Let go

Is not this the fast that I choose:

   to loose the bonds of injustice,
   to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
   and to break every yoke? 
⁷ Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
   and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
   and not to hide yourself from your own kin? 
⁸ Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
   and your healing shall spring up quickly (Isaiah 58:6-8).

Let go

What are you giving up for Lent?

This is a common question. Lent is a season of spiritual discipline and renewal. For centuries, it has been associated with fasting, giving something up during the season as a sign of repentance and turning back to God.

We normally think of fasting as refraining from eating or drinking. It might mean giving up coffee and chocolate (God forbid) or alcohol or fatty foods or TV or Facebook or cell phones ... or our distracting, over packed schedules. These are all things we likely need to cut down on anyway.

Giving up something for Lent doesn’t make us more pure, nor does it make God like us better. God already delights in us! Jesus wants you as his partner in his life-giving mission in the world.

But fasting is still a good spiritual practice, and the prophet Isaiah tells us what we really need to let go if we are to know God’s light and love shining on us ... and in us, bringing the joy of God’s presence to our hearts and lives.

So let go. Let go of the things you cling to make you feel safe and secure and comfortable. Let go of the things that make you forget your need of God.

Let go ... of your bread and wealth to share with the poor.

Let go ... of luxuries that the needy might be clothed.

Let go ... of the politics of personal advantage and seek what is good for others.

Let go ... of your blindness and see the injustice suffered by the homeless, the refugee, the immigrant and those denied privileges you take for granted.

Let go ... of evil speech and eager judgment of others. The people who trouble you ... you don’t know what battles they are fighting within.

Let go ... of the compulsion to blame others.

Let go ... of satisfaction with the way the world is. Christ asks you to long and labor for a better world.

Let go of everything that is not mercy ... and anything that doesn’t do God’s justice.

Lent is about letting go the attitudes and commitments, opinions and behaviors that separate our hearts from knowing God’s great love ... that it might flow from our depths as a fountain of life for others.

Pr. David L. Miller

With open hands

For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward. (Mark 9:41)

With open hands

Open your hands and lift the cup of your soul to receive.

The battle for your soul is won not by doing but by receiving the water of life that is the Presence of the Love who longs to fill you to overflowing.

We come into the world, creatures of the Love who is the Source of all things, that we might be a little epiphany, expressions of Love’s joy in time and space. We become who we truly are not by competing, winning, being stronger, better, smarter, richer or more successful than others … but by receiving.

Receiving love; that is. We receive the Love who made us in every act of reception, every time we hold up the cup of our soul in recognition that we need to be filled with the water of Love’s gracious presence.

It is paradoxical, but true, that winning is often losing. Being successful or stronger, seeming to ‘have it all together’ is invitation to the illusion that you can live and give, pour yourself out, be the one who is strong and calm, dependable and responsible … without your cup running dry.

Do this long enough … and you lose your soul. For your soul is the Love of the One who made you.

We each need to return to our Source with open hands and a humble heart, lifting high our cup and saying, “Lord fill me again. Only then will I have the living water to bless another … who is as thirsty as I.”

And we need to be open to those the Holy One sends, eager and humble to receive even from those you did not expect to come bearing water of life to your parched heart.

Blessed are those who feel their emptiness. They shall be filled. Blessed are those who share the waters of life. They will know the joy of the Lord.

Pr. David L. Miller

Look first

Jesus said to him, ‘If you are able!—All things can be done for the one who believes.’ Immediately the father of the child cried out, ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’ (Mark 9:23-24)

Look first

Do not believe in your own faith, nor in the power of prayer. This leads only to despair, for we know our weakness and vacillation.

One hour our faith is firm and secure, only to dissolve when anxious uncertainties burst our bubble and drain our hearts hollow, leaving us empty of the resolve we thought unshakable moments before.

So we must not trust ourselves or in the strength of our belief. As long as we are looking at ourselves our joy and strength is in peril. And the more attention we pay to the weakness or strength of our faith … the worse off we are.

We are looking the wrong way, at the wrong person.

Turn from yourself and see Jesus. Look at the One who can do all things, whose divine love and will never wavers. Never.

