Thursday, September 25, 2014

Today’s text
Luke 7:41-50

A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?’ Simon answered, ‘I suppose the one for whom he cancelled the greater debt.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘You have judged rightly.’ Then turning towards the woman, he said to Simon, ‘Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.’ Then he said to her, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’ But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, ‘Who is this who even forgives sins?’ And he said to the woman, ‘Your faith has saved you; go in peace.’

Truth that sets free

She believed. She trusted that what Jesus said was true, no, that it is the ultimate truth of her soiled and broken life. More: She believed the grace she felt flowing from Jesus is the ultimate truth of life.

She could have believed otherwise and likely did … until she met Jesus.

She believed that she was what others said she was--rejected, tainted, sinful, unacceptable, an outcast. She doesn’t belong among those invited to the party to enjoy life’s better things.

There are many who believed this about her, and she no doubt internalized this identity. She knew who she was … this rejected, unwelcome thing. She believed the lie that she was not beautiful, a soul of infinite worth, the apple of God’s eye, beloved for all time.  (So many of us believe this lie!)

The rejected often internalize the identity and value others project on them, and this is who they become, acting out a part they were never meant to play, internalizing their oppression.

Forgiven, the woman is given back … herself. She is free to become what the Loving Mystery created to her be, bearing the grace and beauty, dignity and honor. Jesus restores her to herself, setting her free for a fresh future.

And she believes. She has faith. She grasps his words as her reality, the ultimate truth of her life, in the process rejecting the rejection that had rained down on her … as a lie.

Faith grabs hold of ultimate truth. It grasps what your heart accepts as the truth about the world, yourself, the lives of others … about God’s presence or absence, about whether the world is graced or forsaken

Are Jesus words true or are the opinions of those who reject me the real truth of my life? Do I live in a world where grace is real and seeks me very moment of my day, or is this illusion?

The woman believes Jesus … and is saved.

Freedom, a fresh future, the joy of belovedness … this is all hers the moment she believes that Jesus … not Simon … speaks the truth of her life … and ours.

Pr. David L. Miller

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Today’s text

Colossians 3.16:

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.

Filled with the Spirit

I remember my face burning in shame, wishing I could disappear. If only the floor would collapse so I’d fall into the church basement where no one could see me. My God, these people out there watching me, I am going to have to face them … for years.

It was all Mrs. Moll’s fault … for which I am deeply grateful.

On Saturday mornings, Mrs. Moll stood in front of the south bank of pews in our little church, St. Paul Lutheran, Warren Il. Twenty or 30 of us elementary kids gathered there to sing and before going to Bible class every Saturday; junior Lutherans they called us.

She would raise her hands, a pianist hit a chord and we’d sing Living for Jesus. It’s the only song I can remember from those days. I can still sing a couple of verses at the drop of a hat. We must have sung it hundreds of times to have left such an imprint.

About the time I was in fourth or fifth grade, she tried to shape some of us into a little choir. There weren’t many takers, never more than eight or nine, mostly girls. The few boys who sang had a marked tendency to be sick on Sundays when we were scheduled to sing--and that included the organist’s son.

But I was always there in our frilly white robes, usually standing beside Ron McNett, whose tooth I later broke off when we collided in a pick-up baseball game.

But he deserved it.

One Sunday Mrs. Moll arranged for us to sing during worship. Ron and I were the only boys in the choir that day, and the boys section--all two of us--were to sing a verse of the song … by ourselves.

I knew what was going to happen. I could feel it coming like a fright train blaring through town on the Illinois Central tracks.

The moment approached when Ron and I were to sing. As the girls neared the end of their verse, my face grew hotter and redder. I knew what Ron was going to do.

Mrs. Moll cued us. I opened my mouth and a feeble, wavering note squeaked from somewhere high in my throat. Ron, at my left elbow, sniggered beneath his breath, uttering not a word, not a note, taking pleasure as I squeaked and tripped through the verse as the congregation prayed for me to get done … quickly. Please God, make it stop.

I was on my own for an eternity as Ron’s sniggering continued through the verse.

As I said, he served that tooth thing.

Years go by, decades, and now everything transforms. I still sing, not as well as I used to, but I think God likes it more than ever. I know I do.

