Saturday, December 17, 2016

Luke 2:8-13

 In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’ 

At the manger

Who is at the manger? Who do you see there? Are you there … and so many others who desperately need to know what only this scene can awaken in their hearts?

Email brings news of a child in our town, three years old, who wanders from the house and drowns in a retention pond in the back yard. The parents cannot go back to the house. How can it ever be home again?

Will you, I’m asked, will your church give money to help them move into another house where healing …a long time from now … might be possible? I respond, ‘Where do we send the check?’

Television brings a video of 46 children, orphans, pleading for the powerful nations of the world to send relief and carry them to safety. This may be our last video, they say. We are dying. And they are.

I want to see them at the manger scene, the parents of that three-year old, the 46 children and every blessed soul who struggles to keep them safe, fed and alive as barrel bombs drop from the sky.

I want them to be included, drawn inside the cave or stable or wherever it was that Jesus was really born. I want to see them in the scene, included in, no longer out in the cold. I want them to rub shoulders with the shepherds, these characters of questionable repute and unpleasant odor who, despite all this, are the first to see and know.

They are included in, entering the place where the warmth of God is known … and awakened in their own hearts. And there, they are given our chief human dignity: to bear within the Love who who lies in his mother’s arms.

The mystery of their lives is known at the manger: They, too, as surely as Christ, himself, were born to bear the Love awakened in them as they are included in the great circle of God’s embrace.

We hate being excluded, to be on the outside looking in. It fans our fear that we can never have and know the Love and Life we crave from the moment we burst our mother’s womb. Something in us dies, bleeds and grows bitter when we are kept outside that which we know we most need.

At the manger, this is all reversed, shepherds are included … invited in from the cold and given first place. They are stand-ins for all of us who are invited to come in … and know what the heart needs to know, awakened and filled with the wonder of bearing the very life of God.

The manger scene is incomplete if we do not see and know ourselves there, and the children of Aleppo, and the parents of that three- year old … and the three-year old, too. For nothing is lost to this Love.

All of them included, all of us welcomed into the warmth of the Love who was and is and always will be.

Pr. David L. Miller

Saturday, December 10, 2016

 Isaiah 35:4

They shall see the glory of the Lord,
   the majesty of our God. 

There is within us a longing for home—not just the home and family we have known all our lives but for the our true home, our ultimate home where we are surrounded and enveloped by a Love so great that there is nothing to do or say or be. 

We long for a Love who welcomes everything we are as we are, a Love that heals us and makes us feel whole deep inside, a Love our hearts have always wanted and needed but never knew how to get. We long for the home where we know the Love for which we were intended from the moment we drew out first breath.

This longing for home beats at our hearts. We can drown it out with countless activities and pleasures, with occupations and recreations. But moments come when the longing to know the place you a truly belong awakens. The day grows quiet. You light a candle. You see a wedge of geese plying a cold December wind, each one in its place, and you long for the place where Love is … and nothing else matters.

We long to be and know ourselves inside the Love God is.

You will never quite understand Christmas until you have felt this for home. Our best novelists and writers speak of it in every generation, wondering if it can be known or if it is only an illusion.

In these days, we shop and plan, prepare and wrap our packages. Amid the dash toward Christmas, the voice of our longing might get lost.

But it is there. It only takes a moment—a song, a star in the sky, a memory, a love lost … or found—and it springs to life. And that’s a good thing. It awakens our hearts to our truest humanity.

For us who believe … and hope, these days are a journey to Bethlehem, to a manger where a child is born, the child we say is God with us.

God does not grab us by the collar and demand that we kneel, obey and love him. Love cannot be demanded. It is awakened in us when we see and feel the Everlasting Love of God for us.

In the Christ child, God comes in immense Love to share our life, our joys, hopes and pains. He comes to show us the Love who stands with us and seeks to fill us … every moment. This Love is our home. The child is your home, the home you never knew you always wanted … and desperately needed.

Hold him and know the Love who holds you … and all time. He is your home. Wherever and whenever you see and feel and know the Love he is … you are home in the Love that is meant for you, and that Love fills you.

Come to Bethlehem and see the glory of the Lord. Come see the Love who wears a child’s face. See the child of Bethlehem … lying there. See his mother holding him and his father utterly confused, not knowing what to do. See the shepherds wander in, no less confused.

Come with them and see the Love who welcomes you … home.