Look at him and trust the Love who abides and speaks in him. This Love is the power of Life itself, eternal life being poured through him into the world … and into our lives each time we turn from any imagined strength of ours to see him.

His face, his love, his presence stills our anxiety and dispels thoughts and worries about whether we are weak or strong in faith. It doesn’t matter if we are weak. He isn’t.

“Help my unbelief” is not a good prayer. It is looking in the wrong direction. In every moment, kind or hard, look first at him. You’ll see everything you need.

Pr. David L. Miller

This joy is enough

He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts. (Mark 6:7-8)

This joy is enough

Jesus does not send us into mission alone. We walk together with those whose hearts are touched by the Love we know in him. We can look at them and see in their eyes that they know what we know, the freedom only immeasurable divine love can give.

The joyous company of those who know … and in knowing want to know more and more of this inexpressible grace … yes, this is enough to carry us through our lives. It binds us as one, lifting us when we are burdened and joining us heart-to-heart in our joys and in all the years may bring.

The authority Jesus gives us is the power of divine love to cast out demons of sadness and despair, guilt and shame, hatred and bitterness.

This Love is in us. It lives in our hearts and hands. It shines in our eyes and faces as we live and bless. 

It frees us to live beyond the fears of what comes next and what shall we do and will I be accepted and will we have enough.

For we have enough. All those questions have been answered.

We have the unimaginable wonder of the One who is Love living in us, and this always enough.

Pr. David L. Miller

Eternal moments

He took her by the hand and said to her, ‘Talitha cum,’ which means, ‘Little girl, get up!’ (Mark 5:41)

Eternal moments  

Moments bear eternity. A single second can contain the fullness of heaven’s glory. Look and see.

See Jesus’ eyes as he lifts a dying girl by her hand and gives back to her parents. The passion of Eternity, the fullness of the divine heart is compressed into a single moment, revealing everything you need to know about your life … and about who holds you and everything else, for that matter.

It’s all there as he speaks and lifts her. Eternity fills a single moment in which we see the full beauty of the divine heart and know: There is nothing but love in the heart of God for this world … and for each of us.

God does not love us in spite of who we are. There is nothing begrudging in the heart of God.

The Loving Mystery is overflowing generosity, a living fountain that never runs dry, ever flowing over, onto and into us, to make us whole, to make us truly human, filled with love and gratitude, joy and hope.

This is what it means to be truly alive and well, a wholeness that comes as a gift as we know the Love in Jesus’ eyes as our inner experience and deepest truth.

Warmth of healing flows through us as we watch Jesus’ eyes and listen to his voice as he lifts the girl and restores her to the arms of her grieving parents.

All of Eternity is there … in one brief moment. Look and see. It will heal you.

Pr. David L Miller

Listen

And he said to them, ‘Pay attention to what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get …. (Mark 4:24)

Listen

“Listen. You will hear my voice. Just listen. I speak in the silent awareness of what gives life.”

Wake from sleep and notice your joy, your excitement, the exhilaration that fills you when you give yourself to something or someone for the sheer joy of sharing what is in you.

You are absorbed, totally given to what you are doing, not looking for an external reward of money or praise. Your reward is intrinsic. It arises from within as what you are doing and saying aligns with your soul, that is … with the way the Divine Mystery continues to shape you.

You are a word of God, a particular word through whom the Holy One speaks, ever seeking to say something specific … uniquely expressed through the contours of your life and history.

Listen closely to your soul, to the love and joy that arises from your depth. You will hear and know … who you are and the particular shape the Divine Majesty is pleased to take in you. It is revealed in the joy of doing and speaking and giving yourself as a gift.

Listening to your joy, you will know the Loving Mystery who longs to bless the world … and bless you … through what the Holy One has placed in your soul.

Listen … more and more. You will know the Love who has shaped your soul. You will know yourself as a word this Loving Mystery speaks from eternity into time. You will hear and know what the Divine Majesty hungers to say through your surprising and wondrous life.

You will know the Love your heart most longs to know, the Love who longs to live through you.

Pr. David L. Miller

Seeds of love

Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.’ (Mark 4:8)

Seeds of love

It is love that I see in Jesus' eyes as he gazes across fields where wheat and wild grass grow, stems swaying in summer breeze.