And I feel sorry for Ron.

I feel sorry for every boy … or person, for that matter, who never learned to sing, who were too afraid, or tone-deaf, or discouraged from opening their mouth because it was ‘unmanly’ … or not cool … to give voice to words and emotion that open the depth of one’s soul.

I think they are deprived, unable to enter the deepest parts of their souls … and of the wonder of the Love who seeks us there.

 In moments, songs run through me: “You are holy, you are whole. You are always ever more than we ever understand.”

And in those moments I understand. I understand the Loving Mystery of God. I know that Love. And I understand that there is more love and beauty in me than I ever knew. I understand that the language of song opens the heart and ushers me into a world where the wonder of God’s love fills me to the brim, filling me with the Spirit and making me glad to be alive.

I understand how thankful I am for Mrs. Moll … and for the day the floor failed to collapse.

Bless you Mrs. Moll. Now I know why you were so desperate for us to sing.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, September 19, 2014

Today’s text 

Luke 7:41-47

A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?’ Simon answered, ‘I suppose the one for whom he cancelled the greater debt.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘You have judged rightly.’ Then turning towards the woman, he said to Simon, ‘Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love.

 Startled gratitude

The Loved … love.

Look at the woman weeping at Jesus feet, kissing and anointing him. Tears are always telling. They reveal the heart. Her heart knows a passionate, effusive love that cannot be contained. It overflows like a lake into which far too much rain has fallen.

Her tears are not of sorrow. They are not a shower of shame. This is not a broken soul without hope. These are the tears of one who has tasted the height of human fulfillment, the joy which God intends for all of us.

She knows and feels the Great Love flowing to and through her, filling her. It spills from her eyes, her hands and feet in passionate love and blessing that cannot be contained. It evaporates her shame and fear, and she becomes a human soul, a truly human soul for the first time.

The woman weeping at Jesus feet is a portrait of the ecstasy and loving freedom God intends for every human being.

She has entered the world of grace that is no where and every where. It is nowhere for the self-satisfied, like the Simon the Pharisee, whose hearts do not ache for forgiveness and the loving welcome of God. Nor can they fly to the heights of fulfillment known by the woman weeping at Jesus feet. In their respectability, they may never become as alive, wondrous and beautiful as she.

In Jesus, the woman experiences forgiveness and the Love that is beyond all loves welcoming her home. She has entered a world of grace and knows what it means to be encompassed by the Love that labors in every time and place, in every moment and every speck of matter.

Only those with needy hearts and eyes of faith enter and know Christ’s saving presence. They enter a world of grace where the heart pours out the wonder of Love in startled gratitude.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Today’s text

Luke 7:41-47 

A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?’ Simon answered, ‘I suppose the one for whom he cancelled the greater debt.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘You have judged rightly.’ Then turning towards the woman, he said to Simon, ‘Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love.

From Love to love

Grace is everywhere. When it hits you your heart flies free in gratitude and love. Resentments and pains disappear, and you know the joy of being alive … and the heart of God.

Grace is the experience of love flowing to and through you. It is the height of human fulfillment, what God wants for us and seeks to give.

Looking up the street late on a rainy afternoon, I sit in a café, glass of red wine in hand, watching the cars work their way up and down Washington Street, mostly on their way home, I suppose.

Something about the scene moves me. I do not know what or why; I know only that there is love and gratitude in me--and eagerness to bless my waiter and anyone else who passes by for the beauty of this moment.

I just had another birthday, and my mind wanders among places and scenes from past decades of a startling life in which I have seen felt things I never thought I’d know … . 

The blessing of it all fills me, and I know: All that has been and will be is encompassed by God, which is to say … by Love, the love I have known and which surrounds and regularly saves me from myself … and from despair over failures and shortcomings of which I am weekly reminded.

Even the grainy sky and wet streets weighted low beneath the grayness of this fall day speaks love to my heart and fills me.

And my prayer is one of thanks that your love, O God, comes to an aging sinner like me, thanks that you make no discriminating exceptions but come to the hearts of the undeserving and virtuous alike, bringing joy and gratitude for all the life and love I have ever known. Thank you.

