Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Today’s text

John 6:63

‘It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh has nothing to offer. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.’

Reflection

Moments of awareness come when you least expect them, but they come more often when you put yourself on the road they travel. Mine travel in books I read sitting on the back patio. So I sit there on sunny Mondays, basking in gentle suns of late summer.

I listen as voices rise from the pages, awakening an inner voice of love that invites me to sink into my deep inner self. There I find an awareness that this love is in me, waiting always for me to come home and know that this is my true being and my home.

This is who I really am, stripped for the moment of any thoughts of history or accomplishment, failures or frustrations. My being is this love, and for the moment I am one with this awareness; … I know this completely.

I know the Love who loves, and there is no doubt and certainly no fear in me. I am well through and through.

I do not know how or why the words on the page elicited this awareness, however fleeting it may be. Perhaps the writer shared an experience so close to my own that I knew I was not strange or alone. Perhaps her embrace of her life experiences, both jubilant and mundane, spoke a love for life that allowed me to love mine, too.

I simply know there is a spirit of love awakened within that heals and makes whole, stirred perhaps by the action of that same spirit in another human heart and mind.

When Jesus spoke his words flowed from his consciousness of oneness with Love. The Spirit of the All-Loving One filled him, inviting all who heard to know what he knew, to feel what he felt so they might enter the land he inhabited--the land of the knowing oneness with Love that can happen on back patios or wherever Spirit catches up with you.

His words offended many. He told them to eat his flesh, drink his blood, and he wasn’t necessarily talking about taking communion at church. He was inviting them to hear the spirit of his words, the Spirit that filled his conscious awareness, so this awareness might fill them, too.

He seeks to give the life of oneness he lived that we, too, might live.

So we listen to love that is in him, the love that loves his own and this broken world and our broken selves, loving them completely, to the end, leaving nothing out.

And maybe, if you go to places where awareness finds you, you may sink deeply into the Spirit that is in him, knowing what he knows, feeling what he feels that wholeness may come, and you may discover who you really are.

Pr. David L. Miller

Saturday, August 17, 2012

Today’s text

John 6:51


I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.

Reflection

What shall we eat for lunch? Whatever else we eat Jesus invites us to take into our substance the substance of his soul, a soul who is the heart of the Mystery from which all wonders flow.

That Mystery is the One who is Love, the Ultimate Mystery. God is not a being, not a man or woman, old or young, bearded or sitting on a throne. All such language is poetry grasping our imaginations and drawing us beyond what we think or imagine that we might feel gape-jawed wonder at the mystery of our lives.

The Loving Mystery has called us into being and placed us here to know and be the Love God is. We did not choose this. We simply find ourselves here, alive, with the breath of God in our lungs and a niggling awareness that our lives are connected to a great wonder whose name we can’t quite speak or remember.

We feel this in our bones late in the night or when we stand amid the pines or hard woods, captured by the unique beauty of each tree as it grows from hidden depths, reaching skyward for that something without which our hearts remain restless, homeless, lacking peace.

The trees, too, hunger, just like our souls. We strain toward the substance that will fill our hearts so that fear fades and joyful giving and laughter overflows our boundaries, spilling onto the earth around us … and any who might be standing there.

We hunger to be filled with living bread, the substance of life, the hidden manna from the Source of our souls that completes the heart. There is no peace until we are one with the One from who we came, the One we most need, the One who is the love for which the soul hungers.

Jesus speaks simply to our restless hunger. “Come, eat the substance of this my soul, my flesh and blood. Come, eat and know what your heart needs to know. For, my soul is one with the One you need, the One who is all love, the One who is your Source and Home. Come eat my words; consume the bread I give, the wine that is my lifeblood.

“Taste and see the substance of my soul is the Love that draws you. Come and know. I am your peace. Always.”

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, August 17, 2012

Today’s text

Ephesians 5:18

Do not get drunk with wine; this is simply dissipation; be filled with the Spirit.

Reflection

The wind carries the song of the Spirit. Listen. You may hear.

The voice of your Dearest Friend may fill your heart with wordless speech that tells you all you need to know, lifting your soul into the rapture of true knowing: all things were made by Love to awaken the hidden beauty of the Love who abides in our hidden depths.

All creation is God’s holy speech. A red cardinal splits the range of my vision, slicing through the evening breeze that cools the earth. He settles into dense pine boughs, thick with needles, disappears, hidden and safe in his home.

The breeze silently whispers the name of the Holy One, the Creator of soft summer nights, the Source of the cardinal’s gaudy plumes and of the greening meadow, re-awakened to life by late rains that bring resurrection from scorching drought.

What a wonder this earth is. Not a word is spoken, yet everything speaks the wonder the Loving Mystery, the Infinite Source, the One who is Being and gives Being to all that is, and us, out of sheerest generosity.

The Lord is a singer of songs intended to seduce the heart to love the Love who in love breathes life into all that live.

Hearing the divine song, wherever it is sung, awakens love and life, filling even troubled hearts with the Divine Spirit, so that praise and gratitude requires no effort. It is as natural as breathing. We draw in the life that is Life, and we live, as surely resurrected as the green meadow from harsh summer’s burning.

So listen … and look. Life, that One, is there. Always.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Today’s text

Ephesians 5:16-17

Make the best of the present time, for it is a wicked age. This is why you must not be thoughtless but must recognize what is the will of the Lord.

Reflection

You have today. That is all you can be sure of, and you cannot be sure that all of this day will be yours.

There was a time when this thought brought human minds into sharp focus. Not so much anymore.

We live longer; the accidents and diseases, the happenstances that threaten life were more common and not as easy to avoid when I was a boy, to say nothing of earlier ages and centuries when the certainties of life were, well, much less certain.

Today, we readily assume that this day and the shape of our lives is secure, believing we will work and live through the day, rising tomorrow to receive another.

But there is another sense; a deeper awareness of the present moment, for it is all we really have: this moment. Right now
In an instant, the moment is gone, replaced by another as what just happened, what was said and done is carried into the past by an ever-flowing current none of us can stop.

The future moment, the next hour, tomorrow? These we do not yet have. What we have is now, a moment to be received in all its complexity and perplexity, a moment in which we can receive and bless, act and speak or choose silent watching as the better part of wisdom.

So be where you are; occupy the present moment, undistracted and undisturbed by anxieties or anticipations of tomorrow. These divert your eyes from what is before you now, the needs, the faces, the labor, the opportunities to bless and love, to grace and make this moment more alive.

You can grace this moment with the Life who is in you, the life and love that is the Loving Source of every moment.

You have today. Give yourself to it. Surrender your heart to the now. It holds treasures that bless, surprises that grace, pathways to become more human and beautiful than you know.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Today’s text

Ephesians 5:19-20

Sing psalms and hymns and inspired songs among yourselves, singing and chanting to the Lord in your hearts, always and everywhere giving thanks to God who is our Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Reflection

Sing the song of the soul’s delight. Sing the praise of the Unknowable Wonder who is always at hand.

Forget the pettiness with which you pick at all you find wrong with your life and the lives that brush against your own. Turn quickly from the seeming smallness of the present moment that feels insignificant compared with the lives of others or the life you dreamed.

Be here and now in this moment, which is more full of wonder and life, joy and holy purpose than you imagine. Be here to see and sing the glories of the day. Live the life you have been given to live

Enter now this great and beautiful day. You are summoned to a Wednesday, of all things, with eyes wide open and hearts filled with expectation, knowing that every where you look this day you can see and find grace.

You will know the beauty of human souls, the comfort of community and the greening of nature. You will witness with wonder that all things, all hearts and minds--yours, too--are fashioned to grow and thrive, to discover the beauty that is within them.

The beauty and life that lies within seeks hidden pathways from the dark intuitions of potential to the light of day, for the Creative Spirit whose Life fills all things, stirs in you, in all you love and in everything your eyes will see.

So look gently and intently on all that comes. Let thirsty eyes drink in the faces and places, the situations and challenges, the joys and tears, the laughter that sparkles and the fears you’d flee but cannot escape. Welcome the pains of moving from where you are to the unknown of what will yet be.

For the Living One is there amid it all, yes, all. No moment of time is forgotten, no hidden corner of creation is forsaken, no secret of your soul is beyond reach.

Know this, and keep your eyes open. The love that is present in every moment will find you--bursting also from hidden springs deep in our hearts. And you will sing the song of the soul’s delight.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Today’s text

Ephesians 5:15-16

That is why I, having once heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus, and your love for all God's holy people, have never failed to thank God for you and to remember you in my prayers.

Reflection

Too often, prayer for all those I serve is missing. As a result, I miss the fullness of gratitude and joy that is God’s hunger for every heart.

