Praying the mystery

Thursday, February 2, 2012

2012-02-02T07:42:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

Mark 1:29-31

And at once on leaving the synagogue, he went with James and John straight to the house of Simon and Andrew. Now Simon's mother-in-law was in bed and feverish, and at once they told him about her. He went in to her, took her by the hand and helped her up. And the fever left her and she began to serve them.

Reflection

A portrait of my desire … and of the church appears here. The woman rises. We don’t even know her name, but she is us, or at least me.

I feel a gentle smile as she rises from her mat and goes about her business, quietly serving with unhurried grace. There is no trace of anxiety or concern for approval in her. I sense no concern in her for how she is perceived or with whether anyone notices what she is doing.

But she is notices. She is aware, quietly mindful of her quiet motions as she goes about her hospitality for the needs of her visitors. Gentle joy lights her face as she attends to them.

She is given to that which has been given her to do and to be. She lives what she is. In this simplicity, there is the joy of being that manifestation of grace that God fashioned her to be.

Her soul is quiet, at peace, having known the Spirit of Love lifting her into herself, She lives this self not worrying whether it is enough just to be who she is, giving what she has been given to give.

Only Love, which is to say only the Divine Spirit can do this in a human heart.

This points the way for me and for all.

Her gentle grace draws me. The peace she exudes, her quiet givnen-ness to the grace in her is my desire.

She has no thought of success or failure, of ‘making it’ or of proving herself to some judge, and so many judges hold sway over our souls. There are judges from our past or present, judges outside of us and those terrible judges that inhabit our minds.

On our very best days, we are like the woman, free from the judges and the anxieties they provoke. Then we grow weary or troubles come, and the judges take over our minds. I begin to live as if it is not enough just to be and to give what God has put in my soul.

This is no way to live, of course. It is not real life at all.

And it’s so much less than the quiet, gentle light I see on the woman’s face as she serves, Jesus having lifted her into life. She is a portrait of The Spirit of Life seeks to awaken in human hearts, mine and yours.

And that is what the church is: a communion of hearts having been lifted by the Divine Spirit of Love in Jesus, sent to live out the mystery and goodness of what is in them.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

2012-01-31T07:10:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

Mark 1:29-31

And at once on leaving the synagogue, he went with James and John straight to the house of Simon and Andrew. Now Simon's mother-in-law was in bed and feverish, and at once they told him about her. He went in to her, took her by the hand and helped her up. And the fever left her and she began to serve them.

Reflection

Healing comes we know that what is in Jesus is also in us.

It comes when the divine Spirit that moves Jesus’ compassion and power awakens the divine Spirit within us.

Healing is this awakening.

The divine Spirit of love and power resides in us. Its seeds are planted in our creation. It is breathed into us by virtue of our humanity. In the beginning, God breathed life into creation, our holy texts tell us.

This means every human soul is alive with the Spirit, the breath of God, the One who is love and power, mercy and compassion, whose will is life for all that is.

Such is the Spirit that makes us alive, but most often it is buried or caged within our fears and prejudices that it no longer flows freely through our bodies and souls, animating our actions and feelings.

Momentary emotional states--fear, threat, stress and the pains of woundedness--hide the essential truth of our existence from awareness. We live believing these fleeting feeling states are our reality, our truth--that this is who we are.

Confusion results: First, I am my fear, then my joy. I am my victory and then my defeat, my success and then my sadness and stress.

Hidden beneath this illusion is my reality. I am a manifestation of the life and love of God. My breath is the breath of the Immortal and Immeasurable One. This always remains, hidden deep in our interiority, waiting its awakening.

Awakening comes in the presence of One who is filled and animated by the Divine Spirit. This is not strange or even unusual. We have felt it. We come alive and are freed to give ourselves to the tasks of our lives (like Simon’s mother-in-law) when we are in the presence of someone or something in whom we feel the Divine Spirit of love and freedom.

The Divine Spirit enlivens us when we are in the presence of the Presence.

Some blessed souls manifest the Presence more fully and beautifully, awakening life in others. They are graces, sacraments of God’s life stirring us to the life and joy God intends.

The Spirit of the Loving Wonder comes to fullest human expression in our brother Jesus. This is what makes him Son of God, Messiah and Savior. When we come into his presence--or his presence comes to us--his Spirit awakens the Spirit within us.

Then it is: the fever of life leaves us, and we come alive.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, January 27, 2012

2012-01-27T07:56:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

Mark 1:23-27

And at once in their synagogue there was a man with an unclean spirit, and he shouted, 'What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are: the Holy One of God.' But Jesus rebuked it saying, 'Be quiet! Come out of him!' And the unclean spirit threw the man into convulsions and with a loud cry went out of him. The people were so astonished that they started asking one another what it all meant, saying, 'Here is a teaching that is new, and with authority behind it: he gives orders even to unclean spirits and they obey him.'