There is an inevitable connection between Love and love. The Loved …love. Those whose hearts have been found by the One who is Love are awakened and made alive.

And all they … all we want is to bask in the Love that sets us free to bless and love and give ourselves away.

There are not many loves in this world, but only one. The Love we know in every love is the One who is Love, the one revealed in the gracious welcome of Jesus.

The woman who kisses Jesus’ feet in joy and gratitude is all of us, captured by the grace of the One who comes in words of forgiveness and on rainy autumn afternoons.

Pr. David L. Miller

.

Friday, September 12, 2014

Today’s text

John 3:13-17

No one has gone up to heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of man; 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. For God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but so that through him the world might be saved.

Crystal river

The heart of God is endlessly flowing stream … from which you may drink … and live.

When I was 11 or 12 I sometimes rode my bike north of town with a few others boys on summer Saturdays. We left town on highway 78, crossed the state line into Wisconsin, riding three of four miles, mostly uphill, to a gravel road … that headed west.

The road dipped steeply, and we coasted a few hundred yards down the hill and across a rusty bridge. Jamming on our brakes, we sprayed gravel across the road as we turned into a dirt lane and were stopped by a wooden gate, weathered gray through years of neglect.

Dropping our bikes in a grassy ditch, we climbed over the gate and stepped into a pasture, a narrow valley split in two by a lazy steam, three or four horses grazing at the north end of the field.

We ran and rambled along the west side of the valley, beckoned by a pool of water on the edge of the field. A spring pulsed from the bottom of the pool. Crystal clear, burning cold water flowed several gallons a minute from deep within the earth

Water cress grew along the shallow edges of the pool, crisp and crunchy, slightly salty to the taste, green as grass, fresh as the water.

Kicking off our sneakers, we waded to the center of the pool and drank from our hands right over the mysterious crevice from which the water flowed. Cooled and filled, we plunked down on the pond’s marshy bank and soaked our feet in the cold water, mud oozing between out toes, watching what … to our eyes … was a miracle.

The crystal flow at the center of the pool just kept bubbling up, pushed from the earth by forces we didn’t understand. Day and night, winter and summer, it just kept flowing.

We returned a couple of times every summer until we thought we were too old for such things… as if you ever are. Every time the water flowed, beautiful and cold, fresher than any water we’d ever taste.

We didn’t ask for it. We didn’t work a pump handle to draw it from the earth. It did not depend on us in any way. Our moods, happy or sad, make any difference. Nor did the lies we told our mothers about not riding on the highway.

The water just kept flowing, refreshing us and giving a group of boys an adventure on summer days when our little town bored us to tears.

To understand God … you must understand the spring. To must understand eternal life you must know the feeling of being revived by its crystal pure water.

God is an endlessly flowing stream of love we feel in every love we ever know. The flow just continues, night and day, without ebb or end, seeking to refresh your heart that you may find peace … and know the love that never runs dry.

The lifting up of Jesus on the cross is the sign of what is always true and what always will be true. The heart of God is a heart of love constantly pouring itself out in the hope that we will know and feel the love that seeks us in every time and place, in every grace and beauty, in every bright or gloomy day.

 

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Today’s text

John 3:13-17

No one has gone up to heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of man; 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. For God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but so that through him the world might be saved.

The eternal sign

The heart of God is an ocean of love that holds all we are and everything that is.

Every once in a blessed while we wake into awareness of the Love who holds all things. We feel this Love surrounding us like the air.

Every day, we need this knowledge to lift us from our fears and save us from sadness, to fill us with the hope that all is well regardless of present circumstances.

Otherwise, we feel lost and alone, burdened by the unfulfillment, the weight of our failures or whatever present darkness gulfs the heart and clouds our hope.

The lifting up of Jesus is the sign of what is always true, what was always true and what always will be true. The heart of God is a heart of love constantly pouring itself out in the hope that we will see and know and feel the love that is always ours.

No love is won on Jesus’ cross. The cross is demonstration of the Love that comes seeking us in every time and place, in every grace and beauty, in every bright or gloomy day.

Every time awareness awakens our hearts to the truth, we come alive. We smile and flower. We bloom with the life that lies latent within us.