Lacking gratitude, I miss the power needed to live with anticipation, descending instead to the land of disappointment and petty aggrievement. Not today.

Today, I begin by lining up the faces that I saw at worship on Sunday. I go through them as best I can, too many to remember, but I remember some.

I think, too, of those whose faces I haven’t seen for a long time, those whom I hunger to have back in the assembly of hope that draws me back each Sunday to hear and claim a word of grace.

And I say two words, which are the only words necessary for prayer, “thank you.”

Thank you for the privilege of doing this work. Thank you for the privilege of bowing at the altar, of steering tennis-shoe clad acolytes through the service and joking with nervous assisting ministers on the leader’s bench. Thank you for the joy of singing.

Thank you for letting me stand at the head of a line of the needy with a loaf of bread in my hands and being able to give as you give, to love as you love, to share as you share, to bless their children, look into their eyes and feel their gratitude for receiving a gift that reawakens their faith that your love has not and will never lose them.

Thank you for each of them--the knowing and the unconscious, those just going through the motions and those who receive the bread and a hearty ‘amen,’ or a relieved ‘thanks be to God.’

Thanks for the ones that I don’t think like me much and those who hang on every word I speak. Thank you for the petty and the generous, the half-committed and those who can’t wait to get to their cars and flee the lot.

Thank you for each life, the breath they breathe and for their presence in my life. Thank you for what they might become if they truly knew you. Thank you for the love I know from and in them, the love I see in them for their children, their families and friends. Thanks for letting me see and hear the places where that love spills beyond their narrow circle of care to others. Thank you for their decency and the desire you have put in them to be the gracious souls you would have become.

Thank you for the sins and failures and wounds that awaken them to the love you are and always will be. Thank you for all of them, whether they be pleasant or a great challenge for me to like and love them.

Thank you for each of them and the community I am privileged to lead and serve.

My morning prayer of thanks now given I go to my day, not defeated or afraid, not dreading routine duties that pile up.

I come with joy and gratitude, knowing I am part of something wondrous and beautiful, a beauty I just may see once more so long as prayer keeps my eyes open to what is before me on every hand.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, August 9, 2012

Today’s text

John 6:48-51

'I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate manna in the desert and they are dead; but this is the bread which comes down from heaven, so that a person may eat it and not die. I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.'

Reflection

What feeds a human soul so that the heart remain full and strong, the soul quiet and at peace?

This is no idle question amid the changes and chances of life that come as quickly as a telephone ring, bearing news you do not want.

There is no need to list the losses and challenges that come to even the most sheltered lives. Human life is what it is … unpredictable, gloriously filled with joy one moment and pitted with angst or sorrow the next.

We may wish for a stable soul, calm amid the storms, quiet in the face of painful loss, but few enjoy such strength and stability.

Some may reach for this state through denial of what is happening within them or by trying not to care, pretending the ship of their soul doesn’t rock much on the waves of living.

But cares will and do come, the soul shakes, the heart quakes and we hunger for strength, an awareness that allows a peaceful heart amid an unpeaceful world.

Jesus asks us what we are eating: Are we eating him? Are we consuming what is in him that we know what he knows and our hearts dwell in the land where he dwells?

“Come and eat,” he bids. “Come and know. Come and lay down at the side of my great soul that your soul may enter the place of peace and eat the bread of knowledge, taking in the life that is in me.”

There is no other way to become a great soul, who remains full and quiet, at peace and full amid jangling nerves and unpleasant news, except by eating, again and again, the revelation Jesus bears.

He bears the Life of the One who is Life, the love of the One who is Love. In nearness to him, we eat the bread of his all-encompassing heart and know ourselves encompassed and filled with the life of eternity even now, amid the noise and news of living these days.

“All is well,” great souls have said in every age. They were not naïve or stupid. They had just eaten more than we have.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Today’s text

Ephesians 4:31-5:2

Any bitterness or bad temper or anger or shouting or abuse must be far removed from you -- as must every kind of malice. Be generous to one another, sympathetic, forgiving each other as readily as God forgave you in Christ. As God's dear children, then, take him as your pattern, and follow Christ by loving as he loved you, giving himself up for us as an offering and a sweet-smelling sacrifice to God.

Reflection

So many walls divide the human family. Walls of language, culture and history divide nations. Old wounds and fears, unforgiven injuries and injustices, disrespect and insensitivities divide former friends and families, neighbors and communities.

Nations and peoples harbor anger and mistrust, arming themselves and striking when they fear the other might strike first.

We nurture grudges, repeating old stories about those who hurt or insulted us, hardening our attitudes and maintaining a safe distance between our hearts and their actions. It’s the human condition.

Amid such division the Spirit calls us to imitate the inimitable, to be as God, who tears down the walls that separate soul from soul, so the holy dream of God might come true--and all might be one in a great ocean of Love.

The first wall that must come down is that which distances our hearts from the divine heart, the undivided heart of God.

It’s hard to believe and trust that heart because we know our hearts, which are full of divisions and contradictions. The idea and experience of a heart that wills only one thing--complete and total love for all--is foreign to us, impossible to fathom.

We look at God as we look at others, wondering if we can trust that this heart. Does the heart of God seek to bless me at all times and in all things? What about all the crushing hardships, injustices and searing circumstances that cut to the heart and wear us down?

Even there? Even then?

Even there, even then: The great and undivided Heart who is God seeks our hearts, tearing down walls of fear, mistrust and doubt so that our hearts might be healed in the knowledge that there is One, … there is always One who loves and is love for us.

Only in the destruction of the walls of distrust that divide us from the fullness of the One who is full of love can our hearts imitate the inimitable, following the pattern of God who tears down walls that division may give way to unity and peace.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Today’s text

Ephesians 4:31-32

Any bitterness or bad temper or anger or shouting or abuse must be far removed from you -- as must every kind of malice. Be generous to one another, sympathetic, forgiving each other as readily as God forgave you in Christ.

Reflection

Last night’s news featured a photo of a former army officer standing in front of a Nazi flag bearing the infamous swastika, the world’s most notorious symbol of hate. More photos followed accompanied by angry music with vile lyrics.

How? I wondered. How can anyone identify with such filth, such death? How can a soul become so twisted that they willingly drink this poison--and be moved to kill, as this young man did, riddling a Sikh temple with bullets?

Perhaps it is fear of the outsider, fear of those who are different that motivates such hate. We seek to destroy that which we fear.

The invitation of God’s grace is to live beyond fear, knowing God is good and gracious, trusting that neither life nor death nor anything else can separate us from an immeasurable love that holds us in every moment.

There is no fear in God, who is full of loving graciousness even to the enemies of God, as Jesus revealed in him life and ministry.

There are moments when this love also fills us until we overflow with peace and kindness, wanting nothing other than to appreciate and bless those around us, gently handling every moment and every heart.

In these moments, we truly know who God is; we know how we are loved and held, and we know how we are to live--beyond fear and in love, always in love, generous as God is generous, forgiving as we are forgiven

Only in knowing the Love who holds us can we live the love that lifts us above our fears of the other, of those we do not agree with or understand.

When we see such hate as sometimes fills our TV screens we reach again for that Love who is always reaching for us that we might be the antidote to the hate that rips human souls and societies. This is Christ’s call to us.

And know: God uses everything, wasting nothing, not even swastikas.

I was blessed watching the news. The hate-filled images moved my heart to embrace more deeply the gentleness of the Spirit within my own heart, grown there through years of praying and hearing the way of Jesus, the way of grace that makes us human.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Today’s text


Ephesians 4:1-3

I, the prisoner in the Lord, urge you therefore to lead a life worthy of the vocation to which you were called. With all humility and gentleness, and with patience, support each other in love. Take every care to preserve the unity of the Spirit by the peace that binds you together.

Reflection

Unity of Spirit is not toleration, not mere acceptance or the absence of mistrust and conflict. It is the loving awareness that swells when human hearts experience common faith, hope and endeavor.

A song at worship can do this, sweeping souls into a single hope, lifting them into awareness of the great love who holds them.

Common work or sorrow also brings unity. Times of great loss or destruction breaks open our individual cocoons and joins us in common efforts to care for each other or rebuild broken lives and homes.

Christians … others, too, for that matter … band together to send crews to towns ravaged by disasters. We say we do it to live the love of Christ, and that is true. The Spirit within moves us beyond ourselves.

But we do it not only to share the love of Christ but to know Christ’s love, to be swept up in a love that binds us to each other and to the One who is the Fountain of that love.

Amid the common labor--or in sharing the sorrow of one who has suffered great personal loss--the gulf between our souls disappears. Our aloneness in the world evaporates. We feel connected at the heart, and God’s hope and plan for the world becomes real.

