Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Today’s text

Romans 8:15-17

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

Nearer than your breath

Awake, my soul to the truth of this and every morning.

Once more, you move me from slumber to stumble down the stairs and search for words that wake me from sleep.

The words are but means to a larger end. I want words that transport me beyond this gray chair to know the spirit of adoption stirring and filling me with the joyful wonder of belonging … to you.

Call them sacramental words, words that take me home, words that contain the substance of belonging to you, words that fill all inner emptiness, chasing away fear and filling the heart with confident joy.

This is what I want to hear, but already you say, “Listen. Listen to yourself, to your desire. Listen to the voice that speaks in you, wanting me.

“I am that voice, the voice of Spirit within you. I am not far but nearer to you than your breath, nearer than your thoughts, nearer than the thirst that moves you from sleep to find words that speak of me so you may know me so close. “I am that thirst, the spirit of your thirsting … thirsting for you.

“When you call out for me, I am there. I am that call. When you hunger for me, I am that hunger, hungry for you. When you feel cold within, I am that chill waiting for you to arrive and warm me with your presence.

“I am the cry of your heart for me, ever here, ever near.

“I am with you wherever you go, for I am as much within you as in the scenes you see as you go your way.

“I was in that mother’s embrace yesterday as she consoled her child on the way to surgery, the one that moved you to tears. I hold you just as certainly as she held her little one.

“For you are mine, the spirit of adoption wakes you from sleep to tell you the truth … once more. Know it well.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Today’s text

Romans 8:15-17

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

Reflection

Why might I cry to you, Holy One? You don’t need my cries for you know all things and encompass me and all reality.

But I need to cry. My soul needs to call to you and to know that you are that cry, and we are not two but one, not separate but dwelling in union.

I need to know--and feel--this oneness in depth of awareness, or I am neither free nor human and joy is beyond my grasp. But then it always is.

Joy is your gift, the grace of Love’s presence filling the reservoir of soul with the cause of its hunger and satisfying its essential need.

So I cry to you in the morning hours, “Fill and complete me. Lift me to heights of knowing you, the Love who turns my cry of want to one of joyful fulfillment.”

Completion is the word that comes to mind. I yearn for the completion that only union with you brings. My soul is a reservoir for you, Soul of the Universe, fashioned as a proper home where your Spirit may dwell.

So this day let me find the right words, hear voices of grace and see beauty that stirs the heart. Let me feel the loving touch of human hands, see the sparkle of eyes truly alive and feel the warmth of welcome.

Touch me with life. Your Spirit in-dwells all these things, reaching out to fill my soul and give me wings that lift on the currents of Love.

This is my morning cry, Abba, Father, a cry that is You within this soul that wants more … of You. .

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Ephesians 3:7-8

Of this gospel I have become a servant according to the gift of God’s grace that was given to me by the working of his power. Although I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to me to bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ.

Boundless riches

Two words shimmer and penetrate the soul, singing the song of eternity--boundless riches. That is your name. That is who you are.

You are boundless, without boundary or end, without limit. There is no poverty or want in the riches of your grace. The fullness of your heart flows like a stream, fresh and clear, with no hurry or rush, a constant, never-waning life-giving flow beyond the anxiety of poverty and want.

You are always enough, always present, always more than we need, expect or imagine. The boundless riches of your divine heart go on and on. Your are boundless in reach, seeking even the saddest forgotten corners of human life and the hidden pain of my heart that I may  know you and know that you are unlike anything I have ever known.

Human hearts are trained to expect disappointment. We know that all that rises falls; every beauty fades, every joy wanes. Every soaring song whose rhythm lifts us to the heights too soon dies away.

But not you, for you are boundless riches. You are always more. There is no place you are not, no walls that hem you in. You reach to the end of time and beyond. The farthest corner of cosmic immensity is known to you.

No great sin or wound of our troubled soul is beyond your reach, your grace, your loving and healing compassion. Nothing is beyond you, for you are boundless riches, the ever-flowoing grace who satisfies the our yearning hearts.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Today's text

Ephesians 2: 19-22

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.

The household of my love

We ache to belong, Holy One. We long to be gathered into a love that heals our broken hearts and stills every fear about our worthiness. Loneliness endures until we are joined in a unity of peace where we need not fear each other, where all are welcome and no is a stranger or alien.