Pr. David L. Miller

                                                                                                                                           

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

 Isaiah 35:3-4

Strengthen the weak hands,
   and make firm the feeble knees. 
Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
   ‘Be strong, do not fear!
Here is your God.
   He will come with vengeance,
with terrible recompense.
   He will come and save you.’ 

You will come           

I see you, and seeing … you … breathes joy into my heart and strength into my being. Seeing, I know: There is nothing to fear. With resolve my legs carry me into whatever … whatever comes next.

It does not matter because I see you, and in seeing I feel the Love you are deep within this heart, at a place you and no one else can touch. And I am alive … with you, alive with the Love you are.

That is the way it is every time I see you. The Love I see awakens within, and I know: That which you are … I am, too. This Love is what made me and is what I truly am and what I am being created to be.

I see you, Blessed Christ, as you see the eager longing of those who come to you. You are moved to joy at the trust and determination that brings them to you in hope of healing.

And you touch them. You heal them. You forgive them. You open your arms to receive all who in human need come with hearts of hope to be blessed and made whole the way only Love can make us whole.

I see this in words of Scripture and in the faces of those who hold my hands when I pray for them. I see it in those who extend empty hands to receive broken bread, believing that somehow this is you coming to make them whole again.

And you come to us. You always do. Patience. It is only a matter of time before we see and feel you coming to us as the Love you are. And then, each time, I know and feel the joy you have as you touch … me … and all of us.

So come to us, Lord Jesus. Come with Love. Come with joy. Come make us whole. Our hearts grow weak without you.

Pr. David L. Miller

                                                                                                                                            

Monday, December 5, 2016

Isaiah 35:1 -2

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
   the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly,
   and rejoice with joy and singing.
The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it,
   the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.
They shall see the glory of the Lord,
   the majesty of our God. 

Glory

Glory cloaks the trees, filling

the heart on winter’s morning,

the first snow now fallen, arriving

gently on a Sunday morning as

I stopped to gaze through alcove

windows of the sanctuary before

setting the table for the Eucharistic

feast freely given to human souls,

freely as winters grace, silver

flakes floating, coating lifeless

limbs as a single finger leaf, red

as winter cardinals, clung to a slender

branch, holding fast to its life source,

breathing joy into me, the joy of seeing

winter’s glory and knowing within

this Love for … Everything,

this love, yes, a greater glory yet.

Within the walls people sing; they pray,

talk and remember the heartbreak and

hope of those standing near. And I see,

I see! You give eyes to see the glory

you are in a mother’s tale telling

how her child was saved and reaching

to another whose beloved, now ashes,

rests in the garden tomb, out the alcove

windows, a grief covered now with silver

flakes, a gracious snow reminding that Love,

silent as snowfall, covers and cloaks all,

even this heartache, with the glory of Love’s

wonder and winter’s exquisite art.

Glory, it’s all glory,

and we shall see it … together

and be glad.

Pr. David L. Miller                                                            

Thursday, November 24, 2016

Isaiah 2:2-3

‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
   to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
   and that we may walk in his paths.’
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
   and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations,
   and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
   and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
   neither shall they learn war any more. 

Invitation

There is no sweeter invitation than to know you. Knowing you is peace, Holy One. Knowing stills the deepest heart, the point where you and I are not two but one, sides of a coin.

There is no distance between us. We are two sides of the same Love you are, you so far beyond me and yet so much within me. You are my deep and true self where I know who I am, and my heart rests in the extraordinary knowledge that I am is an expression of your joy, a flesh and blood incarnation of you who are Love.

Although we are one, you bid me to come to the mountain of the Lord, to the place where I know you and learn again the wonder of who we are together, as one Love.

Come, you say, come to the mountain, the place of meeting. There is no sweeter invitation than this for it is an invitation to know, finally, what the heart most needs to live, truly live.

So I come to this ‘mountain’ where no hope is too much, too crazy, beyond belief or possibility.  Here, I am with you. Here, no one can interrupt or come between us. Here, my heart listens for the instruction only Love can give, and these fingers speak what the heart knows.

And from this place I rise in peace to live the peace you are, the peace you give, the peace of knowing the Love from which we come, the Love which lives ever within and bids me to come and know. Always.

Of everything for which I give thanks this day, I give thanks for this above all.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, November 14, 2016

Luke 23:39-43       

One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, ‘Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’ But the other rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.’ Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ He replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.