Our completion, the Spirit’s fulfillment and salvation of our lives is not an individual reality but a communal one. We are not saved by ourselves, all alone, but as we are gathered in an ocean of love that holds us all, and all of together, knowing one love.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Today’s text




Ephesians 4:1-3


I, the prisoner in the Lord, urge you therefore to lead a life worthy of the vocation to which you were called. With all humility and gentleness, and with patience, support each other in love. Take every care to preserve the unity of the Spirit by the peace that binds you together.


Reflection


There is a peace that binds us together and the name of that peace is Jesus.


In recent weeks, I sometimes have taken to repeating a simple phrase as a mantra. I say it under my breath or barely aloud: Jesus is our peace.


Sometimes, such as when I feel anxious, I speak it as a petition: Jesus be our peace.


It is not easy to say what this means to me, but I can share what it does. The phrase is a portal, a doorway into a fresh and immense reality.


I enter a space big as the universe or at least as large as the universe within the mystery of my own soul. The noisy chatter of my anxieties fall quiet, and I know the love that is in Jesus.


It is as if I enter the reality that he is, the world that is in him. In that world, the love of God is as embracing and pervasive as the sky, and I know beyond any doubt that there is nothing to fear.


I wish I could say there were particular images or words associated with this awareness, but right now I can name none. There is nothing I see that I can describe. I know only that I enter this immense space where I know union with the mystery of all that was in Jesus, loving unity.


I am in him, in the unity he shares with that Loving Mystery he called Father, who is a living fountain of love and life in such abundance that worry about … anything … disappears.


The world lights up as place of wonder where joy and peace of heart are not only possible but plentiful, even amid the challenges of the day. A desire emerges to live in peace with every living thing, every human soul and all creation.


The reality into which I enter is not an occasional reality but always there, waiting for my awareness to open the door, the awareness that comes in simplest prayer: Jesus is our peace.


Knowing this peace, seeking unity in the Spirit is not a chore but an invitation to live in the reality that Jesus is instead of the much more fearful world we create in our anxious imaginations.


Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Today’s text



Ephesians 4:1-3


I, the prisoner in the Lord, urge you therefore to lead a life worthy of the vocation to which you were called. With all humility and gentleness, and with patience, support each other in love. Take every care to preserve the unity of the Spirit by the peace that binds you together.


Reflection


The grace that I have most consistently rejected in nearly 60 years of living is that of community, solidarity, togetherness.


I was raised in an age when individualism was at high tide. But I also nourished a deep personal strain that wanted to stand over and against others, seeking to establish an identity that was unique that I might pretend that ‘they do not--or cannot--understand me.’


At the same time, I wanted to be admired by those from whom I imagined that I was so different. As if I were less flesh and blood than those from whom I would distance myself; as if they felt all that much better understood by others than I did.


As if my sense of aloneness in the world was not shared by ... everyone.


I have imagined the journey of faith, too, as an individual endeavor, not as a pilgrimage to God’s eternal city in communion with other souls as blessed and needy as my own.


The grace to which I come in these years is one of realism, the grace of realizing I am a merely and blessedly human-- not some kind of separate uber-human species so different from all the others with whom I walk the streets.


They are like me. Just so, they are God’s gift to me as I am gift to them, whether any of us recognize or not.


But when we recognize it, surrender the arrogance of imagining we are so different from each other and seek to live with humility and gentleness, the gulf between our souls is bridged, the myth of our alones is shattered, our wounds find balm, and we feel the unity of life and heart God intends.


At our best, the church and each congregation is a place of knowing the grace of community that sets us free from ourselves for truly human lives.


Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Today’s text


Ephesians 3:14-17a

This, then, is what I pray, kneeling before the Father, from whom every fatherhood, in heaven or on earth, takes its name. In the abundance of his glory may he, through his Spirit, enable you to grow firm in power with regard to your inner self, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith … .


Reflection

The life to which we are called is not one of weakness or passive pieties but of strength, the strength that appears in Christ. His strength lives in us.
We don’t typically don’t believe that … or feel it. But the living Christ lives in us--and in every heart that is open to goodness and grace, beauty and wonder. For, Christ is all that is good and the good that is in all.
When we see and know goodness and grace in ourselves … or others … we encounter the living Christ, gracing life and giving us the power to grow into the expression of his life we each are intended to be.

We each are intended to be convinced of who we are, of what we are: bearers of Christ, sharing his love and power, his purpose and passion.

I look into the mirror each morning and see a face that looks more like my blessed father’s with each passing month. No one need convince me that I am his son, bearing his genes and something of his spirit. It is perfectly clear as I shave my face each new day. The face in the mirror makes it impossible for me to forget who I am.
But I do forget my deepest and truest identity. Amid the difficulties of life, I lapse into negativities that make me diminish myself, my importance, the power that I have to give life … even as Christ is life-giver.
For beneath the face in the mirror, in the depth of my soul, breathes the Soul of Christ, a soul seeking to express life and grace into each moment, a soul eager to know and be love so that hungry hearts may be fed with joy and hope.

This is who I am, the identity of which the Spirit of God seeks to convince my heart so that I have no doubt of the beauty, the wonder, the love and, yes, the power that I bear.

Knowing this, convinced again, I go to may daily tasks not with anxiety or hesitation but boldly, knowing who I am and the inner strength who is the Christ dwelling within.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Today’s text


Mark 6:22-27

When the daughter of this same Herodias came in and danced, she delighted Herod and his guests; so the king said to the girl, 'Ask me anything you like and I will give it you.' And he swore her an oath, 'I will give you anything you ask, even half my kingdom.' She went out and said to her mother, 'What shall I ask for?' She replied, 'The head of John the Baptist.' The king was deeply distressed but, thinking of the oaths he had sworn and of his guests, he was reluctant to break his word to her. At once the king sent one of the bodyguard with orders to bring John's head.

Reflection

There are two basic ways to read any story from the Bible.

You can read with a keen eye for what human beings are doing … or should do, or you can look for God’s gracious presence. You can read hoping to find what is wrong with us so you can castigate yourself or others, or you can read looking for how God shares divine life and beauty.

What you find is often determined by your initial focus, whether on God’s grace and goodness or on human failure. Just so, your reading will bring comfort and hope, or it will yield guilt, accusation, self-righteousness and a heavy spirit.

I prefer to read looking for the wonder and beauty of God.

I find it even in the grisly story of John the Baptist’s death at the head of the henchman’s ax, a story as contemporary as today’s news.

Mark’s Gospel inserts this story in the middle of Jesus’ sending his 12 closest friends, two by two, into the villages ahead of him. They go out to bless and heal, to call people to prepare and believe the gospel of God’s kingdom. He sends them out with no extra clothing or supplies, depending upon the hospitality of those who would receive them.

Each time they were welcomed the kingdom, the community of God’s loving presence, became as real as the food on their plates and the smiles across the table.

They go out and immediately we come to the story of John the Baptist’s execution at the hands of King Herod, who drank too much at a dinner party at the palace and made a promise even he didn’t want to keep.

Right after John’s death Mark tells us about the return of Jesus 12 followers from their mission. Jesus takes them away to a quiet place that isn’t so quiet. Hungry crowds follow, wanting words of God’s kingdom, words of hope to lift their lives into the living experience of God’s loving kingdom, moving them to life and joy.

The power of God’s living grace is everywhere, it seems. It stirs the imagination of the 12 so that they went on their mission with hope instead of worried whining about where their next meal was coming from.

It made John strong and passionate about the justice of God so that he should call for God’s justice even when kings and conspiracies threatened--then took--his life in a most ugly manner.

God’s living grace stirred the heart of the crowd, too. They followed their inner hungers to seek Jesus, hoping for blessings they could barely name, knowing it was better to be near him than to be separate from his presence, which is why I come to this place as often as I do.

Stories of human sin and failure are easy to find, and it is easy to read the Bible and history ever looking for what is wrong.

It’s more rewarding--and joyful, however, to set your eye on beauty and grace, knowing God’s love and power will show up, even in the worst situations you can imagine.

People of faith throughout history have found God’s beauty and grace in such places. That’s why I continue to look, trusting that the beauty of grace … is everywhere.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 6:22-27

When the daughter of this same Herodias came in and danced, she delighted Herod and his guests; so the king said to the girl, 'Ask me anything you like and I will give it you.' And he swore her an oath, 'I will give you anything you ask, even half my kingdom.' She went out and said to her mother, 'What shall I ask for?' She replied, 'The head of John the Baptist.' The king was deeply distressed but, thinking of the oaths he had sworn and of his guests, he was reluctant to break his word to her. At once the king sent one of the bodyguard with orders to bring John's head.

Reflection
Mark’s Gospel is terse and to the point. His favorite word is ‘and,’ although ‘immediately’ appears frequently, too.