Reflection

Astonishment holds no interest for me. I don’t care about it. I don’t wonder in amazement that Jesus did startling things. Nor do I spend a moment trying to understand how he acted with such power or even to believe that he did.

The same is true of rationalizations about what was really happening. Was it demon or some form of mental illness or maybe epilepsy that seized this poor fellow?

None of this captures my interest. The questions bore me and waste the time of any who care to take them on.

What matters to me is what happened to the man. What did Jesus do for him?

This answer is not hard to find … or to want for yourself.

He freed him to live.

He took away the bondage that kept his heart and mind--not to mention his body--from running free as the wind, from sucking up each daily breath with gratitude and joy. He released him from the angry rants that drove all human communion and consolation far away.

He restored him to the ordinary graces of human community where we live and love, struggle and fear, sin and forgive, laugh and cry, suffer and die.

With an angry voice, he drove away the hindrance that kept human souls from throwing their arms around him to receive as a brother, a friend, a soul worth knowing loving.

He ripped away the barrier to loving acceptance and grace, so that he might know the simple sacramental joy of being human and sharing the love that God is.

Jesus did for him the same thing he hungers to do for us.

So speak to our bondage, Jesus. Drive off the demons of our fears and wounds, the burdens of our failures and sins and restore a community of love among us that we might truly live.

For by experience I know … this is what you do and who you are.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, January 26, 2012

2012-01-24T08:18:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

Mark 1:21-22

They went as far as Capernaum, and at once on the Sabbath he went into the synagogue and began to teach. And his teaching made a deep impression on them because, unlike the scribes, he taught them with authority.

Reflection

Sometimes you just know, and knowing … you speak with simplicity and power. Words ring true, with truth arising not from books or reading but from the depth of a soul that feels life and pain, hope and the Love who is God.

Such was your soul, Jesus. All that is human--all that is in us--was felt and treasured, cherished and held at the depth of your heart, where your human heart and the heart of the Divine Mystery met.

You spoke of what you knew, not what you learned; of what you felt, not what others thought you should say. There was no need for others to authenticate your words or meaning, for they flowed from that point where your soul and the soul of God were one.

I know that point. I have been there; most of us have at one time or another. And I know when I feel someone is speaking truth that appears when all artificiality is stripped away, and we say what we are, what we truly see and know.

But only love, immortal and immeasurable love allows us entry into such depth of soul where truth is known and true authority is found. Only when we can look at our lives and hearts, our failures and fears with love … and not denial or the desire to escape … do we arrive at the place where truth … where God is found.

You lived in that place, Jesus. Embracing the realities of your life and ours, welcoming the lives of needy, craving human souls into the love you knew within, you brought human experience and the experience of God together--and you spoke what you felt and knew … so that we might know what you know, and speak with the authority found only in loving.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, January 19, 2012

2012-01-19T07:56:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

Mark 1:14-18

After John had been arrested, Jesus went into Galilee. There he proclaimed the gospel from God saying, 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent, and believe the gospel.' As he was walking along by the Lake of Galilee he saw Simon and Simon's brother Andrew casting a net in the lake -- for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, 'Come after me and I will make you into fishers of people.' And immediately they left their boats and followed him.

Reflection

I think it was your smile. That was why they came … immediately.

These words say nothing about your mood, Jesus. They offer no descriptions of the look on your face as you spoke. But I see you, and I see a smile.

Joy flashes through you as you invite these men to follow you into a new way of seeing and being, into the reality you hunger to reveal--the rule of the God who loves all that is made … and me.

I can’t know why these first followers dropped what they were doing to follow you. But I feel your joy. I see your joy, a smile. Physical pleasure passes through you as you invite your first followers to come and see what you are all about.

I know a gentle joy as your words roll around in my head, and I imagine the scene by the lake. It is just before dawn. A new day is about to break. You walk by, asking these common souls to follow along and to see it, to have their minds and hearts awakened to a radiant vision of God’s loving desire for every living thing.

You invite them to open their eyes to see and trust that this reality is near. It will change them. No longer will they look at world as a place of struggle for daily bread, a veil of contradictions and disappointments in which you are on your own, where the best you can do is to maximize your pleasures.

This is not life, not living. Living is to see the Incomprehensible One pouring the divine soul into the narrowness of earth, into the confines of human hearts, into ordinary and otherwise forgettable moments. The Loving Mystery who is God is near, coming to fill all that is with all that he is.

Repent of your tarnished and cramped vision of life and trust that it is true. Come, follow and see. Your mind will expand; your heart will grow a few new rooms where hope and love can breathe. You will find the reason you are alive.