But we cannot create such a community. Our differences stir insecurity so we draw lines and build walls to excludethose whose ways and ideas threaten our own.

Political and moral convictions divide us into competing camps. Cock-sure self-righteousness hardens hearts and blocks simple understanding--let alone love-- from flowing beyond the narrow confines of “my people, my party, my ideological soul mates.”

Every time our differences create strangers and aliens Christ suffers assault. For he is building a holy temple, a common household, where all are welcome, all belong and human differences are joined in loving union.

“Surrender your fears of each other,” he says. “Drop the self-righteousness that hides your uncertainty. Cease pretending that you are something more or less, stronger or weaker than others. It is not true.”

“Trust and know that you are loved, that your home is in me. You will find freedom to share the joys and suffering, the beauty and wisdom of other human souls in the household of my love.”

Prayer

Wash away our hurts and hatreds, our fear and mistrust. Build the household of your love among us where all may abide. 

Pr. David L. Miller

Sunday. May 4, 2014

Today's text

Luke 23-13-35

Then, starting with Moses and going through all the prophets, [Jesus] explained to them the passages throughout the scriptures that were about himself.When they drew near to the village to which they were going, he made as if to go on; but they pressed him to stay with them saying, 'It is nearly evening, and the day is almost over.' So he went in to stay with them.Now while he was with them at table, he took the bread and said the blessing; then he broke it and handed it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognised him; but he had vanished from their sight. Then they said to each other, 'Did not our hearts burn within us as he talked to us on the road and explained the scriptures to us?' They set out that instant and returned to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven assembled together with their companions. (Luke 24-27-33).

Spirit in the Desert is a retreat center near Phoenix, Ariz. I led regular retreats there about 10 years. I loved the place, … in the sun-burnt Sonoran desert, stark … yet beautiful.

On the edge of the property, there is an outdoor labyrinth for walking meditation. The circles of the labyrinth are divided by rows of stones carving out paths in the sand. 

The first time I walked it I needed quiet time. I was tired from being in front of people, speaking all day. Approaching the entrance of the labyrinth, I took a deep breath, ready to sink into the experience and listen to whatever feelings and insights bubbled up in me as I walked. 

Kneeling in the sand to pray before I started to walk, I looked to one side of the stones and saw a small sign. It read, “Beware of rattle snakes.” 

So much for my peaceful walk. But God spoke, … “Don’t step on the snakes.  … I heard and obeyed.

So how do we listen to God so we can hear and follow Jesus? How can we hear when our lives are as full and distracted as I was with my Indiana Jones hatred of all that slithers?

Our lives are driven and distracting with work, schedules, entertainments and challenges of ever sort. Listening to God shows up nowhere on our schedules. We don’t know what we are missing.

For God speaks wherever you are. Wherever you are the risen Christ is present to tell you what you need to hear … and know.

The same retreat when I avoided communing with rattle snakes included a trip through a barrio, a poor, Spanish-speaking neighborhood in Phoenix. We met a doctor, in his late 30s. His full-time practice was providing primary medical care to anyone in need. Some could pay for his services, a rare few had insurance, but most of his work depended on the donations from individuals and churches.

Most people knew and greeted him as he walked us through the barrio and described the needs and what he did. Our group marveled at his generous spirit amid the tough situations into which he threw himself. Back at the retreat center we discussed what we saw. And I asked a question that disturbed some, “What did the doctor get out of it?”

The question was not an insult. But it was clear that he came alive, his heart burned with love, passion and joy at what he was doing.

The Spirit of the Risen Christ spoke to him on those streets. It filled him so that his heart became bigger, more alive with faith, hope and love. His heart burned amid the heartaches of his community. He listened to God speaking through his own heart and followed Jesus into the needs of his community.

What about us? How do we hear amid the noise and constant motion of our lives?  

This was also a question for sad disciples after Jesus Crucifixion. They knew they’d forever lost contact with the soul of Christ. They thought he would bring deliverance from their political situation and oppression.

There hopes were shattered. They would never see him again. They would never feel him near or hear his voice. He would never again lift their hearts and hopes. He was gone,  lost … and so were they. 

