she shared its brilliance, your brilliance.
She saw you, and in seeing she shared in the life you are. And so did I.
May it happen again today. This is my prayer.
Pr. David L. Miller
From a treatise Against Heresies by Saint Irenaeus (bishop, second century C.E.)
The Spirit prepares man to receive the Son of God, the Son leads him to the Father, and the Father freeing him from change and decay, bestows the eternal life that comes to everyone from seeing God. As those who see light are in the light sharing its brilliance, so those who see God are in God sharing his glory, and that glory gives them life. To see God is to share in his life.
Reflection
Seeing is all I want on most days. I want to see God. I want to be moved by the presence of the Holy One. This vision transports me beyond daily anxieties to a different space, a transformed consciousness in which fear cannot exist and daily anxieties cannot be found.
For the duration of this blessed vision of the Blessed, nothing else matters. Life’s purpose is clear, and the heart is at rest because it has arrived home. We see the loveliness we seek, the beauty from which we came. We experience the wonder toward which we move, until the day we fall asleep in the arms of the Blessed Mystery you are, my Lord.
Thank for you this vision, this awareness.
Through these tears, I move back through my week and see again where I have seen you. Sometimes I have seen with physical vision only because my spiritual eyes were blinded by anxious preoccupation with daily concerns.
I saw you on Wednesday, at a funeral. I stood and spoke, remembering a holy moment between me and a dying man.
He spoke his need for faith and hope, and I knew what to say. “Remember. Remember all the grace and beauty you have seen and known in your days, all the love you have given and received.”
Small pictures, I said; each one is a snapshot of the great love with which you are loved, a love stronger than death. Every graced moment is the Spirit leading us to the Son who is God’s eternal Word, spoken in time. Each one is a gift of eternal life right here and now, for those with eyes to see, each a share in God’s glory
Look and see, I said. And if I had held a mirror to my face, I would have seen the face of my brother, Jesus, calling him to the Father, for I had become the face of the Eternal Glory. I had seen light, and for a blessed moment shined with its brilliance.
There is no pride in this, only humility and the joy of being a small part of a great and holy purpose, a tiny flame in the immensity of God’s heart.
Thursday I saw you, again, My Lord, in an old woman’s wrinkled face. She had just turned 90, though she looks younger. There were many hard days in my life, she said to friends. But looking back, she continued, I know how good my life has been, what a wonderful life I have had.
There was no regret in her words or her eyes, only gratitude. She had seen your light in her life, and now in the shadows of old age, she shared its brilliance, your brilliance.
She saw you, and in seeing she shared in the life you are. And so did I.
May it happen again today. This is my prayer.
Pr. David L. Miller
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Today’s text
From a discourse On the Contemplation of God by William of Saint Theirry (abbot, 1075/1080-1148)
We hold you dear by the affection you have implanted in us. You are the one supremely good and ultimate goodness. Your love is your goodness, the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son! From the beginning of creation it was he who hovered over the waters--that is, over the wavering minds of men, offering himself to all, drawing all things to himself. By his inspiration and holy breath, by keeping us from harm and providing for our needs, he unites God to us and us to God.
Reflection
Are you hovering near, Great Spirit? Do you inhabit this quiet space where I wait for words to come out of the nothingness and flow through my fingers?
If so, come with all the love that you are--the love that ever flows between Father and Son at the heart of the Holy Trinity. Come so that my wavering mind may be drawn to you and my still heart may flow with the warmth of your goodness.
In the beginning, you hovered over the watery chaos of what was to be creation, a universe billions of stars that burn in the cold dark of space. But this morning I cannot think of their multitude or the wonder of yawning light years of dark space.
For reasons I do not know, I think again and again of a small grove of birch trees along 75th Street. I see again the huge yellow moon hanging over the dark wooded ridge high behind them, a quarter mile or so. The moon glistened on pale patches of snow beneath the birches, reflecting gentle white light on the trucks, as I drove home.
Right then, I knew you. I don’t know how or why, unless it is that every beauty and wonder in this world has the tendency to awaken thoughts of you as Ultimate and Loving Source.
