January 30, 2017

Matthew 5:13-16

“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled underfoot. “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

To be what we are

For nearly 20 years I was privileged to write for and edit a magazine that covered the church and its work around the world. My proudest and most fulfilling memories of those days involved reporting from places of acute human struggle and suffering.

I told stories of people our readers had no other way of knowing or caring about. And how they cared! Their generosity moved me again and again. I say with no sense of pride that there are people who lived, who received food and shelter from war, terror and starvation, because my colleagues and I told their stories and captured their struggles in photos that shook people from apathy into action.

The faces I met in those days have been appearing more often in my mind’s eye, as I fear our nation … and our churches … could become much less empathetic, generous and welcoming.

I see them: refugee mothers nursing children on cold mountainsides in Macedonia, war-orphaned children in make-shift orphanages in Africa, parents bearing everything they can carry on their backs fleeing those bent on killing and maiming them in the name of some deplorable political, racial or religious ideology.

And I see shallow graves where people hastily buried their beloved along the road … then hurried on to avoid the same fate.

The faces speak to me as did the photos I once took for magazine pages.

I also hear Jesus words: Be what you are. Be the soul I have made you to be. You are salt and light, so shine and season this world with the light of the love I have lit within you.

In this time when it is easy to let anxiety or anger rule our hearts, we can turn from the world, immersing ourselves in private concerns and personal comforts. Or we can be who we are. Salt and light.

Theologian Walter Brueggemann has often prodded the church to an alternative way marked by practices such as hospitality to those unlike us, generosity to those in need and forgiveness to break cycles of resentment and vengeance. Our world, our nation and our communities have seldom needed them more.

The choice is always ours. Today, the faces of the suffering, the hungry and the refugee … like Jesus … are calling us to be ourselves … and to know the joy of Christ’s love pouring through us.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, January 4, 2017

John 1:32-34

And John testified, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.’

The joy of oneness

The experience of the Holy Spirit is that of oneness with God. There is an internal sense of unity with the great and overpowering Love God is, evaporating sadness and flooding the soul with peace and joy that may even be accompanied by laughter.

John refers to Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. John says Jesus baptizes us, immerses us, with the Holy Spirit.

We are given the same Spirit that fills Jesus, and when we experience the Spirit we are graced to know the unity with the Loving Mystery in which he constantly lived.

Our experience of this exquisite blessing is not constant. It may last moments, minutes, hours or even days for some on rare occasions.

In these moments, we truly know Christ and are empowered to love as he loved, feeling the freedom of being completely one with the Love God is. We need nothing, for in this Love we have all we need, all we have ever wanted.

Sin, guilt, shame, fear are gone, replaced by joy. The Spirit, the Love God is, floods our spirit. 

Although we are distinct, there is no distance between God and out soul. In this awareness, guilt or shame over our wrongs and failures, small or great, disappear.

They are gone, and we are free to live, knowing the truth of the Love who is.

Moments of intense oneness fade amid the necessary routines of living. When they fade or distress comes remember the experience of the Spirit. It tells you who God is, who you who truly are and the joy God intends.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, January 2, 2017

 Luke 2:16-20

So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

Hearing and seeing

It sounds simple. They hear, they see, they ponder and they praise.

The result of their hearing and seeing is joy. So each day, I ... we … should seek to hear and see the Love God is being flesh, incarnate and touchable in our lives and world.

This is the way of joy, the way of knowing, pondering, too, what we hear and see, and sharing it with hearts who can receive it that our joy might be complete. Sharing multiplies our joy.

Separation and isolation are enemies of the joy we would have as God wills it for us. So, too, is a steady diet of the critical commentary, negativity and violence that streams through much of our media.

Turn away from the culture of complaint and the need to criticize or blame others. They carry burdens, too, and are likely doing the best they can.

Slow down. Be. You cannot do everything you think you should, so do what is best and deepest in your heart. This is the gift you are given to share. How ever small it seems, it is more important than you know.

Take time to see and celebrate beauty, to share it and give thanks for the small graces of the day and the moments that speak of the Love who always is.

Listen for the goodness in the words of others. Don't take yourself so seriously, and laugh as much as possible, especially at yourself.

Remember the goodness you have known, the kindness you have received and the love which has touched and filled your heart. And say ‘thank you’ a lot.

It is all a gift of the Love who is and plays and becomes incarnate in every act of goodness, every beauty and the curve of every genuine, loving smile.

