Saturday, August 1, 2015

Psalm 8:1-4

O Love, my Beloved,
   how majestic is your name in all the earth! 

You, whose glory is sung in the heavens. 
   Out of the mouths of babes and infants
you have founded a bulwark because of your foes,
   to silence the enemy and the avenger. 

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
   the moon and the stars that you have established; 
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
   mortals that you care for them? 

Blue moon

Southbound jets from O’Hare stream across the face of the blue moon rising above the cedars, and I raise my glass to heavens, toasting with chardonnay the pale light of the second full moon of July.

The month is gone now, but not the gentle joy of sitting in the night, my glass held high, framed by the pure white disc shimmering in the eastern sky.

I toast your glory, O Lord, O Love who speaks in the night sky. I toast the glory of Love that refuses to let go, of light that penetrates the heart’s dark spaces.

The moon’s silent journey through the night, silver light reflecting from its rugged face, all this can be reduced to mathematical formulae, explainable by mind and reason.

But not so explainable is why I … and ancient souls thousands of years before … are drawn to this light, why it awakens wonder, why we find it beautiful, why it stirs love for earth and sky, life and breath; why we want to share this light, hoping another heart will be as moved as we.

And why does this pale light stir the desire to say, thank you … for my life, thank you for this love and hope?

Explain that one, please, and tell me why such desire is constant across the centuries. Why do we stare into the night sky and find ourselves as moved as our primordial cave-dwelling ancestors?

Perhaps it’s because we know … we created none of this. It is all gift, enlivening our senses, filling us with the joy of being a human soul, able to see and feel, to be moved beyond ourselves, to wonder how it call came to be and why it is all so beautiful.

O Lord, O Love, you made us to see and know, to raises glasses high under the pale moonlight, to say thank you and to be amazed that our lives are part of the story of this amazing universe, a cosmos that springs from an infinitesimal speck to this wonder, this light, this love.

I think you created it all just to awaken this love. I think this is what you really want and treasure.

For all this, thank you, thank you for making me a human soul, thank you for awakening my heart and moving me to look up, thank you for letting me know I am the child of the great love, the great joy of your divine heart.

Thank you for speaking in the moonlight.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, July 31, 2015

Ephesians 3:16-21

I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

In a red chair

Sitting in a red chair in a room called Serenity, I know myself. This knowledge is not a thought but feeling and awareness. Tingling delights within as I listen to a troubled heart musing aloud from the couch opposite me.

Something just fits. I belong here, to this listening, as together we wait for wisdom and grace to appear and set him free from the grip of anxiety and guilt.

We wait, and I know I need nothing else than to be here, part of this mutual listening for the One who is Love to appear and fill us. But already I am full. I need wait no longer.

In this moment to breathe is to love. I cannot … not love.

There is no fear, no anxiety or hate in me for anyone or anything. Every breath I take is one of love. I love the person on the couch. I love this messy world. I love the longing and confusion I so often feel. I love the work I do and this place. I love the miracle of life, the sheer fact of existence, and I know … I am this love that is no love but the Love Who Is from the Beginning.

My soul is grounded yet soaring, filled yet flying, light as a feather in the wind, floating free, able and content to be this love in this time and this place, needing nothing more than what this moment provides.

“Breathe,” a most gracious voice says. “Breathe and know this is you, and this is me. This union of our hearts is all you were ever meant to be. All you will ever need is here. In this moment, you know what the mind cannot know, the love that surpasses all knowing.

“All that matters is this union, this knowing. Breathe and know.”

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, July 27, 2015

Ephesians 3:14-15

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name.

No reason

Reason bends no one’s knees in adoration. Reason has nothing to do with it. Praise flows from a place beyond reason’s reach.

It comes when the heart is inexplicably filled with the warmth of a Love that reaches from soul’s depth to embrace everything it sees and hears. It flows from awareness of this Love within the soul’s own depths, uncreated, simply given like the miracle of life itself.

It burgeons within, filling every aching empty space, granting the heart truest knowledge of the Love that lives at the depth of one’s soul, the Love that is the soul’s Source.