There are no long speeches from Jesus or anybody else in his little book about Jesus’ ministry. Mark … or whoever wrote this Gospel … moves quickly from one event to the next with no pause to catch your breath.

But he pauses … for 17 verses … to tell in detail the story about how John the Baptist was killed by King Herod, who thought Jesus was John come back from the dead. Herod had John executed as a favor to his wife and daughter, who beguiled him with her dance.

It seems his wife, Herodias, didn’t like what John said about their illicit marriage. Neither did Herod, but he was also fascinated by John and kept him around (in prison) to listen to his rants. I suspect Herod believed John was speaking important truth to him, but not one he was prepared to act upon.

The saga ends when, after too much wine, Herod makes a promised he loathes but knows he must keep.
I wonder why Mark spills so much ink on this tawdry incident.

There were those in the first century who thought John might be the Promised One, the anointed Messiah of Israel. His execution gets him conveniently out of the way so the rest of Mark’s narrative can focus on Jesus, making it clear that Jesus is the One, not John.
I doubt this is the reason Mark spends an unusual time on this story, although I can’t read the author’s mind any better than you can.

What I find in Herod is a common division in the human heart. We know what is good and may be fascinated by what we should do, but we fail to do it. The Apostle Paul, whose letters comprise much of the New Testament, talks about this same struggle. He wrote personally of his struggle, saying that the good I would do, I don’t; while that which I should not do … that I do.

Being a king or a person with power doesn’t exempt anyone from this internal struggle. It is universally human. The difference between the powerful and others is that those with power exact greater hurt on others in the process of resisting what is best.

Perhaps, like Herod, there are powerful social pressures pushing us the other way. Maybe protecting our current way of life and living keeps us from acting on our deepest, truest convictions and the values of the Gospel of Christ.

Whatever Mark’s reason for giving this story so much space, it is clear that Herod was unwilling to give up life as he knew it in order to save it and live the life of God’s kingdom, and this is what Jesus calls us to do.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, July 6, 2012

Today’s text
Mark 6:1-5
With the coming of the Sabbath he began teaching in the synagogue, and most of them were astonished when they heard him. They said, 'Where did the man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been granted him, and these miracles that are worked through him? This is the carpenter, surely, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joset and Jude Jude and Simon? His sisters, too, are they not here with us?' And they would not accept him. And Jesus said to them, 'A prophet is despised only in his own country, among his own relations and in his own house'; and he could work no miracle there … .
Reflection

Pray for us Tommy. Pray that we might be human beings, like you.

Watching my middle grandson, Ben, fly off a waterslide transported me to hot Nebraska summers in the 1980s. Ben is six and recently became competent in the water. The diving board and the deep end of the pool have become his habitat.

He stands on the low board, winks his left eye at me and tears off the end. For an instant, he is suspended in space, a portrait of abandonment to the joy of splashing into the crystal water on a one-hundred degree day.

He reminds me of his mother, Rachel, … and Tommy, whom I have to thank for this moment.

Tommy was a swim teacher in our tiny Nebraska town in the early 1980s. I remember him at the pool when he was still in high school, returning to serve as lifeguard during college summers.

Handsome, gentle, patient Tommy. I should have guessed his secret, but I was oblivious at that time of my life. We all were.

One day, while my wife and I were at the county fair, Tommy got our half-pint five-year old to climb the steps of the high board and blithely step off into the deep end of the pool. Then Rachel did it again and again and again. She was fearless, and I was proud.

Each time, Rachel shot a sly grin in our direction and casually stepped off the board, floating in space before disappearing in the deep. The sight of this tiny girl at the end of the board made heads turn, also making my mother gasp during her next visit.
I always enjoyed making my mother nervous, so Rachel was a child after my own heart.
I have Tommy to thank. He loved Rachel. He loved all the children that gathered about his legs when he walked the apron of the pool twirling his whistle, and they knew it.

I don’t think any of us recognized what a gift he was to dozens of kids in that dusty prairie town. He was a caring, gentle gift to our community, a community I left several years later, as did Tommy when his time came to move on.

A few years later we heard that Tommy got sick … and died, a very young man. We heard it was an AIDS death. I have no reason to disbelieve the reports.

I suspect few, if any, in that town had an inkling that Tommy was gay. My story begins in the early 1980s, and none of us were as tuned in as we are now.

I doubt Tommy could share his secret there. He lived in a time and place where masculinity was defined by the local football team, not by a clutch of children clinging to your ankles.

I suspect he knew he wouldn’t find much acceptance from those with whom he’d shared elementary classrooms all those years. They didn’t know any better, and people like me just didn’t know--and if we had, I don’t know if we would have been helpful.

We knew only that he was a gentle soul, who loved children, taught them to swim and won their hearts, including the heart of a small girl named Rachel, whose joyful abandonment I now see on the face of a dark-haired boy named Ben. He gets it from his mother

I have you to thank for this, Tommy. It all started with you.

And I wonder … I wonder how many times we miss the sweet goodness of souls near us, the ones among whom we live day-to-day, taking for granted the grace we receive from them, little knowing how far it will reach.

It makes me wonder, too, … what will Ben’s children do?

Pray for them, too, Tommy, your goodness goes with them

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Today’s text


Mark 6:1-5

With the coming of the Sabbath he began teaching in the synagogue, and most of them were astonished when they heard him. They said, 'Where did the man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been granted him, and these miracles that are worked through him? This is the carpenter, surely, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joset and Jude Jude and Simon? His sisters, too, are they not here with us?' And they would not accept him. And Jesus said to them, 'A prophet is despised only in his own country, among his own relations and in his own house'; and he could work no miracle there … .

Reflection

Ordinary days and faces fill our moments.

The phone rings, and we hear a familiar voice. Our mind activates a category, a box that stores our knowledge of the person we hear. Quickly, we know--or think we know--who they are, what’s most likely on their mind and what they want.

Something similar happens when we go to the common places of our lives--work, our street, a store, a friend’s home, the back patio. We know what to expect, what’s likely to happen.

Our familiarity breeds contentment with what we think we know.

We enjoy a sense of knowing comfort that slows listening and prevents us from receiving information that doesn’t fit our comfortable categories. Perhaps our minds need this lest they become overheated dealing with millions of stimuli each moment.

But this keeps us skimming across the surface of life, content with what we think we know. And we miss the depth of moments and the beauty of souls by deftly ignoring insights and information that doesn’t fit our vision of the world.

There are few better examples of this than the current woeful state of our nation’s political discourse, in which ideological divides prevent people from truly hearing and seeing each other.

Just like Jesus’ townspeople couldn’t really see and hear him. They knew him too well … or so they thought. They knew his family and had him fixed in a category of understanding that told them who he was and what they could expect of him.

They didn’t expect depth or insight, holiness or wisdom, and they certainly didn’t expect his life to be transparent to God.

It didn’t fit their “knowledge” and fell outside what they thought was possible.

They didn’t know: His face was the face of eternity, the image of the unseen Wonder, the Source of every beauty, a sacrament of the Love who has no limit.

He didn’t fit the box in which they had put him. But, then, there is no box in which we can trap Jesus.

The gracious kindness and wisdom that fills him explodes the walls of every box in which we might confine him. His is a mercy and grace that cannot be contained.

And that’s good news.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, June 22, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 4:37-40

Then it began to blow a great gale and the waves were breaking into the boat so that it was almost swamped. But he was in the stern, his head on the cushion, asleep. They woke him and said to him, 'Master, do you not care? We are lost!' And he woke up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, 'Quiet now! Be calm!' And the wind dropped, and there followed a great calm. Then he said to them, 'Why are you so frightened? Have you still no faith?'

Reflection

Jesus saw what no eye could see when he stood and looked into the night. He woke from sleep into awareness of the face of the darkness.



I see that face even now, the curve of the cheek, the dark eyes that always see, the countenance unchanged when winds blow and human souls tremble.
Before and just above the bow of the boat hovers the dark face of eternal presence and constant compassion, hovering over the stormy waters, eyes gazing upon the fearful disciples … and me, never turning away.

I see, and the soul grows quiet and calm. Tears come, for I know all I need to know. I, too, see the face of the darkness, the One ever there.

Jesus lived in constant awareness of an eternal face turned ever toward him. He called that face “Father,” for he knew it as gentle and caring, strong and unwavering.

When he laid down in the rocking boat this awareness was the cushion on which he laid his head. He rested in peace, his heart calm because he knew the face does not turn away when he closed his eyes to sleep.

He knew that when he awoke he would open his eyes and look into the face of Eternal Compassion, the Constant Presence who was there waiting for him to begin his day. Each day he gazed into the eyes of Infinite Mercy, eyes that always gazed upon him with unspeakable tenderness.