Hear and see and the goodness of the Lord.

Pr. David L. Miller

Saturday, December 31, 2016

 John 1:16-18

From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known. 

Always new

Comedians have gotten much mileage telling jokes about how bad 2016 has been. For many the year cannot end too soon. We want something new so we can put the pain, struggle and ugliness of the year past year behind us.

But can we ever start again? Don’t we always carry the burdens of the past into the future?  Is the past even ‘the past’ since it always is with us?

It is, but so is the Love who can make us new every morning. Receiving and knowing the Love we are given makes us new even when the weight of the past clings.

Receiving is the way of freedom. As we receive grace upon grace, love from the Love who is, we move into a new year with hope and expectation.

No matter what the year brings the Love who is will be there, present to fill our hearts with the Joy and Love he is, even when we despair of what is happening in the world around us.

Life is a gift … received. So is living.

Each day we must receive and celebrate the Love who is, the Love who comes to us, the Love who lives in us.

And when the heart is empty or lost we must search for the places we are most open and able to receive the Love who is. Fullness of heart rests in knowing and receiving grace upon grace.

Maybe 2017 will drain our lives and drag us down as badly as the year now ending. Certainly, there will be days that seem too much for us.

But our hearts can be made new, even then, filled with joy and beauty, if only we receive the Love given to us by the Love who is ... always here.

Pr. David L. Miller                      

Friday, December 30, 2016

Luke 2:27-32

Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying, 
‘Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
   according to your word; 
for my eyes have seen your salvation, 
   which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, 
a light for revelation to the Gentiles
   and for glory to your people Israel.’

Always in hope

It is easy to see Simeon standing in the temple courts holding this child, his heart filled with the joy of gratitude.

For many years he has waited to see the face of salvation, the beauty of God. Now, the One longed for lies in his arms.

He cradles him, like an old man looking into the face of the last great grandchild he will see before departing this life.

He has lived enough. He has seen too much of earth’s sorrows and struggle, but now he sees the one thing he needs to be at peace. He sees the face of the Love who is.

He can rest. He can let go of this life, no longer clinging for a few more months or days. When his time comes he will release himself to be carried away gently as a leaf floating on a peaceful current.

For he knows he is carried in the arms of the Faithful Love who lies in his trembling hands. He has waited, always in hope. Now he holds the Love who holds him and all time.

All his life he has been watching, hoping to see even the smallest signs of the One Love who brings healing to earth’s sorrows.

As are we, hoping to see and know enough of the Love who is that we, too, might live always in hope. And our waiting is rewarded. For the Love for whom we wait is faithful.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, December 29, 2016

 Matthew 2:13-18

Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’ Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son.’

Our safe place

Joseph’s anxious eyes survey the road behind his little family to see if anyone is following. He is afraid of Herod’s soldiers as he keeps his family moving toward a safe place. The child who is born to save a world needs to be saved from murderous hands so that one day we might see and know what is in his heart.

Herod, too, is afraid. He fears losing his power and is willing to kill infants on the odd chance that one of them might one day challenge his reign.

Joseph will find a safe place for the child and his mother. But Herod will kills dozens of children looking for him. Their mothers will weep the bitterest tears a heart can know, all because of Herod’s fear.

Fear kills. It kills the heart of our humanity before it destroys others.

But this child, Jesus, comes to save us from the fear that kills with the Love he is. Love drives out fear. The child Joseph saves is the face of the Eternal Love who conquers death and is the refuge of those grieving mothers.

He is our safe place, the Love who is always waiting to receive us no matter where we go or how far we wander. He is the Love who goes before us and is waiting for us at the end of every journey.

He is the Love and the Joy awakened in our hearts every time a single ounce of his love touches us.

‘Come to me,’ he says, with each new sunrise. ‘I am your refuge, the place fear disappears.’

Pr. David L. Miller

December 28, 2016

 John 1:16-18

From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known. 

Seeing

We are physical beings who express our loves and lives through outward signs and symbols that speak the truth within us.

Through even the smallest signs and symbols, we are touched by the heart of another and receive the love and blessing that fill us with joy … or which simply quiet our hearts in simple knowing.

What we see fills us with the reality of what cannot be seen. Theologians call it kataphatic, physical signs from the created order bear God’s own being into our own so that we may know without seeing.

We see Jesus, an infant in Mary’s arms. He heals and blesses. He feeds a multitude. He receives the wounded hearts of those who crave a welcoming embrace from a Love beyond them.