There is no separation in moments of knowing. We know: The soul and the Love who is its Source are one and the same. And in every moment of filling, every millisecond of knowing, we feel the Love we truly are, knowing … the Goodness whom all the world cannot contain mysteriously dwells within the confines of our soul.

This Goodness is our soul. We are one with the One Love though we rarely feel and know it.

It is a mystery to me why certain moments bring awareness of this oneness. I know only that moments of oneness come and fill us so completely that praise and adoration of our Mysterious Source is natural as breathing. Two words form on the lips before one is conscious of forming them: Thank you.

Two words, totally inadequate and absolutely necessary.

Moments of filling and adoration are always a gift. We don’t make them happen.

The sounds of morning—bird chatter and cardinal call, the pounding of hammers far off, the whoosh of tires on asphalt—echoes of the world awakening: Today, it is these that awaken the heart to the Wonder who resides within, so that I ... that we ... might adore again the Love Who is … and the love we are.

Pr. David L. Miller

Sunday, July 26, 2015

Ephesians 3:14-15

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name.

Our name

My name is David Lavern Miller. I have long used the middle initial “L” if only to avoid having a name as bland as oatmeal.

There is another reason, too. Lavern is my father’s first name.

I say “is” even though he passed into the fullness of grace on Sept. 21, 2003. But there is no ‘was’ about him. He lives in the Love who fashioned him, and he lives in me, which is why I use the “L.”

I insist on it. An essential piece of me is missing anytime I see my name without it.

I received my name from him, and a name is never just a name. It is an identity, an essence, the truth of who we are. I am proud to bear his name. I am proud to be his son, to have his blood running through my veins and his hope in my heart.

The passion that often fills my heart and flows through my eyes testifies that I bear something of his heart within my own. And the hope I hold bears his mark, too. For he hoped for fullness of life and joy even while dragging around a broken body, forced to live a life he would never have chosen.

That I love him is obvious. And in loving him, in truly loving anyone or anything, I discover another gift, a deeper identity that any my father could give me.

In loving we feel and know our true name, a name given before we can receive any other.

For Love is our name. Love is our identity. Love is the deep truth of who we are. We are breathed into being by the Loving Mystery from whom we receive our life. Love is God’s name, a name given to us, but an identity we lose living in a less than loving world.

We forget our name and work at finding or making an identity that fits, but nothing we make ever quite fits us. For we are so much more than what our families and teachers say, more than what our education and jobs have made of us, more than our successes or failures suggest, more than what we say of ourselves.

But moments come when the noise and rush of life subside, when our fears fade, when we hear the silent voice of something more, something we did not create rising from within. We feel and know another self—Another Self—something, Someone … far more gracious rising from beneath the face we show the world.

And we know … our real name is Love. We are Children of the One Love from whom every family under heaven takes its name.

And in loving we know and become ourselves.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, July 24, 2015

Psalm 23:6

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
   all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
   my whole life long.

Wherever, whatever

This life is a journey of unknowing. We do not know where we will go, who we will meet or what surprises will come. We do not know the dark valleys we will walk or what heights of crazy exhilaration will make us laugh, weep and dance. We cannot see what friends will appear to delight our hearts or what failures will weigh on our souls.

We don’t know.

And the longer we live the more we discover how little we understand the workings of the world and the mysteries of the human heart, especially are own.

Life unfolds as it will. Surprises come turning us in directions we could not have anticipated but which we must live with as much grace and hope as we can.

But the darkness of unknowing is grace, taking from us the illusion of control and any idea that our minds and strength will ever be enough to live the lives we are given.

In this darkness, the heart curls up and closes down in abject fear, or it opens to receive the mystery of what is and what will be without demanding the outcome.

I am not sure why the darkness of unknowing turns some to fear and others to open-hearted reception of life. Perhaps the sheer blessing of life and breath have opened a foundational faith that behind every goodness there is a Goodness, a Heart beyond their own whom they cannot see and cannot ever know.

Perhaps the mercies and graces that have touched their flesh have also reached their heart, suggesting an inner grace at the heart of life, a generosity of love and beauty that is not just there, but which follows and seeks human hearts wherever they go.