We are saved … and live.

Be lifted up today in my heart, Blessed One, that I may be lifted into the life only your love can give.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Today’s text

John 3:13-17

No one has gone up to heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of man; 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. For God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but so that through him the world might be saved.

The punch line

The symbol of the cross layers so many intertwined meanings it seems impossible to sort them out. Too many, I believe, read these words and reach immediately for the idea of sacrifice and repayment of an offended deity.

God needed to be repaid for humanity’s dishonor to God. But who can pay God anything? No one. So God found a way to pay himself back for humanity’s fault by appearing on earth as a perfect human being.

This explanation is unsatisfying for many reasons, not the least of which is because it seems to turn God against God’s own self.

It also makes God incapable of real love and forgiveness. Anyone who must be repaid or appeased cannot forgive. They are merely engaging in the world’s tired tit-for-tat games that inevitably lead to hatred and revenge.

Virtually every Sunday school child is taught the famous words of John: God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that those who believe in him may not perish but have eternal life.

There is nothing here about wrath or anger or sacrifice or paying God back. God is simply being the Love God is.

Jesus on the cross, with open arms, strikes out at no one … not even his persecutors. His arms are open to receive all the hatred, the vindictiveness, the rejection the world has to give … because God loves … the world.

That’s the punch line. God loves the world, this world where ISIS beheads journalists and kills children who are from the wrong families, the wrong religion, the wrong ethnic group.

God loves the world that hates and rejects God in the name of false and destructive notions of who and what God is.

God loves the world even those who turn away in mockery of our faith, acting as if they and this universe did not depend on an Eternal Source that breathes life out of nothingness.

God doesn’t seek to punish. God doesn’t destroy enemies … not even the enemies of God himself. God seeks no repayment from those who ignore or deny or turn away. God seeks only that we walk into those open arms and know … we are welcome as we are.

God is Love that transcends all human understanding.

Knowing this love … we begin to realize eternal life is this knowing, this experience of a love we cannot understand.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, September 5, 2014

Today’s text

Romans 12:4-6a

For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us. .

Where Christ is

We are one body in Christ. You are part of Christ ... as am I.

To touch you is to touch Christ. To touch and teach and feed and love others is to let another person know the touch of Christ, physically present and real.

Recently, I led large funeral. Many current members of our congregation were there as well as people who were once members who have moved away ... or moved to other congregations because there was something there that they needed.

But they returned for this day because they loved the person who died. They had shared life and love and faith with her and her family.

Would there have been as much of Christ in the room if one of them were missing ... or two ... or 10 ... or 50?

Truth is … Christ would have been less present in the room had they not been there.

The love of Christ would have been less real, less known, less powerful ... because that part of Christ ... that particular expression of Christ’s love that is in their lives would have been missing.

But they were there because they are part of this one ... marvelous ... and very physical body of Christ in the world in which everyone has a part to play, a life to live, a love to share that expresses that of Christ they were born to bring to the world.

And if they … or you … do not bring it, Christ’s love is less present because the world and everyone around you is denied that shape the love of Christ is pleased to take in your life.

Christ was more real and vibrant among us, and we felt it … together … because more of his body was present bearing grace and blessing for all.

Is it any wonder we need each other so much.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, September 4, 2014

Today’s text

Romans 12:4-6a

For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us . .

More ... together

We are many, but we are one body of Christ. This means we each are something of Christ to each other. It also means that we need each other … desperately,

I have never understood those who flee into isolation when troubles come. Perhaps their emotional wiring is different from mine, but I shake my head in sadness when I see someone retreat into aloneness--and remain there--when they encounter loss and grief, disease or conflict.

On one hand, we have needs to be alone at times to think and emote. But withdrawal cuts us off from Christ, who is experienced in this world as a body, the physical bodies of those who bear his Spirit and have been given gifts and abilities through which something his life may be experienced.

Isolation … pulling away from the body, the church, the people who know and love him … is separation from Christ.

Yes, he can knock down our walls or walk through the closed doors of our hearts most any time. The resurrection means at least this much.