But sometimes such scenes awaken faith and sometimes they do not. It is not automatic. On this average ride home from the office, wonder happened in my heart and my mind leaped into awareness that love lies at the heart of this crazy world. The earth in its wonder leaps from the heart of an impenetrable Loving Mystery, who speaks in the glisten of snow in reflected moon light.
The Holy Spirit hovers over the wavering minds of men and women and calls them home. In that moment, as I drove home, you brought me home. For home is awareness of you as Love, a love which manifests in the sacrament of the world, in the reality of life, and my Christian faith says, in the face of my brother Jesus.
Pr. David L. Miller
From a discourse On the Contemplation of God by William of Saint Theirry (abbot, 1075/1080-1148)
We hold you dear by the affection you have implanted in us. You are the one supremely good and ultimate goodness. Your love is your goodness, the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son! From the beginning of creation it was he who hovered over the waters--that is, over the wavering minds of men, offering himself to all, drawing all things to himself. By his inspiration and holy breath, by keeping us from harm and providing for our needs, he unites God to us and us to God.
Reflection
Are you hovering near, Great Spirit? Do you inhabit this quiet space where I wait for words to come out of the nothingness and flow through my fingers?
If so, come with all the love that you are--the love that ever flows between Father and Son at the heart of the Holy Trinity. Come so that my wavering mind may be drawn to you and my still heart may flow with the warmth of your goodness.
In the beginning, you hovered over the watery chaos of what was to be creation, a universe billions of stars that burn in the cold dark of space. But this morning I cannot think of their multitude or the wonder of yawning light years of dark space.
For reasons I do not know, I think again and again of a small grove of birch trees along 75th Street. I see again the huge yellow moon hanging over the dark wooded ridge high behind them, a quarter mile or so. The moon glistened on pale patches of snow beneath the birches, reflecting gentle white light on the trucks, as I drove home.
Right then, I knew you. I don’t know how or why, unless it is that every beauty and wonder in this world has the tendency to awaken thoughts of you as Ultimate and Loving Source.
But sometimes such scenes awaken faith and sometimes they do not. It is not automatic. On this average ride home from the office, wonder happened in my heart and my mind leaped into awareness that love lies at the heart of this crazy world. The earth in its wonder leaps from the heart of an impenetrable Loving Mystery, who speaks in the glisten of snow in reflected moon light.
The Holy Spirit hovers over the wavering minds of men and women and calls them home. In that moment, as I drove home, you brought me home. For home is awareness of you as Love, a love which manifests in the sacrament of the world, in the reality of life, and my Christian faith says, in the face of my brother Jesus.
Pr. David L. Miller
Friday, December 09, 2011
Friday, December 9, 2011
Today’s text
From a sermon by Saint Peter Chrysologus (priest, 380-450)
In all the events we have recalled, the flame of divine love enkindled human hearts and its intoxication overflowed into men’s senses. Wounded by love, they longed to look upon God with their bodily eyes. Yet how could our narrow human vision apprehend God, whom the whole world cannot contain? But the law of love is not concerned with what will be, what ought to be, what can be. Love does not reflect; it is unreasonable and knows no moderation, Love refuses to be consoled when its goal proves impossible, despises all hindrances to the attainment of its object. Love destroys the lover if he cannot obtain what he loves; love follows its own promptings, and does not think of right and wrong … It is intolerable for love not to see the object of its longing, That is why whatever reward they merited was nothing to the saints if they could not see the Lord.
Reflection
I love you Lord for the way your people reach across 16 centuries and touch my heart. What have I in common with a soul from so long ago? And could I hold in common with one the church has name ‘saint?’
Nothing, it would seem, yet Peter’s words tell me that I am not alone. Other hearts have longed and long still for the fulfillment of their love, eager to see the One they love, the One who is Love.
And as he said, there is no moderation in such love. It never finds complete satisfaction but always pushes for more.
Oh, there are moments, of course, when the soul gazes into the early winter snows or looks into the faces of children and is seized by the awareness that a boundless loving beauty stands at the heart of all life.