I just know there are hearts not cowed by the darkness. They welcome the days of unknowing, which is every day in every life. They dwell in hope, trusting that the darkness hides a Love that pursues and catches us ... and won't let go.

They know wherever they go and whatever happens … they live in the house of Lord, the land of the Beloved, whose mercy and goodness follow us every step of our journey.

If we know this … and I do, we have all we need.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, July 24, 2015

Thursday, July 24, 2015

Psalm 23:1-3a

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. 
   He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters; 
   he restores my soul.

Restoration

Maybe it is the buttercream light of a summer evening, glow of heaven, smooth and rich, spread deep and soft across trees and well-trimmed yards. Maybe it is the orange marmalade streaking the western sky as the passionate red ball of earth’s sun falls again beneath the horizon to warm other hearts.

Or maybe it is something less celestial, like a few words on a page or the sound of a voice at which the heart springs to flight, a feathered bird, reaching heights only hearts of hope can know.

Whatever stirs this bird to flight I know its name and know, too, there is no life without it. Hope is its name, and it adjusts the eyes of the heart for the long view, looking down the road toward union with the Love it must crave for it was made by and for Love and craves the fullness of this Love in every love known.

And who knows why it takes flight at words or in the creamy glow of fading light? It just does, withholding its mystery from the minds of mere mortals.

Sometimes it seems to die when union seems impossible, only to take flight again and restore the heart, filling it with the knowledge necessary for life.

And that is this: Love remains and seeks us, leading us to places (still waters or golden evenings maybe) that stir hope’s feathered bird to take flight and lift us above the ditch of doubt so that we taste and know sweet union with the Love we seek.

Hope tastes what it wants and needs, seeking the fullness the heart demands. That’s what we are, Children of Love seeking union with the Love who seeks us.

For this, we hope. Always.

Pr. David L. Miller

Saturday, July 18, 2015

Mark 6:55-56

And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the market-places, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

Healing … again

Places of healing are everywhere, an office conversation, a brief phone call, a post-surgical celebration with a woman who has just been given her life back, or just a bit of time … with a friend whose voice quiets your heart.

All of them … healing, and there appears to be no need to speak of God, for what has God to do with any of these things? They can all be explained without reference to God.

But God for me is not an outside intruder who occasionally intervenes in the crazy mess of living. I don’t think I have ever really believed in that God.

But there is Another who haunts me wherever go, a power and presence of healing love constantly working within the everyday flow of time and events.

There is Another who can be found anywhere and everywhere human souls are truly human, touching hearts thought hands and hugs, words and knowing looks that exchange love and free the heart.

God is built in to the processes of life and is known in every ounce of love and every life-enhancing moment that touches and lifts our souls. And all who are touched are healed. This is the way it works. We are healed in the touching.

We hunger for the healing touch of the Love who labors in all of life—and each of us—seeking to be known and expressed in every soul.

We seek souls in whom Love breathes, hearts who welcome our own, knowing in themselves the indescribable ache and exquisite beauty of being a human soul, needing as we the touch of a hand, a calming voice, a presence who makes real the Presence who heals the inner ache.

Wherever Jesus went they begged to touch him.

Technology changes, our machines and medicine are better than ever, and we have more knowledge than our forebears could imagine. But we still ache to touch and be healed by The Other who is pleased to touch us … in simple moments and loving hearts.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, July 17, 2015

Mark 6:53-56

When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the market-places, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

Healing

Freedom found me in the hospital lobby. I got off the elevator, and for the first time in days I felt free. Perhaps it was because I was myself, and it felt great.

I had visited a patient, listened, shared an observation or two I thought helpful and prayed with gratitude and hope, speaking with was in my heart and what was playing in the depths of those with whom I spoke.

I felt my true worth, which is to be and bear a word of blessing and meaning amid the craziness of living and the unpredictability of illness—healing my own soul in the process, freeing me from any need to please or prove something to someone.

I felt a flow of life from a place deep within that naturally appears when it is not stopped by anxieties about tomorrow or the need to measure up to some external standard or expectations you place on yourself.