Today

Whatever else today is, it is and can always be paradise, the presence of Love. In every love, the One who is Love is present, to bless and make alive.

Outward circumstances may be horrendous and painful or they may shine with the light of a beautiful new day. But outward circumstances do not make or break paradise. Paradise is dwelling in the Presence of the Love who calls you beloved, who reveals the startling truth that you are loved … and can love … beyond anything you imagined.

Paradise is knowing the Love from whom all things come, the Love who holds all things together. It is the fulfillment of the heart’s deepest longing for communion in the simple Presence of the Love that heals every broken corner of the heart, replacing every resentment with love.

Paradise is hearing the Voice for which you long in moments when your heart aches. It is the peace that floods the heart when you know nothing more needs to be done than to throw yourself, your joys and sorrows at the feet of the Love who has always wanted you and always will.

Paradise is not a perfect life but the wholeness of love. And it is today … and every day we hear the Voice.

Today you will be with me in paradise.

This should be our morning prayer every day, a listening to the Voice who promises the Love he is … today.

Pr. David L. Miller

Saturday, November 12, 2016

Colossians 1:15-17

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 

Held together

Do you hold us together when we are falling apart?

Are you the glue, your love the bond that holds each star in its course in the cold dark of space, each glorifying you, each a partial revelation of you, each saying your name in its own way, each with its place in harmony with everything else?

If so … why do I feel this way, angry and bitter, far from the peace this picture promises?

Yet, I, too, am created in you, through you, for you, a partial expression of the Wonder you are, however dying and distant I feel from the Beauty that has lived in me, through me, the Beauty you are.

So I come here seeking to know, to feel, to be held close to you, to know my heart with and in you and you in me.

In the solitude of candlelight, I come … hoping to be held together that the disparate fragments of this life might again find their center, the abiding place where comfort and joy are restored for the coming day.

An inner gravitational pull draws me from the bed of no sleep to this space where fingers trace the contours of unruly emotion in search of the door through which the soul falls into itself and knows again the Love that holds us together when anger and pain rend the heart.

Even in the saying, in this writing the door opens and again I know: There is this Love at the heart of things and at the heart of this heart.

I know… made in you, through you, for you … I fall again, pulled back into the orbit of your Love, held together with you that the fragments of my life may hold together in the Love that, when known, makes all things new, relieves every pain and awakens tears that I should know such Love.

And that is all I need. That’s all. To know this Love from which I get lost from time to time.

No mystery, I suppose, for I am made in you, for you, through you, and in you … I am home.

You save me, again, from myself, from old rejections that still live in me and send this heart careening into distant space, lost, where I know neither myself nor you.

But here in the candlelight I am found. Held together with you.        

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, October 7, 2016

Luke 17:11-19

On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.

A larger world

It is not those who know themselves to be right that reveal the marks of salvation. The essence of faith appears in the presence of love and gratitude, the man at Jesus feet.

He has been drawn into a larger world where he knows the One who is the Source of every mercy. He recognizes the Divine Presence and falls at the feet of Jesus.

It is this that makes him well. Of the 10, he alone sees, truly recognizing what the others do not. The rest are cured and go their way. But filled with gratitude and love, he returns to the Source, to the face of God that has looked on him with mercy.

In seeing, he enters a world where mercy is not rare but present with every sunrise, with every act of grace, with every smile of love and welcome, with every smallest blessing that lights the way of our lives.

He enters a way of life marked by gratitude and love for the Source. He is saved, made well.

He knows he is part of something larger than himself, entering a universe where grace abounds despite and amid the troubles and struggles and destruction we hear about each day.


He becomes the bearer of blessing and joy because he sees. He knows.

He need no longer be controlled by anxiety or worries, for he lives in a world where Mercy lives. It touches us. It enlarges our hearts. It relieves us of our fears and anxieties just to know this.

He is what the world so badly needs. His joy is a sign that Mercy lives … and that we can live beyond the blame and anger and accusation that is malignant in our society.

Knowing the Mercy who is … we are well.


Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, October 7, 2016

Luke 17:11-19

On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.

A larger world

It is not those who know themselves to be right that reveal the marks of salvation. The essence of faith appears in the presence of love and gratitude, the man at Jesus feet.

He has been drawn into a larger world where he knows the One who is the Source of every mercy. He recognizes the Divine Presence and falls at the feet of Jesus.