The elevation of heart that occurs in such moments transports us beyond anxiety and fear, and a ‘Julian’ feeling washes through the soul, as we know with that old saint that all is will and all shall be well. But the moment passes.
And even in the moment of transport to higher awareness of life’s center and meaning, we know there is more. There is always more, and we want it. We are never quite satisfied.
You are the More, Holy One, the One immoderate love hungers to see and know, that we might touch and experience totally union with you. We hunger to be enraptured, so that nothing that is us is outside of you. It is an immoderate desire stirred by your immoderate desire for us.
The state of enrapture is known in this life, even by the likes of me because you are gracious love and give yourself even to the unworthy. Even now, as tears fog vision of these black keys while washing obstruction from the eyes of my heart so that I know you as that total love that gives peace passing all understanding.
I wonder: What was it like for Saint Peter Chrysologus 16 centuries ago? He speaks words that leap the great gulf of time to touch me and tell me that I stand in an ancient line of those who knew your love and wanted more, find final fulfillment.
I can’t get inside of his experience, but his words (golden words, which is the meaning of his name, Chrysologus) move me into awareness of you who inspired them. And I know Peter is my true brother, brothers in longing … to see you.
Show yourself to the eyes of our hearts in this holy season.
Pr. David L. Miller
From a sermon by Saint Peter Chrysologus (priest, 380-450)
In all the events we have recalled, the flame of divine love enkindled human hearts and its intoxication overflowed into men’s senses. Wounded by love, they longed to look upon God with their bodily eyes. Yet how could our narrow human vision apprehend God, whom the whole world cannot contain? But the law of love is not concerned with what will be, what ought to be, what can be. Love does not reflect; it is unreasonable and knows no moderation, Love refuses to be consoled when its goal proves impossible, despises all hindrances to the attainment of its object. Love destroys the lover if he cannot obtain what he loves; love follows its own promptings, and does not think of right and wrong … It is intolerable for love not to see the object of its longing, That is why whatever reward they merited was nothing to the saints if they could not see the Lord.
Reflection
I love you Lord for the way your people reach across 16 centuries and touch my heart. What have I in common with a soul from so long ago? And could I hold in common with one the church has name ‘saint?’
Nothing, it would seem, yet Peter’s words tell me that I am not alone. Other hearts have longed and long still for the fulfillment of their love, eager to see the One they love, the One who is Love.
And as he said, there is no moderation in such love. It never finds complete satisfaction but always pushes for more.
Oh, there are moments, of course, when the soul gazes into the early winter snows or looks into the faces of children and is seized by the awareness that a boundless loving beauty stands at the heart of all life.
The elevation of heart that occurs in such moments transports us beyond anxiety and fear, and a ‘Julian’ feeling washes through the soul, as we know with that old saint that all is will and all shall be well. But the moment passes.
And even in the moment of transport to higher awareness of life’s center and meaning, we know there is more. There is always more, and we want it. We are never quite satisfied.
You are the More, Holy One, the One immoderate love hungers to see and know, that we might touch and experience totally union with you. We hunger to be enraptured, so that nothing that is us is outside of you. It is an immoderate desire stirred by your immoderate desire for us.
The state of enrapture is known in this life, even by the likes of me because you are gracious love and give yourself even to the unworthy. Even now, as tears fog vision of these black keys while washing obstruction from the eyes of my heart so that I know you as that total love that gives peace passing all understanding.
I wonder: What was it like for Saint Peter Chrysologus 16 centuries ago? He speaks words that leap the great gulf of time to touch me and tell me that I stand in an ancient line of those who knew your love and wanted more, find final fulfillment.
I can’t get inside of his experience, but his words (golden words, which is the meaning of his name, Chrysologus) move me into awareness of you who inspired them. And I know Peter is my true brother, brothers in longing … to see you.
Show yourself to the eyes of our hearts in this holy season.