But he wasn’t lost to them or to us. This is what resurrection means. We do not need to live without his presence, without his voice speaking the love of God into us so our hearts burn, too.

This week I met with a small group to begin a study of Galatians. We opened the book, read and listened … to our thoughts and questions, to our hopes, to what we understood and did not. Our conversation traveled a path inspired by the squirrels out my window. But as we shared joy and affection, hope, too, passed through and among us. And the story of Emmaus came true again, for us.

We gather as a community of faith at this table every week. We open empty hands among others who hands are as empty as ours and we receive Christ, full of grace and eager to give himself to us. And Emmaus happened again, for us.

The risen Christ is not confined by walls but speaks amid the noise where there seems so little time to listen.

Many inside and outside the church think the language of God is guilt and shame. Some joke about having a bad case of Catholic … or Lutheran guilt. Hmm?

The voices that shut us down, that make us embarrassed, that harp about our smallness, our weakness, our shame or guilt, the voices that close our hearts to goodness and grace … these are not the voice of God.

God’s voice frees from preoccupation with ourselves … from obsession with what we have or don’t have, … from anxiety about what we have done or failed to do. 

The risen one speaks in experiences of deep love faith and hope that stir us, that expand our hearts that we may follow Jesus. The voice of God awakens the burning of an inner voice of love that moves us to share the love God is … in the barrios of phoenix or wherever we go.

And wherever we go, he will speak … even in the voices of strangers on the road.

Pr. David L. Miller

May 2, 2014

Ephesians 2:17-18

So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father.

Jesus is our peace

The center aisle was a moat dividing our congregation. When the peace of the Lord was announced everyone stood shook hands and exchanged polite hugs, a restrained, civilized affair.

No one stepped across the “center moat” that divided us in two parts. Too dangerous apparently, fear of drowning in a sea of peace, no one wanted to dive in.

But one day I said, “You have received the peace of Christ. With great and affection--and lots of noise--jump across the aisle and greet one another with a sign of peace.” It started slowly, but over the weeks laughter and commotion replaced politeness as worshipers jumped the moat and found people they wanted to bless. Physical and emotional unity replaced polite separation.

On good days, I lean against the baptismal font at the center front of the church and savor the site. I want it to go on and on. I want time to stop amid the joy and blessing being shared in not so peaceful ways. It’s a vision of God’s holy kingdom.

There are so many things that separate and divide human souls. In the ancient world Jew and Gentile were worlds apart, one near to God the other thought far off. Today, even our schedules separate us, making us strangers to God and each other as assuredly as our prejudices, politics and mistrust of those we don’t know.

But Jesus is our peace, and with great love he draws us into a great sea of  peace and blessing where what is shared is the love he is.

Prayer

Fills us with the Spirit of your peace that we may bless across the divides of our lives.

Pr. David L. Miller

May 1, 2014

Today's text 

Ephesians 1:22-23

And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Filling the reservoir

God is love and creates every person out of love and for love. We each are walking, talking, creative expressions of the Love who is, each of us thirsting to be filled to overflowing with the Love who made us.

Sorrow endures, joy remains incomplete and our souls ache until the reservoir of our hearts is filled and spills over with that love.

It happens, though. There are exquisite moments when the heart is so full all sadness disappears, old hurts and wounds evaporate and joy spills from every pore, watering the earth with divine life.

These are moments of highest joy when we are filled with the Love who made us and know the elation for which are intended. Only then are we truly human, truly ourselves

But too soon, daily frustrations and anxieties cloud our consciousness and the reservoir of our souls leak and drain dry.

So we return to the places of filling. We come to the people, the church, through which the love of Christ flows to be filled again with the substance of his life.

Imperfect as the church is, as frustrating and wounding, it is a place thirsting souls gather to be filled with the fullness of Christ, the Love who is filling all things, lest our reservoirs run dry.

Prayer

Fill with us with the love you are that our souls may overflow and give life to the world.

Pr. David L. Miller

April 30, 2014

Ephesians 1:20-21

God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.

The light of Christ

The light of God explodes from eternity through the lens of the risen Christ. He shines from the beginning to the out-most corners of the cosmos.