This connection with self was at the same time connection with something beyond me, something that is pleased to be expressed in and through me, a Source, a Spring that is fresh and alive, that brings a cool blue happiness not caused by any external event.

There is an awareness of being in tune, in time, perfect rhyme and rhythm with the Life that is pleased to live in and through you. There are no wants, no need for hopes for something more because you already know and have the More that the heart wants.

Our basic human problem is our sense of separation from the Life and Love that is our Source, the Mystery who wants to live in and through us. Anxieties and hopes take us from the goodness of NOW, moving us out of sync with the flow of life and laughter, joy and our natural goodness that dwells within as our truest nature, which seeks expression through us.

But this cannot be expressed when worries about performance, anxieties about tomorrow or guilt over yesterday blocks the flow of our truest self, the self that is the expression of the Great Self, of whom we each are a unique and irreplaceable expression.

This is the healing that Jesus brings … or at least brings to me.

In total freedom, he loves we who wonder if we shall ever know a love that truly sets free. Knowing the Love in him, anxieties grow quiet, fears fade, guilt becomes irrelevant. The flow of Life in him sweeps through us and carries us into the joy of knowing who we are and for what we are made.

Little wonder people begged to touch and be touched by him. They wanted the exquisite healing that comes ... even in hospital lobbies.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, July 6, 2015

Luke 24:28-31

As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, ‘Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.’ So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.

The un-vanished

I visited old friends recently. They spoke to me from their rest as heavy stones rested over them: My father, Lavern; Bob, my old friend who became the grandfather I could have never expected after my grandfathers died. He stays with me five decades later.

I walked, too, around the old church on the west side of Warren, IL. The stones spoke to me. I saw all those who had worshiped inside these weather-worn limestone blocks, set in place four years before the civil war split the nation.

Dozens of faces came to mind, but I spoke only to four or five to whom I owe greatest thanks. Tears became my prayer as I talked to the stone, to church walls and tombstones.

I told them what I have been doing, what is in my heart, and the startling blessings and pains which have been the broken road that led me to where and who I am.  I spoke the deep unfulfilled longing that, in one way or another, each of them awakened in me.

But the broken road has not come to an end. Who knows what is yet to be?

I know only this: Every fulfillment spurs longing for more life and love, more joy and surprises, even for more tears for the people and places I love and which have loved me. We are meant for this More, and our hearts are restless until … well, until they know the Love for which you made us, Holy One.

The typical human rush toward the future allows little space for such knowing. Only later, as we talk to church walls and cemetery stones through tears of gratitude and loss do we begin to know the great mystery of which we are a part.

We are because the One who is Life is … and breathes life into us. And as long as we breathe, we long for that completion of love, that holy communion we taste in moments when the heart is full … and as we walk through stones of the past which isn’t past at all, for it all lives in us and in the Mystery who is ever present.

Nothing is lost. Ever.

Stay with us, Holy One; open our eyes to see.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, July 3, 2015

Matthew 6:26-29

Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.

In the moment

Here and now

is the secret, this …

moment, this tree,

this squirrel, this

diamond blue sky,

this cardinal, brilliant

and red calling his

singular cry over

this patio here and now.

Eternal moments,

each … a wonder

never to come again

quite the same.

Each … followed

by another equally

unique, precious.

unrepeatable.

Each … to be received

with gratitude with

sure and certain hope

that fullness of heart

for which we long is

here and now, found

in savoring what is,

releasing what may be

lest the grace of this day,

of what is, be lost

in longing or fear

of what is not come.

And what is ... in each

moment is the place,

the only place, our hearts

find life, the filling

of body and soul,

the upsurge of air

and energy, wind

of life lifting us into

the ecstasy of knowing

truly the joy which is

and can be ours … only

in the moment, savoring

what is that the here

and now may fill us once

more with the love

that alone fills the empty

spaces with startled

gratitude for life and love

beyond expectation,

received fresh and new

as each dawn, a day

clothed in the Love

who is the hope of each

here and now.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, June 27, 2015

Galatians 2:20

It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

The song of peace

It happened again on Sunday. I realized again why I am Christian, why I am a pastor and how inadequate my words have been through decades of writing as I try to describe the awareness of being one with God, inside God as God is inside you, with nary a bit of separation between.