Pr. David L. Miller
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Today’s text
From a treatise on The Ascent of Mount Carmel by Saint John of the Cross (priest, mystic, 1542-1591)
By giving us, as he did, his Son, his only Word, he has in that one Word said everything. There is no need for further revelation. … God has spoken so completely through his own Word that he chooses to add nothing. Although he had spoken but partially through the prophets, he has now said everything in Christ. He has given us everything, his own Son. …[God says] Fix your eyes on him alone for in him I have revealed all and in him you will find more than you could ever ask for or desire.
Reflection
I have heard what I need to hear. I know what my heart needs to know. I await no further word of life’s meaning, unfolding its mysteries. That Word has been spoken in time and space--and in me.
Simple hearts rest it this Word without seeking great understanding, knowing this Word of ultimate grace and presence is enough and always will be. Sophisticated minds plumb its depths and never reach the bottom. There is always more to be known of this Word. It remains as inexhaustible as the Love who speaks it, and always will.
Sometimes, it is enough for me to be simple and simply trust, neither needing nor wanting depth of understanding. My heart rests totally at peace, simply knowing a final word of love has been spoken over my life, no, over all life, a Word that encompasses every pain, every loss, every sorrow, every broken dream and promise.
All of it is encased, embraced and encompassed in that single Word, in Christ.
In Christ God has spoken, a clear and unmistakable ‘yes’ to the human race and more. The Word is spoken in creation, through the means and substance of created matter, and it is spoken to all that is, all that ever was or ever will be. It is a Word, a word of promise and deliverance, spoken to the rocks, the rivers and everlasting hills as much as it is to me, a human soul
For, all that exists came to be in Christ--in him, through him, for him. He is the Word in which God says all we need to know. In him created matter and divine substance combine to reveal the beauty God intends and will work in and through all that is.
In this Word, divine reality and created substance unite, and God speaks the uninhibited, joyous communion of God and creation, the holy union God is working in me and all that is.
In this Word, God speaks unfettered love for all that is, a love that takes all that is into itself for the sole sake of a love spoken in a Word, a single life, the life of my brother Jesus.
Pr. David L. Miller
From a treatise on The Ascent of Mount Carmel by Saint John of the Cross (priest, mystic, 1542-1591)
By giving us, as he did, his Son, his only Word, he has in that one Word said everything. There is no need for further revelation. … God has spoken so completely through his own Word that he chooses to add nothing. Although he had spoken but partially through the prophets, he has now said everything in Christ. He has given us everything, his own Son. …[God says] Fix your eyes on him alone for in him I have revealed all and in him you will find more than you could ever ask for or desire.
Reflection
I have heard what I need to hear. I know what my heart needs to know. I await no further word of life’s meaning, unfolding its mysteries. That Word has been spoken in time and space--and in me.
Simple hearts rest it this Word without seeking great understanding, knowing this Word of ultimate grace and presence is enough and always will be. Sophisticated minds plumb its depths and never reach the bottom. There is always more to be known of this Word. It remains as inexhaustible as the Love who speaks it, and always will.
Sometimes, it is enough for me to be simple and simply trust, neither needing nor wanting depth of understanding. My heart rests totally at peace, simply knowing a final word of love has been spoken over my life, no, over all life, a Word that encompasses every pain, every loss, every sorrow, every broken dream and promise.
All of it is encased, embraced and encompassed in that single Word, in Christ.
In Christ God has spoken, a clear and unmistakable ‘yes’ to the human race and more. The Word is spoken in creation, through the means and substance of created matter, and it is spoken to all that is, all that ever was or ever will be. It is a Word, a word of promise and deliverance, spoken to the rocks, the rivers and everlasting hills as much as it is to me, a human soul
For, all that exists came to be in Christ--in him, through him, for him. He is the Word in which God says all we need to know. In him created matter and divine substance combine to reveal the beauty God intends and will work in and through all that is.
In this Word, divine reality and created substance unite, and God speaks the uninhibited, joyous communion of God and creation, the holy union God is working in me and all that is.
In this Word, God speaks unfettered love for all that is, a love that takes all that is into itself for the sole sake of a love spoken in a Word, a single life, the life of my brother Jesus.
Pr. David L. Miller
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