Christ’s light illumines the hearts and lives of every human soul in every place whether his name is known or not. He is the light of God’s own heart who works in all and through all and for all. He may be unknown or rejected in many places, but there is no place where he is not.

The heart of God is love and joy, compassion and wonder, blessing and grace, all that shines in our brother, Jesus, shining on us and in us amid the world’s brokenness and our imperfections.

Wherever grace and compassion touch human flesh, wherever wonder and love, trust and hope, kindness and joy appear he is there, illumining human hearts and drawing them into unity with himself. The light of Christ seeks to permeate all creation and the depth of every human soul until there is nothing that does not shine with the light he is.

His desire is for you to become as he is, sharing total unity with the Loving Mystery who is God that you may know the joy and holy purpose for which God created you.

Our yearning to know and be filled with an infinite love is but a mirror of his hunger for us.

Prayer

Illumine the dark sadness of every human heart that we shine with the love who doesn’t let go. Amen.

Pr. David L. Miller

April 28, 2014

Today's text

Ephesians 1:17-19

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.

Revelation among the potholes

There are moments you just know. Driving from Chicago’s loop, the ramp bends right then a broad sweep left, descending into a merge lane on the southbound Dan Ryan expressway.

The city’s jagged northern skyline, alight in late afternoon sun, arrests my plunge into the rush hour grind. Lifting my foot from the accelerator, my eyes caress the city’s peaks, its streets and all who make this crazy place work. And I realize how much I love it all.

This love wasn’t there a moment ago. But a sudden flash of illumination fills me, and I know: I know the Love who fills me and cherishes all that I see, the Love who is drawing the whole mess home into the love Christ is.

In an instant, inner light illumined my mind and heart, revealing the hope to which God’s calls us. It is strange knowledge, not of the mind but of heart and intuition, awareness of an unnameable Love filling one’s being and embracing all that is.

It is knowledge of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, love’s knowledge of the One who is Love, who made us from love and destined to be united in love with all that is.

Revelation among the potholes … who knew?

Surprise us with the light of your love that we may walk with hope.

Pr. David L. Miller

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Today's text

 

Ephesians 1:15-16

I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love towards all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.

The color of love

What is the color of love? Every first grader knows it is red, and it is shaped like a heart. But I think it includes every shade and hue we can imagine, every joy and sorrow.

We should color-code the notes on the prayer wall of our sanctuary. People stop there to write a prayer and stick it up on the wall.

There are always fewer prayer notes than I’d like to see. I want us to coat the wall with a great wash of color, the color of love that blends every human need and emotion.

We could use red stick-up notes for the loves that make us truly glad. Blue notes could speak our deep hopes and unfulfilled yearning, white ones the joy of being alive and feeling free. Green or gold could lift our prayers for healing, and scarlet the sorrows that won’t heal.

Run all the colors together, each one overlapping and crowding out others and you have the confusing, contradictory, mixed-up mess that is human life.

You also have one great visual prayer of thanks for being joined in a community of love and faith where every hue and color, every emotion and experience finds a welcome--and the love that Christ is becomes much more than words on paper.

 

Help us, blessed Christ, to be a community of love where you are known and hearts find healing. 

Pr. David L. Miller

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Today's text

Ephesians 1:13-14

In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance towards redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.

Reflection

I reached over the hospital bed and marked Simon’s forehead with the sign of the cross. Never before had I been privileged to serve someone so distinguished. A Nobel Prize for physics graced his office for a lifetime of work I will never understand.

That did not matter now. He was dying, and what he most wanted was the blessing I came to speak. “Simon, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.”

It’s more than a formula. It is truth spoken to human souls at moments of greatest fear and need. It tells them to whom they belong at the very moment they realize they have no grip on life and never really did.

There is One who holds you, One who claims you, One to whom you belong every moment of your living and dying, for you are in Christ … and he is in you.

This assurance, first pronounced in our baptism, is a truth to be claimed every day.

“I am yours, and you are mine … and you will always be,” the Spirit whispers to our souls. “The breath of hope within you, the warmth of love flowing through your heart--these all tell you the Spirit you hold and the Wonder who holds you.”

And all this is but a pledge of what will be.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, April 25, 2014

Ephesians 1:11-12

In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory.