But there is a body, a people who are connected at the heart to Christ, the Heart of the Universe. Together, they make up his body in the world, sharing the warm blood of his life pumped through them by that Great Heart.

In that body, his Heart is pumps the blood of creative love that gives us life when we feel dead, hope when hopeless. It shares our joy and passes it along to other members joined in this one great Heart.

To be part of a body is to need the other parts … and to know the other parts need you--who you are and what you have--even if you think you have not much to offer.

The life of the body, its joy and purpose is diminished when we are not united in the heart of Christ … when we withdraw and deny our presence to the rest of the body.

We are so much more … together … so much more joy and love, more grace and beauty … more than we are apart.

So reject the impulse to withdraw into isolation because you hurt or are uncertain..

Reject the temptation to withdraw from the body of Christ because you are insanely busy or because the cancer of apathy eats at you … or because there are people there who are at least as imperfect and frustrating as you are.

You belong to the body of Christ in which you are a member. You need them to know the love of Christ, They need you, what is in your heart, hands and mind.

And I need you … desperately.

Without each other the body of Christ, his presence in the world, remains incomplete … as incomplete as the joy Christ seeks to give us … together.

Pr. David L. Miller

Saturday, August 30, 2014

Today’s text

Romans 12: 15

Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.

One

You pull us out of isolation into splendid oneness with all that lives. You draw us to share what we are and receive the being of another, opening our eyes to the fact that there is no other, no outsider, no alien.

All are part of one great Life, all dwell and have their being in you who are Being itself. You dwell in all that is, and you love everything you have made without condition or limit.

You stagger me in these morning hours. Tears are the only language that speak the wonder of finding your love inside our hearts, filling our being so that we know utter and totally oneness with you and each other.

This is not a decision we make, not a choice at which we arrive. It is a gift and startling break-through that happens as we give ourselves to laugh and play, cry and comfort each other.

In the flow of living, we discover we are not separate from each other but one, sharing not just a common humanity, a common earth and universe, but a common life that is your life.

Discovering a oneness in sharing our lives, we know you, the Love from whom all things come, the Love that is the core of our being, our true selves, the Love that expresses itself in our tears, crystal pearls of praise for you who are Love. 

You invite us to rejoice and weep with each other so we may truly live … and be utterly filled … with you.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Today’s text

Romans 12:12-15

Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.

Step inside

Wednesday morning, a return to the round of work after nearly a week away, and I am eager to get to it.

It is better to throw myself into the fray of doing even as I know there is far more to do than I will get done today … or ever.

Sooner or later, we all leave the stage, so to speak, and the labors of life continue. Others must pick up where we left off.

But not today. Today is my day, and I know … I am certain that blessing will come to me and through me.

This is the hope to which we are invited. To live with hospitality, to rejoice with those on whom the sun shines and to be the light of your love, Lord, for those who dwell in sadness.

All in all, this is an invitation to step inside of you. Inside.

I cannot imagine how you are in yourself, but in this world you are the flow of giving and receiving, the dance of blessing and being blessed.

We know you--we feel you--not in idle speculation but as we throw ourselves into the fray of living and loving, giving our hearts and whole lives to the dance of Love in time and space that you are.

There is only one way to know you … from inside this dance, sharing and participating in this flow of life where we know ourselves inside of you … and you inside filling us.

So rejoice with those who rejoice, bless everything and everyone in sight, be patient when life is hard, and share the sorrow and lighten the hearts of those in sadness.

And hope … always hope that amid it all your heart and eyes will open to the truth that you are inside the Love that is now and always will be your home.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Today’s text

Romans 12:2

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

The Lord of laughter

It is good to laugh. Laughter releases us from the grip of whatever confines our hearts and limits our joy. We are made for joy, intended for laughter which frees us to be the grace we each are.

Rejoice always; let your gentleness be known to all people. The Lord is near.

Yes, the Lord is near, even here, at the bedside of the dying as friends and children gather to release their beloved into the grace in which we each are made.

Even here … rejoice. Do not be conformed to the way the world sees and thinks and feels. Rejoice, for the Lord is near.

We know … we feel and know your blessed nearness in the sound of gentle laughter that comes as we acknowledge our foibles and follies, the silly things we human beings do, the ways we need each other … and have loved each other in spite of disappointments and hurts.