The tradition calls it union or unitive experience. For many it happens in prayer or being in the wonder of nature, but on Sunday song carried us beyond ordinary consciousness into knowledge of that which is true every moment.

The music carried us away … into the place we always are, in God, with the wonder of God somehow simultaneously in us.

“Peace be yours” we sang over and over in response to the cantor’s song as she named the nations of the earth. Peace be yours. Peace be yours.

It was our prayer for a broken and fragmented world, for our divided nation and the distress and wounds of our own hearts. Peace be yours.

Somewhere in the repetition I became aware that I did not … we did not … stand outside of God, at some distance imploring God to give us the peace we cannot give ourselves and our world.

The song, the chant carried me into awareness that God was praying in us and through us. My voice and the Voice of Love were one and the same voice; God was praying in our prayer, the prayer of the song.

But it had ceased to be a prayer at all. It had become benediction, blessing. The Holy One was within us, within our souls and our assembly, singing through us, pouring out the blessing for which our song pleaded. Peace be yours.

And it was … and is ours. The Loving Mystery was pouring out the substance of the divine heart on us and through us, peace be yours, peace be yours, and all we needed to do was to let the steady flow carry us along into the awareness that God and we are not two but one.

We were in God, in the flow of peace that springs from the Mystery of the Love God is. The wonder of this One is in us, singing, blessing, giving us the desire of our hearts. We had become God’s song of peace, discovering our true identity, the who we most truly are.

We are the song of peace, the voice of the Voice who sang through us on a Sunday morning. We are one with the One, and for a few holy minutes we knew it beyond any doubt.

And now we pray the song of God’s heart may sing through us on Mondays, too.

Peace be yours.

Pr. David L. Miller

Saturday, June 13, 2015

Psalm 13

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
   How long will you hide your face from me? 
How long must I bear pain in my soul,
   and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? 
Consider and answer me, O Lord my God!
   Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death, 
and my enemy will say, ‘I have prevailed’;
   my foes will rejoice because I am shaken. 
But I trusted in your steadfast love;
   my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. 
I will sing to the Lord,
   because he has dealt bountifully with me.

For J

Abandoned and alone, the voice said, forgotten and cut off from the face of God. Days of sunshine had passed, leaving only the shadow of not knowing what hope can be had from an uncertain future.

So many walk this road. And the voice little knew in what blessed company he walks, for he is not and never alone. He walks with all who are stripped of the false certainties once imagined to be true.

He walks with those who know what life is, a path where hard-won wisdom leads either to despair or to the Love which is the foundation of all real hope.

He walks with those whose hearts are being made loving and beautiful by what they suffer.

He walks with those whose words ring true because they have endured the valley and know what remains when illusion is stripped away.

What remains is you, Holy One, just you, and that’s enough. You are enough for us.

When suffering comes, when the illusion that we are in control disappears, what remains is the Love that leaks through the crust of this earth— through chemotherapy and radiation, through CT scans and ultrasounds, through to-the-bone weariness and doctors frowns.

What remains is the Love who streams through every love and beauty, through the light of every dawn, through the rain that waters the earth, through the sweetness of sound and melody that cut through our darkness to the sensitive soul assuring us again that Love is, Love is, Love is.

You are the Love who remains, Holy One, the Love on which we lay on days when we cannot stand. You are the Love to whom we call when forgotten and alone, far from healing light, we cry to feel the light of your face shining on us nevertheless.

We cry out, our voice one with the sorrow of our brother, Jesus. Forgotten and alone, cast out and rejected he wanted only one thing—You. He longed for the light of the Love that remains when every illusion shatters.

You are the healing for which the soul longs, the rock solid beneath our feet when life and disease shake our foundations. The light of your love is the hope cancer and uncertainty cannot kill, the light that pierces the darkness of the valley that must be walked.

You are Love, and You are here … even now … always. Nothing can change that. So pour through the dark of difficult days. Give light to our eyes that our hearts may see and sing your beauty.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Psalm 92:4

For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work;
   at the works of your hands I sing for joy.