Reflection

The language of praise is joy, the startling joy of discovering that reality is better than your dreams and fantasies, the joy of feeling a love greater than any you imagined you would ever know … or could know.

We are lifted to praise every time our eyes open and our hearts feel the reality into which we wake every single day. Our little lives are strands of the great story of God’s determined love, working in every circumstance to bring us into the joy of oneness with him and all that is.

This is God’s holy dream, God’s eternal purpose. There is no desire in the heart of the Holy One to condemn or exclude. God treasures all God has created and hungers to draw you and all things into the love God is.

This is your reality. The great sorrow of our lives is that we so seldom see and feel it that our hearts may know how profoundly we are loved and wanted--and how significant our lives are, each contributing its unique texture and color to God’s great story.

So wake and claim the truth every morning. It will lift you beyond your burdens into the joy of praising God for letting you be part of it all--part of a startling Love who will never let you go.

Gracious and Holy One, lift us into the joy of praising you for the love you are. 

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Today’s text

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

For the tradition I received from the Lord and also handed on to you is that on the night he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took some bread, and after he had given thanks, he broke it, and he said, 'This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.' And in the same way, with the cup after supper, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Whenever you drink it, do this as a memorial of me.' Whenever you eat this bread, then, and drink this cup, you are proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes.

Reflection

Strip it down to its essentials and this is all the Lord’s Supper is: simple sharing of a bread and cup through which heaven is present on earth as empty hands are filled and all are welcome in a circle of blessing and belonging.

The meal makes it happen, not the music or the robes or the fancy words spoken over the bread and wine, not these but the simple gathering around a table where strangers and people to busy to notice each other become brothers and sisters joined into the Christ presence anyone of them can feel if they give it half a chance.

I prefer the simplest gatherings best. Easter blow-out services are wonderful, but the intimacy of a few people gathered around a table with wine and bread seems best to me, more natural to what we are doing.

Forty or so confirmation students and their teachers gather in the sanctuary around the table, the cup and a loaf at the center. I trip over myself telling them how special they are, how the Spirit of the Living One in-dwells them. All are quiet. Some listen

Then the words are said, “In the night Jesus was betrayed, he met with his friends. He wanted to be with them, just like we are are now … .”

The bread and cup are lifted, then shared. “The body of Christ for you… . The blood of Christ for you.”

Empty hands are filled. Wounded hearts are touched. Students from half a dozen junior high schools become one circle of sharing where no one is any better or worse, richer or poorer, smarter or slower than anyone else.

They are alike, joined by their need and emptiness in one great sharing in the life of Christ who gives himself that they might have this moment of simple knowing, feeling the generosity and hunger of God to bless them and fill every empty place.

No one need tell them Christ is present. They know. And so do I. Their silence tells me. They feel it in this circle of receiving and blessing created by bread and wine.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Today’s text

Matthew 21:7-11

They brought the donkey and the colt, then they laid their cloaks on their backs and he took his seat on them. Great crowds of people spread their cloaks on the road, while others were cutting branches from the trees and spreading them in his path. The crowds who went in front of him and those who followed were all shouting: Hosanna to the son of David! Blessed is he who is coming in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heavens! And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil as people asked, 'Who is this?' and the crowds answered, 'This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.'

Reflection

The Romans came to Jerusalem on horses. Jesus came on a colt and a donkey. The people trembled at the sight of centurions marching up the mountain into the city. But when Jesus approached they cut branches and waved them in welcome.

The Romans came always to overwhelm by sheer force. Jesus bore no weapons, and the crowds hailed him as a savior.

I wonder what they wanted to be saved from. Roman subjugation? The humiliation of being an occupied nation, doubly taxed by local and foreign leaders?

Did they really see Jesus as a conqueror, a new king like David, the warrior king, who led the nation at the apex of its power and influence 1000 years before?

Perhaps some did. But Jesus entry into the city is not a portrait of physical power or military force. He sits a low on a humble beast, near enough to touch, not high above them.

He is among them, coming in the name of the Lord, seeking not to subjugate or to make war but to bring a new community, a new kingdom marked by the justice and compassion of God.

I doubt those who benefited from the present political arrangement went out to welcome him. But those who hungered for the vision that filled his being, his words and healing went out. They went out with hope.