On this bright and promising morning, I look into those eyes and glimpse the contours of that great and gracious face. It’s invisible to the physical eye. But the imagination of faith has eyes to see the face of the darkness even in impenetrable night when fierce winds blow and human souls tremble.


And in seeing we hear a voice, “Peace, be still,” and we know what we need to know.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Today’s text
Mark 4:37-40

Then it began to blow a great gale and the waves were breaking into the boat so that it was almost swamped. But he was in the stern, his head on the cushion, asleep. They woke him and said to him, 'Master, do you not care? We are lost!' And he woke up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, 'Quiet now! Be calm!' And the wind dropped, and there followed a great calm. Then he said to them, 'Why are you so frightened? Have you still no faith?'
Reflection
An elderly person I know tells me, “Whether I live or whether I die there is someone waiting for me.”

Hers’ are eyes of faith. She looks beyond what is happening in the moment to what the moment will bring.

Illness or death, healing or renewed life: there’s someone waiting no matter what comes. I know she is speaking of friends in this life and a husband and friends who have passed into eternity.

But her words carry a double meaning. They echo with the Presence of One who says, “Peace, be still. I wait for you in every new moment, in every fresh morning, in every storm that comes your way.”

Whatever else the day brings, Holy One, it holds you. The tempest of the hour, the challenge of the day, the work and faces we meet, all of it … holds you.

But it also hides you. The surface noise of the now distracts our anxious vision from the Presence of the Love who abides, who waits for us in every future.

Jesus rests in this awareness and invites us to lay our worried heads, our anxious minds, our troubled hearts on the cushion of this certainty. He does not say, “Look at me.”

He says, “See what I see. Hear what I hear. Live where I live.”

He sees and hears the Love who always whispers, “Do not fear. Ever. Love waits for you in every time, every place.”

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Today’s text


Mark 4:37-40

Then it began to blow a great gale and the waves were breaking into the boat so that it was almost swamped. But he was in the stern, his head on the cushion, asleep. They woke him and said to him, 'Master, do you not care? We are lost!' And he woke up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, 'Quiet now! Be calm!' And the wind dropped, and there followed a great calm. Then he said to them, 'Why are you so frightened? Have you still no faith?'

Reflection

Jesus’ command was not really spoken to the wind and the waves. It is spoken to us. He invites us into the awareness in which he rests amid the storm.

“Peace, be still,” he says, but stillness cannot come when our hearts have two eyes.

We live with one eye focused on the tumult of living and the anxieties of the day, while our other eye looks warily at God, wondering, “Are you there? Do you care? Can you help?’

Only a single eye, a singular focus brings peace, an eye open to God, steadily gazing into the heart of Love who made us for love and in love holds each moment.

Storms come; winds blow, and we fear. We fear losing that which is most essential to our life and happiness. We fear what the future might bring, what it will inevitably bring and what we cannot control.

But the storms are temporary; the love is eternal. Storms operate on the surface of consciousness; the Love abides deep in the heart.

So we descend into the depths. We sink beneath the surface of noise of the now into awareness of an abiding, creative, ever-present love who breathes us into existence each moment, though we do not ask and cannot control its breathing.

Love abides beneath the noise and anxieties of the day. It breathes, “Peace, be still.”

Jesus dwells in this awareness. It is the cushion on which he lays his head. He is the living embodiment of the life to which we are called but which escapes us because we do not see with a single eye focused on the One unchanging amid the storm, the Love who always … is, and always will be.

May we see with one eye … and find peace … this day.
Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, June 15, 2012

Friday, June 15, 2012


Today’s text

 Mark 4:26-29


He also said, 'This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the land. Night and day, while he sleeps, when he is awake, the seed is sprouting and growing; how, he does not know. Of its own accord the land produces first the shoot, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the crop is ready, at once he starts to reap because the harvest has come.'

Reflection

It is hard to wait. I am not sure human beings are built for waiting, and growing up in the U.S. doesn’t do much to teach you the art of patient waiting.
Twice yesterday I heard the word ‘impatient’ from people who are not at all antsy. They know about waiting. They know what it is to live with uncertainty and threat, watching and wondering what will come to them, their health, their family … their lives.

They want to see and know what the future will bring. While they wait they distract themselves from the worst of their fears as well as possible, and they live their lives.

I hope they can continue to live with hope, just knowing … that beneath the surface of their lives --and of all life--there is unseen dynamic constantly at work that will yield a great harvest of loving presence in their lives, no matter what comes.

You are there, Holy One. Always. The parable is not about seeds, but about you. And you are the hidden dynamic of love secretly growing in the soil of our lives, green shoots pushing through the hard crust of doubt and fear, our uncertainty and our struggle to trust that whatever the future holds … your love holds the future.

The sower in Jesus story acts strangely. He plants but doesn’t not weed or till, water or care for the growing seed. He does nothing to assist its growth. He waits, knowing all will be well because something good and beautiful will grow and cover the earth with fresh green life.

No farmer worthy of the name, even in Jesus time, would be as passive as this man. But passivity is not the point; patient confidence is.

Living in relationship with the Loving Mystery, who is everywhere and active in everything, we are invited to take a deep breath and live, simply knowing that a harvest of divine goodness and grace, love and blessing will come.

This hardly means we get everything we want or think that we need. Life with God is not existence in a candy store.

But we will bask in the light of and love of God. For in ourselves three grows a harvest of loving presence that will fill our souls and unite our hearts with all who know this love … and with the One who is that Love.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 4:26-29

He also said, 'This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the land. Night and day, while he sleeps, when he is awake, the seed is sprouting and growing; how, he does not know. Of its own accord the land produces first the shoot, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the crop is ready, at once he starts to reap because the harvest has come.'

Reflection

Some of Jesus stories are opaque to me. I can’t see through them. Perhaps they are a bit like Zen koans, dense, obscure sayings that make little sense to common ways of seeing. Only in living with them and allowing them to unsettle us do other dimensions of meaning appear.

Perhaps it is not even correct to speak of ‘meaning.’ Perhaps his sayings provoke us, agitate us through our lack of awareness until common ways of seeing iare dislodged and a new conscious emerges.

None of his stories can be reduced to a single point of meaning, but each resonates anew each time we dare look at them and watch what they awaken in us.

Today, I see the farmer … the one who scatters the seed, and I am moved to quietness, perhaps even to patience, a contrary move for me and many in our society who are socialized to work harder and with greater diligence to make good things happen.

We are a driven people for the most part, and we honor those most driven to be successful among us. Only later seeing how badly unbridled ambition can disfigure lives and relationships.

I am impressed that the sower in Jesus story does his part … sows seed. Then he watches and does little, if anything.

He does not understand the processes by which growth and maturation occur. He knows his part is to plant and watch, being ready when harvest time comes, recognizing that life and growth are a mystery he does not control.

He knows his part and patiently awaits the mystery of growth to appear, with little apparent anxiety of what he cannot understand and with no attempt to ‘push the river’ to make something happen.

He can only do what has been given him to do … and to trust the mystery: an inner, hidden dynamic of goodness and grace will work its magic. Beauty and fullness will come … as a gift, a given, a grace, and he will have what he needs.

His is a life of knowing his part and waiting for mystery of goodness and grace to unfold, patiently trusting that it will because God will have it no other way.

Not such a bad way to live.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Today’s text

2 Corinthians 5:6-7


We are always full of confidence, then, realizing that as long as we are at home in the body we are exiled from the Lord, guided by faith and not yet by sight … .

Reflection

With apologies to Yogi Berra, “It’s hard to make predictions, especially when they’re about the future.”

And yet, there is a future we know, a future where surprising grace and the reality of love awaits our arrival, a future hidden in the heart of the One who is Love and nothing but.

As long as this awareness is before our eyes and lives in our heart, the days are never too hard, the challenges never too great. For we know what is most needful.

Paul sometimes thought of being ‘in the body’ as exile. It is, I suppose, for our flesh is weak. Our bodies grow tired, and our hearts begin to doubt whether the unseen future holds any of the goodness and grace we need to live, to breathe, to feel filled with vitality and purpose.

We experience separation, distance--sometimes great and impassable distance--between ourselves and the Heart our heart most needs to know. The feeling of being exiled from the Lord who is Love’s Holy Source is all too known in human hearts, believers and those who cannot find an inkling of faith within.

But moments of grace occur, gracious smiles appear, hope stirs in hearts that were barren but moments before, and the soul awakens to the reality of our lives.

We live in an ocean of unseen Presence. We move through a liquid grace that finds cracks and corners of soul through which it seeps in, awakening awareness that we are not exiles at all.

And we know: the future is predictable after all. We know nothing of what will come, but we know you, Dearest One, will be there … waiting.