His eyes embrace the hills as they rise from water’s edge, and he smiles. In that slight smile, I see and know his desire for me … and for every soul.

He wants seeds of love to grow in the soil of our souls that we might know and become the Love he is.

The Holy One has been sowing seeds of love in the world since Earth was new. Every moment of our lives sows seeds of divine life into our hearts.

Every day is a gift. Every sunrise an opportunity to open our hearts in gratitude for the privilege of being, for the startling truth that we are alive, for the ecstasy of touching the hand or cheek of someone we love, for the needs of others that call us beyond ourselves, for the crystal beauty of sunlight glistening on frozen snow.

Even our troubles and sorrows sow seeds, stripping way our defenses and opening our hearts (if we are willing) to know, again, that what most matters in the ecstatic simplicity of loving and being loved. Everything else pales.

Some seeds are snatched away like dreams at the moment of waking. Others find little root as we are too busy with living to notice … or to make space for them to grow in us.

I’ll not worry about the millions of seeds that found no place to grow in my life. I am too grateful for the seeds of love that somehow managed to take root and grow a harvest of divine love in me … and in so many millions of others. 

This is my greatest joy. It makes me smile … that same smile I see on Jesus’ face.

Pr. David L. Miller

Being with

And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.’ (Mark 3:22)

Being with

The best time of my day is when I am with you, Jesus.

I breathe deeply and read a few verses from a story where you teach or heal, bless or free a human soul from the grip of evil. I watch you, and my soul usually grows quiet, with few thoughts, if any, beyond the awareness of you.

Everything else disappears. There is only you, and this enough for me. Being with you drives out every anxiety and quiets the soul.

I don’t know how you cast out the evils and obsessions that torture our hearts and hold us in bondage. I know only that your presence is freedom, and that you are always there, waiting for me to come and spend time with you.

You are a living Presence, ever near, who always has a place for me where I can name whatever is in me without shame.

In your presence, the weight of the day, worries about the future and everything that is not love … evaporates. All that remains is an exquisite, rhapsodic awareness of Love that cleanses and frees the soul to know and be the Love who made it.

It is true that you are always with me. This is your promise, and in some obscure way I sense it is real.

But true knowing, awareness that frees the heart, happens most when I set aside time to be with you, moments of breathing, praying, meditating and watching you.

These are the best moments of the day, for I am with you.

Pr. David L. Miller

Knowing peace

He also said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. (Mark 4:26-27)

Knowing peace

For one year I would like nothing more than to live at peace with who I am, where I am, with the work I do, patiently accepting whatever comes to me without complaint.

One year. I’m sure I cannot keep this going, but today, amid the cold and snow, the door to such a life appears in the assurance of the sower who knows … and trusts … a life-giving power he does not understand.

Assurance marks his movements. He does not worry or fret that seeds scattered will not grow. His quiet heart dwells in the land of confident assurance in the power of Life to give life.

He waits and watches, eager for the harvest when the time is right, but there is no hurry. He knows it will come because he knows God.

God in great love and hidden mystery works in all things and every circumstance to bring something unknown, something new to sprout and grow.

Knowing this, he trusts, not knowing what will come, only that it will bear the beauty and grace of the One who sows the seed of Life in every moment and circumstance.

Set-backs and disappointments will come. Hurtful words and actions will wound the heart. Best laid plans will not always work out. There is no escaping struggle in this broken and sin-scarred world. 

Our anger and frustration over all of this are of no help. Nor is the desire to escape the everyday irritations common to all people.

Peace is not found in escape, but in knowing the One the sower knows.

Know ... and be at peace.

Pr. David L. Miller

Walk with him

One Sabbath he 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?’ (Mark 2:23-24)

Walk with him

Jesus is our Sabbath. He invites us to walk with him through fields where he freely plucks heads of grain and glories in the light of day.

He does not rush. No anxiety moves him, no self-conscious worries about the objections of others.

Leisure marks his movements, as if he has all the time in the world to savor the warmth of day, the goodness of the growing earth, the fullness of all it produces. His heart smiles and gives silent glory to the Creator Source whose love is present in all that surrounds him in this moment.