Healing

Grant me grace to do the work of your hands with my hands, with my heart and voice. There are faces who hunger for blessing, too long neglected, their stories pushed aside by the demands of the urgent and the fearful mind’s avoidance of hard places.

Now, I hunger to let them know they are not lost to your people and never to you Holy One. What most gets in my way is guilt for having forgotten, for letting the clamor of living get in the way of loving hearts so wounded they could not cry for help.

But the anxiety of guilt is one more selfish distraction. It turns the mind back on itself, to its craving for comfort, making its own need central.

What is needed is not comfort but healing. The only comfort to be had, the only real comfort there is comes in the unity of love and reconciliation that heals the wounds of the forgotten, calms the fears of the threatened and washes away guilt in the flood of grace that flows from your heart.

It flows through us, Blessed One, when we open to each other the heart of our need and let the grace in us flow. This is your work, the work that gladdens the heart and lifts our souls to songs of joy.

Lift us today, Holy One, that we may sing the song that only love knows.

Pr. David L. Miller

June 8, 2015

Psalm 92:1-4

It is good to give thanks to the Lord,
   to sing praises to your name, O Most High; 
to declare your steadfast love in the morning,
   and your faithfulness by night, 
to the music of the lute and the harp,
   to the melody of the lyre. 
For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work;
   at the works of your hands I sing for joy.

Found again

Gratitude and hope bring me to these keys again, great hope for what might roll from my fingers before my mind knows what is happening and stops me from writing what I am … and discovering what is inside this mystery who wears my face.

I am grateful, Holy One, for whatever I am … I am part of you, not separate but connected, an expression of the life you are. The love and gratitude I know this day bring happy tears and praises you for every joy and pain and experience that brought me to where I am … with hope for who I will be and all that is to come.

Life knows no diminishment as my hair grows whiter (if that is possible). More than ever, I relish the reality of being, just being alive and knowing the wonder of sky and light, cloud and shadow, savoring the grace of love and the hugs and laughter of children in all their spontaneous freedom, which welcomes the immediacy of joy that bubbles beneath the surface of my soul.

Thank you for them … and for all who know how to play, inviting the child within to speak and sing and release the self I most am, so that I might see and know who I have been all along, finally becoming what you always knew me to be.

Thank you for them. They sing the song of your grace to my heart more clearly than any book or teaching ever could.

It is days like this, moments like these when I know this life is not about figuring things out, reducing the world, emotions, actions, politics, the state of the world (blah, blah, blah) into tidy explanations and equations in some vain attempt to find meaning … and You … in the midst of all the noise.

I don’t need to find anything … because you continue to find me even as I stumble across these keys savoring moments when life, no Life, finds and surprises me and makes me glad.

Thank you.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Mark 2:23-28

One Sabbath [Jesus] was going through the cornfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?’And he said to them, ‘Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.’ Then he said to them, ‘The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.’

Under a Sabbath sun

I love the freedom in Jesus and the freedom to which he invites me. He walks through the fields, picking grain, knowing all the earth is gift, a pleasure of God, flowing from the fullness of the Maker’s joy.

The grain plucked from ripe stems are for him, for his friends, for all the people of earth, to be received with thanks and shared in community with others.

Communion happens as they walk under a Sabbath sun receiving the goodness of creation, communion with God’s giving heart and with each other. They taste the joy of God, the love that overflows the divine heart and are joined in a common humanity, needing and receiving together the life God alone can give.

Seeing the scene, I want to walk with Jesus through those fields, picking that grain, enjoying communion with him under the Sabbath sun as clouds play tag across a summer sky. Being with him is freedom and peace.

I am free from rules that tell me what I am to do and how I should live. I am released from anxieties about success and failure, from judgments of who I am or what I do.

I know … all that matters is being with Jesus, receiving and sharing the goodness of what is, the wonder of what God gives, the love that can be found everywhere and in all things, the love that fills the heart with a great, wordless ‘thank you’ for life and love, truest worship of God.

Pr. David L. Miller