Pr. David L. Miller

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Today’s text

2 Corinthians 4:16

That is why we do not waver; indeed, though this outer human nature of ours may be falling into decay, at the same time our inner human nature is renewed day by day.

Reflection

We do not know, and that is what is most distressing for our souls.

Life happens, challenges come, victories and wounds, love and loss. Each moment is a tiny piece of a great drama whose ending we do not see, the story of what the Spirit of God is doing to renew our inner nature … and all creation.

Most often we cannot see what the Spirit is doing, what gift or strength, what courage or joy might appear in the midst of difficult times … or our many average days ruled by the regularity of routine.

The Spirit is not governed by our anxiousness to know how things will turn out, to see what renewal or restoration may appear.

Our task is to live, a day at a time, waiting and watching … or perhaps not.

Perhaps the greatest wisdom is simply to live, to love, to give yourself to the work and souls that surround us, not getting too disturbed … or elated … by the moment at hand … or any moment.

Perhaps it is best not to worry about seeing what renewal God’s Spirit will bring, for that distracts our vision from the present moment which is all we really have.

We can take the long view, trusting that God is working, knowing that the Spirit will do what the Spirit does … give life. Waiting for that fresh breath, we attend to the daily, the now, the need of the moment, knowing … just knowing that grace will come. Blessing will fill us.

The Spirit will breathe renewing life and hope, love and vigor into our souls even when troubles bring sadness and deadening routine wears us low.

Nothing is lost or wasted. Nothing. All that has been, all that is and will be is swept into the great drama of what Love is doing in our little souls.

Our eyes may see nothing at any given moment, nothing but years and yearning, loss and decay. But the Spirit lives and breathes … into us … the renewing breath of life so that we might breathe free and sing songs of life, trusting that renewal and life will come to our souls … day by day.

May we see your life today, dear One? If it is all the same to you, might we not feel, if only for a precious moment, the breath of new life blowing through our souls … that we may know?

Pr. David L. Miller

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Today’s text

2 Corinthians 4:16-18

That is why we do not waver; indeed, though this outer human nature of ours may be falling into decay, at the same time our inner human nature is renewed day by day. The temporary, light burden of our hardships is earning us for ever an utterly incomparable, eternal weight of glory, since what we aim for is not visible but invisible. Visible things are transitory, but invisible things eternal.

Reflection

And what is this that we do not see? For what do we wait?

The stripping away, the losses and disappointments of our life, sorrows, troubles and unfulfilled hopes … these we see, and we feel them with acute intensity, wondering if they signal that the hole in our heart will never find healing, never experience completion.

But that for which we hope … must it remain ever a hope, a dream we can barely name?

Do we ever see and know, experience and feel that incomparable weight of glory entering our little lives? Does it ever come and wipe away our yearning ache for completion amid the giddy laughter of fulfilled hope?

It will come, I hear you say. The weight of this time will pass, and you will laugh. The Love I am will wash away every sadness, salve each wound.

There is a weight of glory that is no weight of all. It is lighter than air, more powerful than the sun. It fills human spirits and lifts them like so many brightly-colored Fourth of July balloons.

Slowly they rise from all that tethers their souls to earth, lifting to soar and display the colors of life and love, of beauty and hope that each is.

The world smiles at their presence because they beautify and lift the spirits of all with eyes to see them, even though the inner secret of their life remains unknown to most who witness their beauty. The secret is me … that’s what you tell me, Blessed One.

The secret is the filling of the soul with a love that is eternal and boundless.

The eternal weight of glory is the Love that surprises us that comes when we are not looking for it, that lifts your soul when you think you will never feel or know it, when you falsely imagine that the difficulties and losses are the final word over your and all life.

It comes, … you come, Blessed and Holy Lord, … when in sweetest moments we know union with you, when we feel one with that Source who is beyond us and beyond everything, when that awareness fills us, and we just know that we and everything we see and touch springs from love eternal.

May we know such a rare moment of knowing … today. Everyday.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Today’s text

John 3:3-4

Jesus answered: In all truth I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above. Nicodemus said, 'How can anyone who is already old be born? Is it possible to go back into the womb again and be born?'

Reflection

The answer, of course, is ‘yes.’ We can return to the womb and be born again.

Each day we can retreat to the places of rebirth and wait as we did in the womb for birth to come to us … again.

Nicodemus’ absurd question points directly to what we need to find newness and grace, revival and peace each day. We return to the womb of ultimate compassion and know ourselves once more as beloved and, well, special--held, nourished, our uniqueness treasured and brought to life.

This place is everyplace the love of God in Christ envelops us whole and holds us near, the place … the places of knowing.

One biblical word for compassion is, quite literally, womb.

In the womb of divine compassion, of ultimate grace and safety, we are born from above, knowing a life that is new, freed from the barnacles of past that cling to our hearts and minds, tying us down.

These barnacles cling, ever re-attaching themselves to our hearts, stealing the newness Christ brings.

Still, there are precious moments, sometimes longer periods of time, even whole days when every cell of the body sings in newness, knowing freedom from every past sin and failure, from every wound and want, because we are surrounded and filled by the Love we have always wanted.

Praise of God is not forced or effortful in such times. Joy and gratitude become the essence of our being as we are made new, born from above, once more, in the womb of ultimate grace, unlimited love and perfect compassion.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, May 25, 2012

Today’s text

John 16:13-15

However, when the Spirit of truth comes he will lead you to the complete truth, since he will not be speaking of his own accord, but will say only what he has been told; and he will reveal to you the things to come. He will glorify me, since all he reveals to you will be taken from what is mine. Everything the Father has is mine; that is why I said: all he reveals to you will be taken from what is mine.

Reflection

There is one who is complete, complete love, complete humanity, complete transparency to the heart of God.

The mystery of God is hidden in his heart but flows through his words and pores so that all he does bears the darkness of eternity into the light of time, our little moment of time.

We see him and feel his words within, and our hearts weep with the joy of knowing the Love beyond every love that is the Source of them all.

He is our brother, my brother. His name is Jesus, and all that is God is somehow in him, waiting to be given away, to flow into us so.

And it does so that the Voice deeper than all voices may speak in the depth of our consciousness, whispering of the Wonder who made us, the Love who holds us, the Hunger who wants us, the Healing that comes to us until we and all are whole..

Complete truth, Jesus calls this: all we need to live in love, bubble with hope and laugh as if all worries had departed. For, they have.

All that is in God is in him and being given to us.

And all that is in him is life. That is the first and last word, the complete truth. The temporal truths we know along the way of living--that life gets hard, that grief comes, that beauty fades, that summer ends--all this that passes for wisdom is but partial.

The complete truth: Love lasts, Life is forever, Beauty holds us and always will. So laugh until you cry. Your tears praise the One who is in you.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Today's Text

Romans 8:26-27

And as well as this, the Spirit too comes to help us in our weakness, for, when we do not know how to pray properly, then the Spirit personally makes our petitions for us in groans that cannot be put into words;and he who can see into all hearts knows what the Spirit means because the prayers that the Spirit makes for God's holy people are always in accordance with the mind of God.

Reflection

Come, Holy Spirit, give wings to our hearts.
Free us from the fears that possess us. Set our souls free to live.

Come, Holy Spirit, surprise us with your nearness.
Fill us with strength when we are weak. Renew us when we are worn and tired.

Come, Holy Spirit, you are the breath of our sighs, longing to be made new.
You are our wordless yearning when hope fails and needs press down.

Come, Holy Spirit, you are the fresh breath of each new morning.
You are the breath of all life and all love, the breath of hope within us.

Come, Holy Spirit, You are the breath of the love that fills us.
Fill us that joy may spill from our hearts and lighten our days.

Come, Holy Spirit, you are the oil of kindness poured on the wounds of the world
You are the oil of blessing reminding us that we are your beloved.

Come, Holy Spirit, you are the oil of anointing calling us to lives of care.
Move us to pour your mercy on the hungry and a world in need.
.
Come, Holy Spirit, you are the fire of love and conviction.
Ignite our passion that we may give our lives to your kingdom.

Come, Holy Spirit, You are the fire of passion. You hunger for us.
Stir our hunger that we may desire nothing less than knowing and loving you.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Today’s text

John 16:4-7

But I have told you all this, so that when the time for it comes you may remember that I told you. I did not tell you this from the beginning, because I was with you; but now I am going to the one who sent me. Not one of you asks, 'Where are you going? Yet you are sad at heart because I have told you this. Still, I am telling you the truth: it is for your own good that I am going, because unless I go, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.

Reflection

There is no time for sadness because there is no separation. Never.

You are here always and always will be. In this quiet place, I know you present and with me. No, the One you send is not with me, not beside or around me, but in the depth of the mystery of my own being, the Voice deeper than every other voice.