It is this that makes him well. Of the 10, he alone sees, truly recognizing what the others do not. The rest are cured and go their way. But filled with gratitude and love, he returns to the Source, to the face of God that has looked on him with mercy.

In seeing, he enters a world where mercy is not rare but present with every sunrise, with every act of grace, with every smile of love and welcome, with every smallest blessing that lights the way of our lives.

He enters a way of life marked by gratitude and love for the Source. He is saved, made well.

He knows he is part of something larger than himself, entering a universe where grace abounds despite and amid the troubles and struggles and destruction we hear about each day.


He becomes the bearer of blessing and joy because he sees. He knows.

He need no longer be controlled by anxiety or worries, for he lives in a world where Mercy lives. It touches us. It enlarges our hearts. It relieves us of our fears and anxieties just to know this.

He is what the world so badly needs. His joy is a sign that Mercy lives … and that we can live beyond the blame and anger and accusation that is malignant in our society.

Knowing the Mercy who is … we are well.


Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, October 5, 2016

Luke 17:11-19

On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

Healing mercy

There is a difference between being cured and being healed. It is a matter of the heart …and of community.

Ten are cured, but only one is healed. Only one is well, the one who is so filled with gratitude that he throws himself at the feet of the Source of Mercy.

That one knows he is dependent for everything—for life itself and for every moment that pumps vitality into his body and joy into his heart—upon the Source of Mercy who has appeared in his life.

His trust in that Abundant Source makes him well. His faith his heals what is most broken in him.

For what is most broken in him …and all of us … is not his disease. It is the doubt and fear that plague the heart and kill the joy and gratitude for life that is so evident in the man at Jesus’ feet.

That is living. Anything less is just going through the motions of the day.

Knowing mercy … and its divine Source … heals the heart and awakens joyful anticipation for each day, for it is then that we trust that the Mercy who met us in the past will meet us again in myriad ways we cannot anticipate.

This is the faith that makes us well and draws us into a community of mercy and gratitude. 

Deepest healing is known in community with those who know they need mercy, who cry out for mercy, who have eyes to see and hearts to feel mercy when it comes, however it comes.

Wherever that community appears the church is, and Christ is truly known as healing mercy he is.

Pr. David L. Miller 

Saturday, October 1, 2016

John 1:16

From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

Extravagance

We are not called to be normal. Average is not our code. Extravagant love simmers in our depths awaiting moments when it can flash out and shine in eyes and smiles that beggar every description.

We are children of extravagance, invited always to love beyond reason, to forgive when grudges are easier, to give from the heart beyond all measure.

For the there is no measure that can contain the Love who fills us. The heart may falter for a moment; anxieties and angers may for a time obscure our deepest truth.

But even then … Love remains. The Holy Fire still burns, the soul’s silent pilot, waiting its time to flame out, to burst into in fullness, warming every troubled place in the heart with awareness that all is well for the Love Who Is … is ever present.

Love is our true name; we are made in Love’s image. And Love comes to sweep us into who we are, filling us with You, the Presence who is always there. Always.

Our lives are a cradle where Christ lives, deep within, seeking to be born again and again, that he may shine, the Love he is filling and overflowing the heart.

How does it happen? I do not know. I know only that Love’s Fire needs space to breathe and speak, to feel and bask in the Extraordinary Wonder you are Holy One.

And in such moments, we truly know ourselves, knowing, too, that to share this knowing is the joy for which we were made.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, August 26, 2016

Luke 14:10

But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. 

In the presence

Honored, I am, truly, to be in the Presence of you are present in every place, Holy One.

But there are places of privilege where it is easier for our hearts to know you, knowing, too, a magnitude of Love and overwhelming nearness that makes the heart sing.

From old, human eyes turned to tree-crested hills and mountains, their heads crowned in cloud riding the wind, soaring above deep valleys where living streams tumble toward the sea.

The wonder of earth and sky, stars of night, the burnished west as setting sun announces day’s end—all this speaks a Name we can never truly know or say, a name we know only as Love who fashioned what our senses behold and yet lives in the Love awakened within.

Awakened, we wonder, who are we that we should know this? What are we that we should know the ecstasy of Love awakened? For in this Love we know you and all for which we are made.

We are graced by you who are Grace, dwelling in the Presence of Love beyond all naming. Known in earth and sky, deeper, still, we know in eyes that shine and hearts that glow with the fire of your divine heart.