And who would have thought that biscotti baking would trigger laughter of truest affection in a hospice room? Who could have known?

But there it was.

No, … there you are.

We know you in our laughter amid the tears. Our laughter is the song of your Love singing in our souls, lifting us into the joy of simply knowing … simply knowing you as the Love you are.

And knowing, too, that this is all we really need.

Blessed are those who love and laugh. They know you.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Today’s text

Romans 12:1-2

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

A holy presentation

Monday, I sat in the chair by her bed and prayed. From time to time, I think she heard me from far away … in the world of sleep, a land suspended between life and the Life into which we go.

I wanted her to hear the words of assurance and peace, words of blessing and yes, of regret, that her life was not what she wanted … and was ending too soon.

I wanted to bless her and for her to hear and know it fully. I wanted her to know the Love that fills you when you sit beside the dying soul for whom you wanted so much more--certainly more life … but also enough love to heal the inner wounds you could not mend.

So I presented her to you, Loving God. My prayer hovered above her bed, barely penetrating her consciousness as I offered her to you … offered myself, too.

I was there, praying, speaking, blessing--marking her head with oil in the sign of the cross, the hope of the wounded and broken.

Even if she could little hear or respond, words of grace flowed from my soul to surround and embrace her, as I offered her back to you, a holy presentation of a life you love, a life that has long hungered and cried out for the healing only you can give.

Nurses came and sheepishly backed out the door, not wanting to interrupt. I wonder … did I look foolish, speaking prayers and blessings to someone who may have heard almost nothing of what was said?

There is a time I would have cared about the answer to that question. No more.

It is not just that I know that you hear, Holy One.

No, I have come to see that all that matters … all that matters … is the speaking, the blessing, the grace. Once grace is released into any room--however empty or full, whether heard or not--everything is changed and charged with the Presence of the Love who heals what we cannot.

So we sat there, embraced by grace long after the final echoes of my words faded into silence, the two of us, a holy sacrifice presented to you.

So sad, yet … it was perfect. Because of you.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, August 18, 2014

Today’s text

Romans 12:1

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Given away

Saturday afternoon I walked through the sanctuary, and my heart filled with joy. I was beyond happy. I was overwhelmed with pleasure, the pleasure of God.

The joy filling me was eternal, endless, without limit, and it completed me.

I could not imagine then … or now … anything I would rather do … or be … than to be in this place, speaking a word of the Love who refuses to let us go.

“Thank you,” I said into the empty room where people would soon gather. “Thank you for letting me do this.” This is my only prayer as I bow at the table at the start and close of every liturgy.

I have no explanation for why I should feel this way or why this should be the place that joy comes so fully. I only know I feel God’s pleasure when I am here, when I speak and when the blessing and compassion of God flow through me.

 It is then that I am truly alive, free … and me. And I know … I was born to be this vessel of blessing. I was formed to know the joy of grace, the elevation of divine pleasure filling and passing through me.

I do not think I am in any way special. It is the divine destiny of every human soul to experience God’s pleasure filling them so that they might surrender themselves to the labor of life they have been given … and know the Love who made them, the Love for which they are intended.

The filling of divine pleasure comes as we surrender ourselves in love to the Love we come to know in this life. And in our surrender, we discover what it means to be alive, truly alive.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Today’s text

Matthew 15:21-28

Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

No limits

What is great faith? How does it happen?

I wish I could turn back the clock 11 years and give it to my father. I am haunted by the image of him lying helpless in bed, his body limp and weak as a kitten after a second heart surgery.

Post-polio syndrome, not heart disease, had totally depleted him. The rehabilitation staff tried to get him some strength in his one “good” leg and arm. But there was nothing left to rehabilitate. Nothing. And we all knew it, including him … though he kept trying and we cheered every tiny sign of growth even when we knew they were false.

We loved him too much to admit to ourselves or to him what our mind and heart could not deny. This time he was done. There would be no more coming home, no more adjustments to get just a little more out of his broken, polio-ravaged body.

Heartbreaking for us who loved him more than we knew how to say, but it was worse for him.