He breaks bread and gives it to friends, saying, ‘This is my body, my life, my heart … the very heart of God.’

A sign, a symbol that cuts straight to our hearts bearing the Love from whom all creation flows.

We see … and know we are enveloped in a Love we will never understand. All we can do is say … ‘thank you,’ and find signs and symbols to say what can never truly be said. 

Pr. David L. Miller

December 27, 2016

 John 1:12-13

But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

Children of God

Children of God are known by the Love who lives in them, the Love who moves them beyond themselves so that they shine with great beauty, the Great Beauty God is.

Buses and cars left refugee camps near Mosul, Iraq, Christmas Day. They traveled to a bombed out town and a desecrated church surrounded by crumbling concrete and razor wire.

Outside, the cross had been broken down by ISIS. Inside, statues had been shot up and defaced, the head of one blasted off.

Guards with automatic weapons secured the door as people entered, lit candles and made it a holy space again. They sang ancient chants generations have sung there for more than 1000 years.

In the back, several U.S. service men lit candles and celebrated Christmas, listening to hymns of which they likely didn’t understand a single word. But it didn’t matter.

Their hearts were one with every syllable of those songs and the souls who sang them.

Unquenchable hope carried all of them beyond their fears to come hold candles against the darkness and know, in themselves, the Light no darkness can extinguish.

They are children of God. The flame of hope burns in their depths, awakened by the Love who becomes flesh in Christ … and in them.

I watched them, and Christmas came to my heart. Once more. I knew: These are my brothers and my sisters. We are made truly one by the Love who burns in us, living always … in hope.

Thank you.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, December 26, 2016

 John 1:14

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 

The day after

The Eternal Word, the heart and mind, will and the passion of God is summed up in a single face, the child of Bethlehem who shines with the Love who lived before time began.

This child, the unity of divine heart and human flesh, is the mystery of our lives. It is God’s way to become flesh, not just in a single child whose name is Jesus but in all creation.

The Word becomes flesh and speaks in every beauty, in every act of grace, in every beat of every heart. Day and night, sunrise and sunset in burnished glory all speak the name of God.

It is God’s way to take shape and substance, bringing out the endless possibilities of life from the Life God is.

But it is only in love that we truly know God and ourselves. For our lives, too, are the expression of the Love who gives birth to the world, the Love who shines in the eyes of every truest love.

Our true self is the Love God is, the Love shining from a Bethlehem manger. Little wonder that the glisten of love in another’s eyes, shining on us, fills us with life and hope.

When we truly know Love our truest self breaks every bond that holds us back and fills us to overflowing so that Eternal Love, the Great Beauty we are, becomes flesh, shining with grace and truth, filling us with the joy of Christmas morning. Once more.

Thank you.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Luke 2:15-16

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’ So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.

With the shepherds

I wonder what the shepherds felt when they found Mary and Joseph and the child. I always imagine them holding the baby, rough hands, yes, but they knew what it was to care for the mother sheep and their lambs in the night watches when birth came.

They were not mere brutes with no feeling for life. They knew how to cradle and protect fragile, newborns. So I wonder what was in them as they held him and looked into his face, angel song still echoing in their heads.

Did they smile as we do when we peer into a bassinet at an infant wrapped in blankets?  Did they shake their heads, wondering how a child should be born out where the cattle are kept?

Did they know they held the Eternity who holds them? I suppose not, but we know. I know.

Moments come when Eternity appears. Time stops. The wonder of Love fills the heart with a joy we never imagined possible.

We are inside an all-surpassing Love, a Love that envelops … everything, a Love in which we live and move and have our being.

In these moments, it is impossible to want anything, for we have everything, and everything is one, one Love encompassing all and filling the soul. All exists in Love, and Love fills the inner being, stilling every anxiety with peace and joy.

This Love is Eternity, and Eternity is this Love, the Love who always was and will be, appearing through the veil of time, touching and healing, chasing out every sadness, awaking smiles of awareness that we are one with the Love that is everywhere present in every moment.

Once you know it, you want to feel it always, to be constantly aware of the Love who holds you and transforms you into its likeness. Such knowing is life.

Whether they could name it or not, I think the shepherds knew Eternity in time.

And we? We return to Christmas, again, imagining them enter open-mouthed in wonder at the sight of mother and child, hoping once again that the miracle will happen in us.


Pr. David L. Miller

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