You are the Voice that renders all other voices irrelevant.

In the silence you speak the wonder of a Loving Presence who is the first and final truth of my life. And I flee there, to that place within where I might hear, even as gentle music of longing filters into consciousness from the stereo across the room.

As long as you were with the disciples, Jesus, they fixed on your nearness, eager to lean into your side as they walked along. And why not?

In you they knew a Holy Presence, a soul transparent to the mystery of God. Their hearts woke from sleep when they sat with you.

Could it be true? Could they know and feel the fullness of God so close that their skin tingled in delight?

Could they feel so alive and free that the anxieties and threats that surround life disappear? Could they feel a Love beyond all loves with their hands and heart? Could they feel it filling them, so that they knew this Love like their own breath and the warmth in their chest?

They didn’t need to ask such questions. They knew. In Jesus presence, they knew all this and more, although words mostly failed them when they tried to express what they knew.

Their sadness when Jesus was about to leave them was heavy, palpable, understandable … and unnecessary.

For as long as he was with them they would not and could not listen to the Spirit, the Voice within them and hear that same Voice and Spirit that filled Jesus and made him transparent to the Eternal God.

When Jesus left they felt bereft, alone and abandoned, but they were not alone, not ever. The Spirit of truth, the Helper, the Eternal Voice that is the Holy Presence of Love beyond all measure was there, given to them, in them.

And they, like us, needed to learn to listen at that deep place where speaks the Voice of Eternal Love telling us that we are not and never will be … alone.

There is never a moment when you, Holy Mystery, are not here.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, May 21, 2012

Today’s text

John 15:26-27

When the Paraclete comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who issues from the Father, he will be my witness. And you too will be witnesses, because you have been with me from the beginning.

Reflection

We search the wrong places for the Spirit of truth if we listen to everyone and everything but ignore the voice within.

The Spirit is the breath and heart of the Father, the Loving Mystery whom our hearts know even though our eyes cannot see.

There is a place within, a point of convergence where You, Loving Mystery, and I, are one, two sides of a single coin, to quote an inadequate cliché.

When I quiet my heart and practice standing still other voices from within and without tire and fall away, and I can hear again, listening for that point.

I listen in the silence to the Silence and hear you speaking, for Silence is your most sublime language.

In the silence, I know. I am aware that all that is … is your breathing. I know you as Source of all life and my own. I know my life and all I see is the stream of life springing from a boundless fountain that never runs dry. I know all I see is but the surface of a great and bottomless sea of mystery.

There is within me a witnessing Spirit, the Spirit of your truth, no, the Spirit you are.

Your indwell me, and I hear a Voice, a Helper telling me again and again and again … it is Love who makes me and all that is, and it is love that I am at the depth of my being, for my being is but one manifestation of your own, and you are Love.

And I know … that the Spirit of truth within me, the One I hear so faintly, is the same Spirit who filled my brother, Jesus, who heard you so well. He heard so completely that his life and words seamlessly gave witness to the truth and beauty of all that you are, Loving Mystery.

Lead me into the silence, Holy One, that I may hear your Silence speaking clearly, even as did he.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday May 8, 2012

Today’s text

John 15:9-11

I have loved you just as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my own joy may be in you and your joy be complete.

Reflection

I have loved you, as the Father loves me.

I am not sure if there is a more amazing statement in the entire Bible. I come here again to know the truth of your words, Jesus. There is no other reason, not really.

There is a love that awakens the soul to the beauty of all things and, yes, even to the beauty of its own soul self. Having tasted such love, all of life becomes a pilgrimage back to the places and faces, to the moments and yearning practices that open one’s heart to know what it most needs to know: that we abide in love, at all times and in every moment.

It is true every moment, but it is a truth lost to us most of our lives. We miss the holiness, the Presence of the One Love who is present in every love and in the deep mystery of every moment, moments that appear out of the darkness of nothingness to make a world where our hearts might discover the heart of the One from whom we all come.

We hunger for that heart, each in our own way, seldom knowing the rapture of being so enveloped that we know this One, this Love is the ultimate truth of our lives. We wander in deserts of our own despair and the drivenness of our craving to experience and know as much as we can, fearing life is passing us by.

But there is only One thing we truly need, One Love which evaporates our craving in a flood of fulfillment and surprising joy.

You, Jesus, tell me that you are rapt in joy when this happens. So you tell us to abide, rest, remain in the places and faces, the moments and practices where we know that we are loved as wholly and everlastingly as you are by the One Love, the Loving Mystery, you call ‘Father.’

So I flee again to this place to listen and prepare to enter again my daily pilgrimage into the wonder of the divine heart, praying but one prayer: that my heart may open and know One Love.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday May 4, 2012

Today’s text

John 15:4-5

Remain in me, as I in you. As a branch cannot bear fruit all by itself, unless it remains part of the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, with me in him, bears fruit in plenty; for cut off from me you can do nothing.

Reflection

This is my quiet space. My escape, my time … in a life when too little of my time seems my own.

None of my moments are mine, of course. It seems selfish and foolish to speak as if life is something I possess. I am not a possessor. Each moment is gift. The breath I breath is not my own.

In this quiet space where gentle music moves the heart, I know life, I know my heart and I know you, Holy One.

This is all the same knowing, not three separate things. I retreat here and my lungs expand, my heart grows quiet, and I am aware of a place I cannot see or describe but which I know is there, somewhere, somehow in me.

It is an intimate darkness where I know and feel your mystery. I know myself connected with you, no, not connected but part of you, inseparable, joined as a leaf in a vine, a flower on a stem.

And I am at peace. The noise of living and the voices of unfinished tasks do not disturb here. There is only me and you, and these tears that tell me I am well, at home and beloved.

My heart rests, knowing that this alone is life and that I should never settle for anything less.

So why, my brother, Jesus, should you tell me to remain, abide, live in the vine? I am part of the vine. My life flows from the vine. It is the essential and inevitable truth of every life.

But that’s it, right there. So many days I turn from the vine, the channel of infinite life and joy, of love unlimited.

Amid the anxiety that has driven me for years, I hurry about, failing to turn, quiet myself and enter that intimate darkness where I rest and watch and knowing I need to do nothing but receive and feel this oneness, this inseparable unity with you are the Source of my soul, of all life and love.

It is possible, even likely to live a life denying that we each a leaf on the vine, but it is a life of anxious striving and fear because it is lived without awareness of our essential truth: We are all part of the vine, who is the Source of our life and peace, our breath and joy.

You, Jesus, are the Source, the human face of the One, the Vine I know in this intimate darkness.

‘Remain, abide in me,’ you say. ‘Rest in me in me, for I am the vine of life. You will find the peace of an intimate quiet in which you will know the Love I am, the Love who wishes to flow in and fill you. Remain and dwell here in me, and your life will bear fruit.

It is from this restful awareness that life and beauty grows.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday May 1, 2012

Today’s text

1 John 4:7-9

My dear friends, let us love one another, since love is from God and everyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. Whoever fails to love does not know God, because God is love. This is the revelation of God's love for us, that God sent his only Son into the world that we might have life through him.

Reflection

It is only in loving that we know you, Lord, and it is only in knowing your love that we have life. You came to the world that we might have life.

So come to me this day that my heart might fall calm and in peace know what life is.

Morning comes again, a spring morning brimming with possibility. But you do not lead me into the sunrise but to this place of silence where I listen to my created soul, seeking to hear you have always existed and always will.

You use my own aching need to bring me here. I need to know you. I hunger to know you not with the mind but with the fullness of heart. Only full hearts know you.

The mind can grasp your possibility. It captures hints of your creative wonder. It grabs your coattails as you pass through our lives. Then, it stammers a few words about who you are, what you are like and what you are doing among us so that we can pretend that we understand something.

But we understand nothing, and all the books that surround me in this quiet space are mere echoes of your life.

True knowledge of you comes not by mind but only the in-filling of the heart by your fullness. Only then do we know the fullness of love whom you are. Only then does your living substance fill us and clear out the cobwebs death and darkness that cling like barnacles to the walls and corners of our souls.

So I come again to this silence, waiting for you who are love to awaken my awareness that love is the Source of my soul. Love is the source of spring mornings. Love is true knowledge of you. Love is the reason I am made, and giving life is the sole purpose of love.

I wait, knowing your love will come and awaken me, warm my heart and fill me that I may know you and truly live … for one more day. It's all I have, and all I need.

Pr. David L. Miller

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Today’s text

John 10:14-15

I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.

Reflection

I am the Good Shepherd.

All that is in me … I give you. The love I share with the Father … I share with you … that you may know.

I am the Good Shepherd.