“I wish I had your faith,” he said to me one morning as lay nearly immobile in his bed at the rehab hospital.

He wanted greater faith … mine. I have no idea what this means.

Did he think more faith would have lifted his broken heart as he was forced to live a life and die a death captive to the disease that had stolen his youth … and now, everything?

Did he think greater faith would have given him more courage?

And what is great faith anyway? The strength to continue on? The flame of trust that God’s goodness will yet come? The hope that pushes forward when everything is dark? The grip that holds fast to God’s grace even when it seems there is nothing there?

I said the first thing that came to mind when Dad wished aloud for my faith.

“Let me have faith for both us. “ I said. “I will have faith for both of us. You … just rest. You rest in the arms of Love as surely as you rest in this bed. You have worked long enough. Now it is time for rest.

I was asking him to end the struggle he waged since his 29^th year when disease had stolen the life he was born to live … along with the rolling hillsides he had farmed and never ceased to love.

Once, faith was loving the land and trusting the Creator’s goodness amid the struggle of nurturing those hills to the vibrant green beauty of life.

After disease came, it meant holding on, making changing and trusting that life was still rich and beautiful, a holy gift of God to be received and cherished even when loss and struggle came

At the end, faith was knowing it was time to let go and just know … all the beauty, all the love, all the wonder he had ever known and seen, tasted and touched shined with the face of the One Great Beauty who would receive him home.

Great faith, I suppose, means different things at different times. Sometimes it shaking your fist at God and complaining, sometimes trying to accept what can’t be changed, sometimes it is struggle, sometimes just resting … and knowing.

Faith is the lifetime journey of leaning there is no place the Love of Christ cannot or will not go.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Today’s text

Matthew 15:21-28

Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

No limits

It is hard to know what all this story is about. Is it about Jesus learning the breadth of his mission, the universality of God’s love for the peoples of the earth? Perhaps his vision was too narrow, too parochial.

Was your heart moved, Jesus, as you felt the woman’s desperation as she knelt in the dust and begged for your help? Did you think, “Why not? Why limit the loving power of God to some narrow band of chosen people?  Can I not share it with all the peoples of this troubled world?”

Did the depth of her sorrow and fear so move you that you could not turn away? 

Did she teach you more about God’s love for this world than you had before understood?

Or is the story about the woman’s desperation … and ours? Does it lead us to throw aside all pretense and pride before you to plead for the deep needs of our hearts that we so often try to deny or ignore?

Both messages seem present. Day-today we take life and health for granted, failing to humble ourselves before the magnitude of your divine immensity to say ‘thank you’ for the generosity of your all-loving heart.

But I come back again to that all-loving heart … to the revelation that there are no boundaries in divine grace, no limits or borders that allow it to go only so far.

I come back to this woman who begged and dared to believe what we forget: Nothing limits the range of divine compassion. As soon as we draw lines and circles, boundaries and borders, we exclude ourselves from the place you are and from the people you love.

There are no dogs, no outcasts, no one whom you are not willing to feed at the table of your grace.

Our angers and fears exclude those who threaten or wound us, but even these, you say, are dear to you.

As we open our hearts to them … we open our hearts to you … and know the love that flowed from the heart of Jesus to the woman at his feet.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, August 11, 2014

Today’s text

Isaiah 56:7-8

 … for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered.’

Thank you … even for the pain

The grace of these words still excites my heart. I remember, too, how Jesus used the words as he cleared the temple of dishonest money changers and those who turned a place of prayer into an arena of money-grubbing.

My house shall be a place of prayer for all peoples, he said.

It’s the word all that stirs my heart and fills me with joy, yes, fills me … complete. All.

This includes me … and all of me. All are welcome to this place of prayer.

And what is prayer other than a time and place of meeting, communing and knowing the Love who has no other name. Knowing the great I Am, who was and is and always will be.

I suppose the words move me so deeply because I have not forgotten what it means to feel like an outsider, excluded, not wanted--separated from those whose acceptance and approval I desperately wanted in childhood and adolescent days when I felt at ease and welcome … nowhere … not even in my own skin.