I think they hailed him because of what they experienced as they heard him. His words made their earth-bound hearts take wing and soar. They went out because they had experienced salvation already working in their souls when they were in his presence.

They went out, waved branches and hailed him because they felt the presence of God in him, freeing them to know the dignity of being a human being made in the divine image.

They went out because they saw he was totally surrendered, completely given over to the mission of God to bring mercy and justice to their broken world and healing to their wounded selves. They saw: His eyes were fixed on the vision of a new world that they felt already present when they were with him.

I suppose that’s why we go out to.

Pr. David L. Miller

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Today’s text

Ephesians 1:7-10

In him, through his blood, we gain our freedom, the forgiveness of our sins. Such is the richness of the grace which he has showered on us in all wisdom and insight. He has let us know the mystery of his purpose, according to his good pleasure which he determined beforehand in Christ, for him to act upon when the times had run their course: that he would bring everything together under Christ, as head, everything in the heavens and everything on earth.

Reflection

You made us for this, Holy One, to be gathered together into one blessed unity with you whose name is blessed. You did it because it brings you pleasure. You take delight in sharing the substance of your life, your love, your joy and beauty.

This is not a new plan, not an afterthought. You did not think it up as a way to fix the world after the fateful fruit was picked in Eden and the powers of fear, hatred, and evil spoiled the beauty you had made.

From the beginning--no, earlier--before the beginning, before the first spring breathed beauty on our flesh, before first flower awakened us to wonder, before sunlight exploded into a spectrum of color behind the first white cloud, before the first rainbow, before … when there was only darkness and the impenetrable mystery of who you are, already your holy plan was in place, and you were bringing it together.

All things, including me, were destined to be joined with Christ, sharing his intimacy with you. All that is was destined to be gathered together into one great unity, sharing the love you are.

So even now, every taste of the loving unity we know in our flesh is a taste of eternity, a gift of the future into which you are gathering us, so that we laugh with delight, bathed in the love you are.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday March 24, 2014

Today’s text

Ephesians 1:3-6

Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all the spiritual blessings of heaven in Christ. Thus he chose us in Christ before the world was made to be holy and faultless before him in love, marking us out for himself beforehand, to be adopted sons, through Jesus Christ. Such was his purpose and good pleasure, to the praise of the glory of his grace, his free gift to us in the Beloved.

 Reflection

Open hands. I stand at the table with hands open above gifts of bread and wine, open to welcome the congregation, open in blessing, … open to you, Holy One.

But are these hands really mine? Are they not your hands open to welcome and bless we who are empty and in need the fullness of a love to that heals every doubt, fear and wound of our hearts?

Your hands are always open to give us with everything that is in you,--everything, all the blessings of heaven that we might know the love you are and know ourselves as your beloved.

Your hands say it all: I am wanted, chosen, forgiven, known and treasured since before the dawn of time. And you fill me with the joy of knowing this with all my heart because it brings you pleasure. Could it be that I am your delight?

You tell me it is so. Little wonder sometimes I wake in the middle of the night when sleep flees and repeat your name over and over.

“Blessed,” I name you. “Blessed are you, for you are the love that fills my heart with the blessings of eternity. You stir my mid-night prayer that I might know your open hands and praise the glory of your grace.”

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Today’s text

Luke 6:46-49

Why do you call me, "Lord, Lord" and not do what I say? 'Everyone who comes to me and listens to my words and acts on them -- I will show you what such a person is like. Such a person is like the man who, when he built a house, dug, and dug deep, and laid the foundations on rock; when the river was in flood it bore down on that house but could not shake it, it was so well built. But someone who listens and does nothing is like the man who built a house on soil, with no foundations; as soon as the river bore down on it, it collapsed; and what a ruin that house became!'

Reflection

There is only one foundation for life that leads to beauty and confidence on days of plenty, of need and of joy. Only one.

This foundation cannot be found in ourselves but in the one unchanging fact of life: the goodness and compassion of God that does not waver or change with our feelings or fortunes. Only this is unchanging.

Only this can save us from ourselves, from our self-assessments, from the judgments of others, from the feelings that accuse our hearts.