Move up, ever higher, you say, for it is your desire that we know the honor of living in your presence, every day.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, August 26, 2016

Luke 14:10

But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. 

In the presence

Honored, I am, truly, to be in the Presence of you are present in every place, Holy One.

But there are places of privilege where it is easier for our hearts to know you, knowing, too, a magnitude of Love and overwhelming nearness that makes the heart sing.

From old, human eyes turned to tree-crested hills and mountains, their heads crowned in cloud riding the wind, soaring above deep valleys where living streams tumble toward the sea.

The wonder of earth and sky, stars of night, the burnished west as setting sun announces day’s end—all this speaks a Name we can never truly know or say, a name we know only as Love who fashioned what our senses behold and yet lives in the Love awakened within.

Awakened, we wonder, who are we that we should know this? What are we that we should know the ecstasy of Love awakened? For in this Love we know you and all for which we are made.

We are graced by you who are Grace, dwelling in the Presence of Love beyond all naming. Known in earth and sky, deeper, still, we know in eyes that shine and hearts that glow with the fire of your divine heart.

Move up, ever higher, you say, for it is your desire that we always know the honor of living in your presence, every day.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, August 25, 2016

Luke 14:10

But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. 

No higher place

There is no higher place than to be in your presence. Even now I hear you speak within. It is your voice above all others I want to hear. Hearing comforts my heart and fills my morning emptiness with hope for every tomorrow.

Your love finds me here and wherever I am; wherever I go you are there. No distance separates us. Your love knows no boundaries.

As much as I long to be in your presence, your holy longing is greater than mine, above me and beyond all human imagination.

You seek the highest place and for you that is me, my heart, this life. You hunger to be found in me, eager for me to know you within my heart and relish your nearness. 

You ache to hear me, feel me, calling you to come and fill every place of longing, every corner of fear, every doubt and hesitation until we are one joy, hearts in holy communion where there are no longer two but one.

This is the highest place, to be one with you, you in me and me in you, sharing the unity of love that is your holy will for all that is … and my hope every waking morning.

But here in this place hope is already now, present and real, for I hear and know you, even as I know your voice and am lifted to the highest place.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Luke 14:7-10

When Jesus noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. 

The highest place

I have sat at the highest place, the place of friendship and love among people who are better than me, smarter, more talented, more gracious and certainly more exquisitely loving.

I did nothing to deserve their presence and affection. I was simply welcomed inside the circle of their warmth and joy, given a near place where I might truly know … and be known.

Little wonder, then, that today I mourn, as I think of Leon, my friend (I am proud to say) from seminary days so many years past. I called him the boy raised by wolves. He didn’t like that, but it captured his semi-socialized ways.

There was almost no filter between his mind and his mouth, but, oh, what a mind. His was the most wildly active, creative mind I ever knew and perhaps the most undisciplined. The valedictorian of Eveleth (MN) High school, he could hold forth on virtually any subject imaginable, connecting and combining insights from diverse disciplines, putting them together in enlightening, entertaining, unorthodox and often profane ways that would occur to no one else.

He was at the center of every conversation he ever entered, and each and every table where we shared coffee was warmer and more alive because he was there. You never walked away from him without knowing more, feeling more, laughing more and thinking more than when the coffee was poured in those white refectory cups. God, how we laughed.

All of us knew his flights of fancy, undisciplined ways and unfiltered tongue would not translate well to congregational life, so I was not surprised that he served as a pastor only a few years before heading off for other pursuits like teaching history and English.

His obituary says he had three sons. I wonder if they knew how extraordinary he was, or how much we loved him and loved being with him. 

I wonder if he ever told them about his friends that pushed around those tables after classes to talk and congratulate ourselves on how smart we thought we were.

I wonder if he knew how much I loved him even though I was, then, under the delusion that I was superior to him because I knew how to play the game and use my moderate skills to get a couple of steps ahead.

And I wonder how we ever lost touch. I would have liked to visit him and remember those days and laugh again at our professors and recall the drama of his wedding day. I would have liked to hug him once more before cancer stole him away from a world that is less bright and alive because he is gone.

I would have liked to said, “Thank you for welcoming me into the highest place. I am better for having sat there.”

Rest in peace, blessed one, I am sure our Lord has a place for the Pastor of Zen Lutheran Church.

Pr. David L. Miller