Those feelings no longer plague my heart. They come and go from  time-to-time, so I have not forgotten--moving me to wa extend the gracious welcome of God especially those who know what it is to be on the outside of life looking in.

But today the stirring and joy in my heart over three small letters--all--stirs nothing but joy. It’s all joy, even the pains that come. I am thankful for them all, all of them.

For all of them led me to you, Holy One; all of them lead me back again and again to you, the Loving Mystery who has haunted my heart from childhood.

All of them are part of the journey that keeps me near your heart and my heart needing and wanting you. All of them are the cause of my startling joy this morning and this moment.

The bumps and bruises of life’s journey open my ears and my heart to hear the word … all … and to know the Love you have always wanted me to know.

Thank you.

Pr. David L. Miller

Saturday, August 9, 2014

Today’s text

Matthew 14:28-33

Peter answered him, ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’ He said, ‘Come.’ So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came towards Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’ When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshipped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’

Be still ... and know

Human beings aren’t very good at walking on water. This goes without saying, but I am not talking about skimming across the surface of a lake without skies.

In the Bible water is often a symbol, a metaphor for life and God’s presence ... and for threat and chaos. Psalm 46, often read in troubling times, says there is a stream that makes glad the city of God. The flowing stream is a metaphor for God’s presence bringing hope and strength.

Jesus says those who know him will have streams of living water flowing through their souls; again, water is a symbol of God’s peace and love flowing through us. But water is also a symbol of chaotic (even evil) powers we cannot control. The sea is restless and powerful. Winds whip up waves that toss human beings around like child’s

toys.

The waters stand for the unruly tide of human history, unpredictable and uncontrollable. Water symbolizes changes and troubles--the storms and rough seas of life that steal our confidence and make us afraid.

These waters are everywhere. Just watch the news.

Disturbing waves appear as suddenly as an ache that wasn’t there the day before, the pink slip telling you your services are no longer needed, the awareness that you may be losing your edge or your memory, the anxiety that your life and future are not secure.

Our Camp Noah ministry team recently encountered young people in Oklahoma whose lives were distressed not only by tornadoes that smashed homes, but also by alcoholism, physical and emotional abuse and the revolving realities of life in a foster home.

Recently, I heard from a bank vice president, one of the most competent and confident people I have ever known, musing about the constant bickering around his office—the way his opinion is ignored by younger colleagues who have no idea of all he has done in his leadership ... and don’t care. Now, he questions his judgment, the sharpness of his mind, his ability to do what he has done with care and confidence for decades. The waters are choppy around him, and there is doubt in him I have never

before seen.

School soon starts. Students go to new schools, to classrooms and teachers they don’t know. Amid anticipation of good things questions and anxieties also appear. Will my friends still be there? Will I have difficult classes or people who don’t like me?

And then this week our staff visited Amado, our congregation’s custodian, recovering and rehabilitating from the bullet that ripped through his neck and shattered, nearly killing him from the five units of blood that poured from his wounds.

It is amid such wind and waves that Jesus reveals himself, speaking as the One who alone masters the storm.

“Take heart, It is I,” Jesus says. “Be still. Do not be afraid ... even when the waves are great ... even when you feel like you are sinking. I am with you. Just ... hear ... my ... voice. I am the Voice of calm, the Voice of the Love who is, who always will be ... who never leaves you.”

It strikes me that before the story of Jesus and Peter on the waves, Jesus rests on a mountain, praying, communing with God in the silence of total love, totally aware of God’s Holy Presence deep within.

He wants us to know what he knows. Most often we don’t know.

Our fears multiply when we feel separated, separated from Voice of Love that would fill us as it filled Jesus on the mountainside. He knew the Voice of Love. He always knew what we forget, especially when the waves grow high and the winds restless.

Jesus is the Voice of Love who comes amid restless waves of fear, finding ways to speak to us and in us, seeking to fill us with the Eternal Presence of Love that filled him.

That is why we pray together or in the silence of heart, with words or without, as we go about our days.

You need to hear the Voice of Love, the Voice of Jesus’ Eternal Presence deep within your heart amid the restless waves and noise of living. Hearing his Voice ... courage comes, and we begin to learn ... however slowly ... what it means to walk on water.

Pr. David L. Miller