Love is not something I do. Love is who I am. I do not love when it strikes me or when it is easy. I do not love only the worthy or the beautiful. I love, and this love is for you.

I am the Good Shepherd.

Friday, I learned again what this means. I was asked to visit a prisoner at the DuPage County Jail. He is the age of my children. Already, he is sentenced to 30 years. But he faces another charge for a violent assault that will likely keep him behind bars for the rest of his life.

The last time I made a prison visit my hair was brown, so I was nervous going to the jail. I didn’t know what I would find, or whether my ministry would be rejected and abused.

But my anxiety didn’t matter. I promised to go, and I went.

The visit was not earth shattering. No great conversion of heart occurred that I could see. We talked freely and laughed on occasion. We were as serious and honest with each other as we could be, given that we were totally unknown to each other moments before.

At the end of our time, we prayed. We put our hands up against the glass, me on one side and he on the other. We prayed for his trial, for courage and strength, for comfort and peace not only for him but for those he victimized. They also face a life sentence of reliving, again and again, the worst moments of their lives.

I wish I knew them. I would like to hear their story and pray with them, too.
There is no happy ending here that I can see, not for anyone.

But driving away from the jail, I knew in my bones what Jesus is means when he says, “I am the Good Shepherd who pours out his life for the sheep.”

He doesn’t ask if the sheep are good, or deserving, or worth the trouble. He doesn’t ask if they scare or disgust him. He just loves each one, the lost and the found, the victim and the criminal, me and you.

There is no hint of turning in Jesus. He doesn’t turn away. He is always turned toward us. His arms are open, no matter what. He lays down his life. Opening his heart, he lets all that is in him pour out … to us.

He wants us to know the love he shares with the Loving Mystery of God. He wants us—you—to know this great love, to share with you loving union of hearts he shares with the Mystery he calls ‘the Father.’

2

I want to know this union of hearts. I have wanted to know this since I was a young child. Sunday after Sunday, I looked at the painting over the ancient, green-painted piano in the church basement. It pictured Jesus sitting on a hillside, staring into space.

It was a poor painting, but spiritually rich. It helped awaken a longing in my heart to share the quiet deep feeling I saw in Jesus as he sat in silence knowing God’s love flowing through him.

I wanted to know what he knew, to feel what he felt, to be filled as he was filled. And this is what he wants for you.

So seldom do we have this, though. There is no turning in Jesus. But there is in us. We turn away. We forget. We neglect and fail to care for our relationship with him.

Life gets busy. We give ourselves to everything that demands our immediate attention, surrendering to all our life and work and recreation seem to require.

Busy and distracted, we turn away from our aching need to rest everyday in the Good Shepherd. We fail to return each day to find our place in his protective love, in his receiving arms, in the quiet acceptance where we feel totally known and completely safe.

Then something happens. Life outside the arms of the Good Shepherd gets hard. Failures and disappointments whisper in the night. Grief and loss, heart wounds and future fears trouble our souls, and the empty ache within tells us we have neglected the one we most need.

We hunger for intimacy with the Good Shepherd, but we can’t feel him near because we have gotten out of the habit of putting first things first.

So we return, again, to the places where we know him, to the music where he sings his love into our soul, to the people whose voices resonate with the Love that fills him, to words of grace he speaks, to a picture or place whose beauty becomes his eyes of mercy looking into our souls and filling us with the wonder of all that is in him.

It is such moments that we know him again, feeling the love of the Good Shepherd.
In such moments, we sit on that hill with Jesus and all that he is flows into us and makes us human again. The shackles of our fear fall away, and we breathe deeply, drinking in the good air of earth. With each breath, he laughs at the joy of giving us life.

And we know … Jesus is the Good Shepherd. He invites to sit quietly with him, to chant his name, to speak the depth of our joy and pain, to open our empty hearts and hands and receive all that is in him.

And as we receive, we know … we are totally known and completely safe.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Today's text

John 10:14

I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.

Reflection: What happens inside

It happened again last Sunday. I stepped to the altar at the close of worship, bowed and spoke two words. “Thank you.”

The words are not planned or calculated. No one hears them, since the final song is being sung. But the words are always there; appearing from a part of my soul I don’t control but can only notice.

“Thank you for letting me part of this.”

For the hour of worship, I have inhabited a space where unfettered grace holds sway, where the anxieties of competition, disease, struggle and uncertain futures are washed away in the flood of a love from the boundless heart of God.

Once more I have received what I need lest I forget who I am, where I come from and for what I am made.

Sometimes, often lately, the hour of worship feels like a bubble in time. Together we step into a space that is not just physical but profoundly spiritual and liberating.

Inside this space things happen that don’t or cannot happen outside this space. Words are spoken that feel forced and awkward elsewhere. People touch and hug struggling friends they haven’t seen all week. Sorrow can be named and prayed, and sufferers can be blessed.

The flurry and worries of daily life may control our time and minds outside this space, but not inside.

When we come inside we enter a realm, a physical and spiritual space where the love of God holds sway, where gentle grace pours healing oil on wounds, whether old or fresh, and human hands reach out to bless.

Inside, laughter at human foibles and frailties sparkles in the air because we know our failures and fears are held in Love Immeasurable. Inside, we know that we are welcome and loved, treasured and delighted in by the Loving Mystery whose grace shines in the face of Jesus--and in the faces around us who know and love him.

Inside this holy space, babies grab my glasses when I take them from their fathers’ arms to baptize them.

Inside, faces are named as they file forward and open empty hands to receive a food that fills the heart with the awareness of that Love who welcomes every part of them. Inside, arms encircle the shoulders of those whose eyes are still moist at the pain of goodbye.

Inside, children hug me, talk back to me, make fun of me and become sacraments of a Love far greater they--or I--can possible understand.

Inside, we sing to the mountains and the seas, lifting our voices, raising our hearts to proclaim the day blessed, a day when all the world rejoices in the gift of life and the truth of Love.

Inside, we take the hand of the person next to us, hold it up and pray an old prayer that has crossed billions of lips, “Our Father … .” Praying together, we feel oneness with another human soul and all those other souls who breathe and need, who fear and laugh, who live and die knowing there is One from whom we come and to whom we go, One who is Love Unbounded.

Inside, our hearts fall open again, and we are able to forgive (or at least to try) the failures and sins of those who have hurt us, recognizing that we are as human as flawed as those who sin against us.

Inside, we become human beings again. The shackles of our fears drop away, and we breathe deeply, drinking in the good air of earth. And with each breath, God laughs at the joy of giving us life.

Inside, we know. We know the Love God is, the Love for which we are intended, the Love we are privileged to share, the joy of that sharing and the hope that the grace that fills our gathering will, in God’s time, thoroughly fill us and all that is.

Until that day, we need to come inside, to step into this space where grace holds sway that our hearts may again be made human and learn to say, “Thank you. Thank you for everything.”

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Today’s text

John 10:11-12

I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. The hired man, since he is not the shepherd and the sheep do not belong to him, abandons the sheep as soon as he sees a wolf coming, and runs away, and then the wolf attacks and scatters the sheep.

Reflection

There are things we do and things we are. Jesus is the good shepherd, the one who is unconditional commitment, unfettered love for his friends.

Love is not something he does. Love is what he is. It is his nature, his truth, the center of his being. It is not what he chooses to give here or there when the notion strikes him, but the essence of who he is.

So, too, it is the essence of our relationship with him.

There is no turning away for him. He is always turned toward us. His arm are always open, no matter what.

We turn away. We forget. We fail to care for our relationship with him.

Life gets busy, and we cut back where it is easiest. We give ourselves to everything that demands our immediate attention, surrendering to all that life and work seem to require of us.

Busy and distracted, we turn from our aching need to rest everyday in the One who is always good, in his protective love, in his receiving arms, in the quiet acceptance where we feel totally known and completely safe.

Life outside the arms of the good shepherd gets hard. Failures and disappointments whisper in the night. Grief and pains, heart wounds and future fears trouble our souls, and the empty ache within tells us we have neglected the one we most need.

We hunger for intimacy with the Good Shepherd, but we can’t feel him near because we have gotten out of the habit of putting first things first.

So we return, again, to the places where we know him, to the music where he sings his love into our soul, to the people whose voices resonate with the Love that fills him, to words of grace he speaks, to a picture or place whose beauty becomes his eyes of mercy looking right into our souls and filling us with the wonder of all that is in him.

Then, again, we know you, Jesus, and we know you are always good, a word which also means beautiful. You are the beautiful shepherd, whose beauty is the love you are, the love that beckons us to come and rest, to come and know the goodness of a peaceful heart where we are safe, totally safe.

In awareness of such safety, we know you, Jesus. We know what we need to know.

Pr. David L. Miller