The message of Jesus, the word of the gospel is little understood in our western world, which is so addicted to the notion that human worth and peace of mind is based on our achievement.

I remember Bob. We just laid him to rest in December after a 10 year bout with cancer. He had fought a valiant fight, gracious and courageous to the last.

But the final months of his life were marked by what some might call “stinkin’ thinking.” He suffered from the ‘if only’ disease, replaying scenes from his life wishing he had made a different decision or acted in a more prudent, thoughtful way.

He regretted not getting serious about his faith or prayer until later in life, wondering how his life would have been better lived if he’d gotten serious and grown his soul at earlier age.

He’d lived a good and gracious life, loving his family, working hard, finding success in business, enjoying a variety of sports and excelling in a couple of them even into old age.

Still, he felt he had done too little. He felt he had not been good enough. He felt he could have and should have been a better human being. If only I had tried harder, he thought. I would have been a better person with fewer regrets now.

He was typical of most of us in the western world. The value of his life was built on the foundation of his actions, which at the end of his life felt insufficient.

Now, he felt his foundations shaking, and peace eluded him. He needed to claim another foundation for his life that was always there for him but was insufficiently claimed.

So we together we claimed it. We claimed the utter goodness and compassion of God for his life, for his living and his dying. This does not change. This is solid. This is real and dependable when our feelings and strength fluctuate wildly.

Recently, I stood at the bedside of a new friend, who is the most accomplished person with whom I have ever done ministry. Never before have I been called to the bedside of someone who has a Nobel Prize for physics in his office. He is among the most accomplished scientists of his generation, and the work of future generations will stand on his shoulders.

Yet nearing at the end of life, he is like us all, a beggar for grace. No accomplishment or prize gives peace, assurance and a quiet mind in the face of a terminal condition.

So he, who is so greatly accomplished, turns to the one unchanging fact of his life, the loving goodness of God which is solid and true, unwavering and certain whether we are having a good day or bad, whether we feel righteous and good or profoundly sinful.

Doesn’t matter. We change. We succeed and fail. We are faithful and faithless. We have good days and bad. We do good works and evil deeds. But the solid rock beneath our feet is the compassion of God revealed in Christ.

So at the break of the day and its ending, we turn again and again and again to taste and feel this goodness, reminding our restless souls that there is a place to stand, a quiet place to dwell, a certainty we can know

Our best life, our joy and peace, our patience and comfort, our love and kindness is built on this foundation.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, March 7, 2014

Today’s text

Luke 13:18-21

He went on to say, 'What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it with? It is like a mustard seed which a man took and threw into his garden: it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air sheltered in its branches.' Again he said, 'What shall I compare the kingdom of God with? It is like the yeast a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour till it was leavened all through.'

Reflection

Seasons come and go, and this one can’t leave too soon. We are winter weary. But we also know spring will come. 

Green shoots will appear. Crocus and tulips will push through the cold soil. Trees will bud with life that was always there, waiting … until conditions were right for life to burst forth from winter’s prison.

I always loved spring in Nebraska. Farmers planted wheat in the fall. It would sprout several inches tall. Then it went dormant and lost its color as and the days grew short, cold and dark. It slept through the bitter winds of winter.

But there always came a day in early spring when I would be driving along a country road. The sun was regaining its power, and the glint of its rays would catch the broad expanse of surrounding fields just so, and I would see it—the greening of life, a shade translucent and electric like almost nothing else in nature, wheat coming to life to feed the world.

The seeds of life were there all along ready to break loose even though the incessant prairie wind that cut to the bone and made us doubt spring could ever come. 

This is the way it is with us, too, with the seed of Christ in our lives.

The Christ seed of God’s gracious life is always there, present and full of promise--in us--waiting to break out and blossom when conditions are right.

Do not think of this is narrow religious terms. The Christ seed is the seed of grace and beauty, of justice and compassion. When it sprouts and grows it stirs the desire to a more whole beautiful person. It stirs action that creates a better world, a more just nation and the hunger for God’s will to be done on earth. 

The seed grows not just in religious or spiritual people, nor only in Christians but in Muslims, Jews Sikhs and agnostics and atheists. 

And we see its growth. We see it in a million places far outside the stain-glass windows of our sanctuaries. 