He invites us to walk beside him and live this way. To breathe. To know. To savor every ounce of goodness. To see the earth as a holy gift, a sacrament of divine grace, a gift from the Holy One he knows as loving Father.

It is all for you. All that is, everything is given … that you may know … and that in knowing you may be moved to praise, reverence and serve the One who is Abundant Love, this Father, this Mystery Jesus knows as he walks the fields and feels the gift of it all.

Walk with him today, though the cold is bitter on this January morning. See yourself, feel yourself there … with him.

Being with him is Sabbath, rest for the mind, peace for the soul, warmth winter winds cannot chill.

Pr. David L. Miller

Yet to be

When the steward tasted the water that had become wine … the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.’  (John 2:9-10)

Yet to be

The best is yet to be. Startled joy fills our faces when we know this. It is a surprise that runs contrary to common thought.

We fear losing what we have as the decades of life roll by, unable to imagine that anything in the future could we as good as what we know.

I suppose those who have suffered greatly in earlier stages of life are eager to release their past, hoping, if they can still hope, that something better lies ahead.

But as years go by our strength, health, family, relationships or our income diminish in one way or another, and we hold tight to what we have as long as we can.

Yet, here we meet an alternative way of being and living, looking ahead with hope—because there is good wine that can inebriate us with startled gratitude for the gracious goodness of living and loving.

Good wine awaits. The best is yet to be.

Some days it is hard to think this and harder still to write it, for it seem glib, Pollyannaish, until you know the bridegroom, Christ, who has married this earth. He shares the fullness of all he is that we may taste and see Love’s pure delight.

He is the good wine, the best wine, and there is always more. The best awaits, eager to surprise us with a joy that the years will never dim.

Pr. David L. Miller

Heaven opens

Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened … . (Luke 3:21)

Reflection

This is the way it is. In prayer, real prayer, in opened-hearted, radical honesty, heaven opens, and we enter the Holy Presence where nothing else matters but being with you, Holy One.

Such is your eternal invitation: “Come, be with me. There is no need for you to be … or to feel alone. There is a place here beside me.”

Jesus sits on bank of the stream where he’d been baptized and prays, his heart open to the Eternal Presence which fills him, a holy knowing in the depth of soul.

The empty place beside him beckons. This is our space, the place of belonging and knowing the Everlasting Love who lights him from within.

It is the place of prayer, where nothing is out of bounds, where everything can be said and all that we are is welcome. Anger, feelings of failure, the joys for which we hope and the fulfillments that elude, pain and confusion about who we are and what we really need—everything.

Prayer may be peaceful as a gentle stream or a bitter struggle to find something to hold onto in the tempest of living lest we drown in a sea of restless emotion.

So come, bring whatever you are and everything that is in you to Christ who bids you to sit in that empty place beside him.

Release everything. Heaven will open, and you soon will rest in the Love who always has a place … for you.

Pr. David L. Miller

It's enough

Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’ (Luke 3:21-22)

Reflection

Me, too. I am well pleased, blessed to know that Jesus stands in the water with all the others who came to John the Baptist.

For this means he stands with me, with all that I am and all that I want to be but am not, with my hopes and fears, with dreams that can never be and wounds that will never quite heal in this life.

He is there … beside me, and this enough for me. It is enough to know this great and unsurpassable love who chooses to stand should-to-shoulder with me, where I am, with all that is in me.

It frees the heart and releases tears of joy that praise God in ways no words ever can.

The baptism of Jesus by John was a problem for early Christians. Did this mean John was greater than Jesus? Did it mean he needed to repent of his sins like those who came out to be baptized?

No, it meant Jesus stands with all those who hope for a better world where all things are bound together in love, peace and justice, where the great love of God is at the center of everything.

Jesus chooses to be there, standing in the water, with us, sharing our hurts and hopes … and the love that heals.

It is enough.

Pr. David L. Miller

Starlight

When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. (Matthew 2:11-12)

Reflection

There is a stain glass window across the sanctuary from where I sit. I look at it nearly every Sunday, especially this time of year after Christmas.

The window is a modern depiction of two abstract figures, Mary and Joseph, kneeling beside a manger. The tiny hands of a child appear barely over the brown manger’s edge.