It grows in the medical staff and researchers who seek cures for life threatening conditions, in teachers who nurture students into the fullness of what they can become, in the business owner who carefully serves and protects her clients, in the scout leader who nurtures young lives toward honor and respect, in volunteers of all stripes who help pick up the pieces and put lives back together in troubled places. 

And we most certainly see and feel it in friends who help and pray and lift us when we fall behind.

We see the Christ seed growing in all who seek the common good, who resist the powers of death and hatred that destroy the goodness and beauty on this earth. 

And what is this to us, who follow Christ, in this season of Lent?

We must learn to look tenderly at our lives--and take seriously presence of the Christ seed planted in us.

The central purpose of our lives is to nurture the growth of this seed so the wonder of Christ’s life in us may grow into that great tree in Jesus parable, a tree that gives home and shade to others. 

We work the leaven of his life into us so that our lives become bread that feeds those whose lives we touch in one way or another.

We all know people who, by their simple presence, make us more alive, more joyful and stronger because of the life-giving energy that flows from them. 

Each of these souls is a testament to the seed of Christ’ gracious life and power in human beings. Somehow, the Christ seed in them grew, and they became a source of life and beauty for us and others.

They are like the Nebraska wheat in springtime, translucent and green, brimming with life and promise, freshening the earth and our souls with hope and joy. 

This is what the Holy One seeks to do in you and in all creation. 

The Christ seed is always there, always the same, present and powerful, full of promise amid the changes and challenges of every season of our lives.

And this is we pray and sing. It is why we light our candles and listen to our souls in this season. It is the reason we do acts of love and look beyond our needs to those of the homeless and the starving next door or on the other aide of the world.

These things nurture the seed. They work the leaven of Christ deeper into our lives and into the life of the world, freshening our souls that we, too, may be the breath of God’s eternal springtime in the coldness of our world.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

 Today’s text

Matthew 6:1-2, 19-20

Be careful not to parade your uprightness in public to attract attention; otherwise you will lose all reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give alms, do not have it trumpeted before you; this is what the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win human admiration. In truth I tell you, they have had their reward. … 'Do not store up treasures for yourselves on earth, where moth and woodworm destroy them and thieves can break in and steal. But store up treasures for yourselves in heaven, where neither moth nor woodworm destroys them and thieves cannot break in and steal.

Reflection

Once, I thought it was a terrible to mark someone’s forehead with ashes and remind them of what we all want to forget: “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

But on Ash Wednesday this is what we do.

We mark our heads and hear again that we are made from the same elements that make up the rest of universe, elements to which we will return when we are done here.

“Remember you are dust.”

It sounds awful. But now in the seventh decade of my life I hear those words as invitation and grace.

They are an invitation to come home, to be real, honest and human again, to quit trying to be something more than a common flesh and blood human being somehow above others. Quit trying to be something I am not and was never intended to be.

The words tell me that I am dust, but that’s not what I hear.

I hear, “Welcome home, David. It’s okay.”

Welcome home. There is no need to be anything other than what you are, a human soul, sometimes frail and weak, other times stronger than you ever thought you could be, sometimes selfish and careless, sometimes competent or even wise, others times inept--and never as together as I appear to be on good days.

The words invite me to embrace my neediness. For I am terribly needy, needing forgiveness, needing encouragement, needing warmth, needing companionship, needing fullness when I feel empty.

And this makes me more or less like you.

And to this, God shrugs and says, “I know. I’ve always known this about you, and it doesn’t matter because I am life and I am love in infinite supply.

“I am warmth when you are cold. I am the fullness for which you ache when your heart is empty. I am your constant companion when the sojourn of life is hard and lonely. I am the arms that catch you when you fall or fall behind.

“But you will never know me. You will never know the warmth I am, the fullness of your heart in mine, the silent company of my presence in your depths. Never.

“Not until you give up trying to be more than a human being, not until you give up denying that you are one bit less needy than you are, not until you mark your head with the ashes and say again, “I need you. I need you like I need my next breath. I need your warmth and joy, your forgiveness and blessing.

And this is what the ashes say, “I need you, Lord.”

And to this, the Holy One says what we most need to hear, “Welcome home.”

Pr. David L. Miller