A great starburst explodes in the sky above them, and a pronounced angle of light descends directly to the child in the manger. The low angle of the winter sun illumines colors of glistening white and gold through the window and sets the star ablaze.

Everything I need to know … about Jesus and about the Light that illumines all history and every heart … is captured for me in this image.

The window speaks to my heart of a Light who has shined in all history, a Light of life and creation, of mercy and care, of everything that is good and right and beautiful in the world.

It tells me this Light takes a human face that I may see and touch, imagine and know the Love who is the Source of my life and of all that lives in this and every universe.

I look and wait for the light to illumine that star, and I smile every time I see it, more and more as the years pass. It awakens the joy of knowing the Light of Love God is, and opens the eyes of my heart to the Light who shines in every time and place.

Like the Magi, watch for starlight, and joyfully give yourself to the love the Light awakens.

Pr. David L. Miller

Saturday, January 5, 2019

John 1:38-39

When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day.

Each day

A day is not enough, not nearly. We need and want to be with him every day. This, exactly, is Jesus’ invitation, Come and see, not once or twice but each day.

Come and be with me, Jesus says. Set aside silence to give me your heart, whatever is there. I want you to be with me that you may see and know, feel and be transformed into that which I am, a living expression of the Everlasting Love who has no beginning and who is the end to whom all things go.

Knowing this Love every day we truly feel like and become the human beings we are. We are made by and for this Love who is beyond all names.

Resolutions for the new year quickly fail amid the routine demands of living, but make this one central to your year:

Each day resolve to spend time alone listening to your heart and offering what is there to God. Speak to Jesus as one friend to another and rest in the presence of the Love who wants you.

Each day make a conscious effort to bless someone through a touch, kind words or actions. Each time you do this, you place yourself in the flow of God, the current of Love that springs from the depth of the divine heart and flows through all creation.

Each day this year, come and see the Loving Mystery who hungers for you. At year’s end, you will be more alive and more yourself than you have ever been.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, January 3, 2018

Luke 2:49

‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’

The air we breathe

The house of the Father is anywhere we can truly be with God.

God doesn’t dwell in a house made by human hands, but in the universe fashioned by Eternal Love. God is the Love who is everywhere … seeking to be known in everything.

We, on the other hand, are always embodied somewhere … in this place or that. And some places distract us from what is most essential to the joy we desire to know.

But there are places where our hearts attune more easily to see and know, to commune and enter relationship with the Loving One who is everywhere at once.

So, it is important to know what the Father’s house is … for you. Where are the places you can truly be with the Loving Mystery and hear the voice of the One who so desperately wants to be heart-to-heart with you?

We need ways and places to be silent and listen to our soul. The Father’s house is a quiet place where the noise of the world fades and doesn’t intrude.

But it may also be the local pub, a living room, time with good friends, walking a busy street where love fills you.

The Father’s house appears anywhere human hearts share what’s in them, knowing it is okay to be wrong and that there is no special prize for being right. All that matters is knowing … love, for every love breathes the Love God is.

For each of us, the Father’s house is any place and every place where Love is the air we breathe.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, December 31, 2018

Luke 2:48-49

When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, ‘Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.’ He said to them, ‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’ 

Knowing and knowing

Joy appears as I imagine the boy, Jesus, sharing and questioning among great teachers in his Father’s house, the temple. It is the joy of those who know God and yet know there is so much more that they do not know.

The Holy One is a great Loving Mystery. Blessed by God’s presence, we experience this Love flowing in, through and among us. It fills the heart, but we are not fully satisfied or perhaps only for brief moments.

For Love awakens the awareness that there is so much more that we do not know, more Love, more presence, more hope, more joy, more blessing to know and share. God is always more than we think or imagine.

Every word of knowledge, every experience of the Loving Presence in and among us opens the heart and excites hunger for more of the inexhaustible Love God is.

A new year is but hours away. Be grateful for all the knowing the years have given. Let it fill you with an ecstatic hope for more of the Love you know. The inexpressible wonder of our loving God will be present in every moment of the year to come.

It will be an adventure. Every year is an adventure, if you open your heart. Love always comes to teach you … more.

Pr. David L. Miller