Little wonder you smiled Jesus. You knew, you saw, you felt the kingdom of God’s rule. It filled you. So invited them to come, see and learn to live.

I have no idea what those fishermen saw in the moment you called them. But I see and feel your joy, your smile, and I know what draws me and why I arrive at Sunday worship with joy.

I want to know what is behind your smile. I want to see what you saw and feel what you felt as you invited them to follow. I want a piece of the joy that flashes through you as you invite them to come along for the ride. I want a piece of this for myself, and I know … you are only too glad to share it.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

2012-01-10T08:31:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

From a sermon by St. Leo the Great (pope, 391/400-461)

The Lord has made known his salvation; in the sight of the nations he has revealed his justice. This came to be fulfilled, as we know, from the time when the star beckoned the three wise men out of their distant country and led them to recognize and adore the King of heaven and earth. The obedience of the star calls us to imitate its humble service: to be servants, as best we can, of the grace that invites all men to serve Christ.

Reflection

It is easy to imagine the wise men, three … or however many there may have been, trekking across dry, rugged landscape on their camels. The figures are well known from children’s books and engraved figures that sit on our tables or beside the Christmas tree.

They are symbols, surely, of the human heart’s hunger for home, for the soul’s desire to taste and see something transcendent. The wise men travel in search of something that awakens the heart. They want, they need to feel the illumination of being in touch with life’s center.

They journey in search of the center of their hearts, hoping to see and touch something that awakens greatest depth of warmth and love, something that will penetrate that untouchable central point in their souls so they might feel truly alive and well, fully whole and loved.

They go step by step, slowly, not jumping quickly to end. Each little step on the rocky road of the journey must be seen and considered, lived, loved and attended to with such care as they have.

Each one must be lived and not avoided. And they never know which step will be the one that brings them to their journey’s goal, to the manager, where the heart finds it has arrived home at the feet of the Love that called them on this journey in the first place.

Neither do we. So we, when wise like they, attend to each step, hoping the next step or three will bring us again to our goal, to the manager, where the heart’s need and the heart of God meet.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, December 29, 2011

2011-12-29T11:10:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

From a sermon by Saint Leo the Great (pope, 391/400-461)

Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God’s kingdom.

Reflection

The greatest dignity of the human soul is to bear the nature and substance of God--to know oneself as part of the body of God, sharing in God’s life. I know this dignity and joy and would know it fully, which is why I am here, writing again.

In you, Holy One, I live and move and have my being. I come here to consent to you one more time, as I do again and again. I acknowledge you as the Maker and Lover of my being.

Thank you for my life, for the breath I breathe that it not my own, but gift. Thank you for the love that is Love, which is to say … You, which I bear in my tiny heart.

I come here again to allow your immensity greater access to my little life. I come so that you might fill me with the love that is your nature and substance.

This filling appears to be a lifetime project. I pretend to be more advanced in this process than I am, but I am constantly a beginner. That’s all I will ever be.

I know the immensity of your fullness of the Love you are, only to feel cold and unfulfilled the next hour.

I see again the image that appeared at Christmas. I see all that is surrounded by you. I see how you contain us--and everything, every world, every cell, every leaf and snowflake. You encircle and envelop us like the air, like the rays of the sun, like the waters of sea.

I see your silent immensity, a constant flow of liquid love, seeking entry into the narrow confines of our being that you may flow into and through us.

Your substance seeks entry that you may seep--or rush!--into the interior of who and what we are … that we may become what you are, fully sharing your nature. And in precious moments, the Love you are fills me, and I taste your nature as it becomes the substance and of my own heart.

Then, it is, that I know my dignity as a bearer of the Divine Wonder. Then, it is, that all that is in me--struggles and failures, sin and confusion, even the longing ache of my unfulfilled life--are washed away.

All that is left is the joy of knowing you.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, December 22, 2011

2011-12-22T07:05:00.001-06:00

Today’s text

From a treatise against the heresy of Noetus by Saint Hippolytus (priest, 170-235)

God gave utterance to his voice, engendering light from light, and then he sent his own mind into the world as its Lord. Visible before God alone and not to the world, God made him visible so that the world could be saved by seeing him. This mind that entered our world was made known as the Son of God.

Reflection

All the world came into being through you, in you and for you, O Christ. There is nothing that does not bear the mark and resemblance of you who are before time and beyond imagination.

Yet, you are as close as the goodness flowing through the beauty of all things, each thing revealing the mind of the Maker.

You are the mind of God, the intelligence and intention of the Infinite Source of Being, the Loving Mystery, the Eternal Wonder my naming cannot catch or fathom.

The immensity of your heart, O God, dwells in this child, this infant Christ, a peasant’s child. And that heart embraces all creation. It reaches out to see all that is made and to love it, to delight in it, to treasure it, to bless it, to desire fullness of life for all it sees.

I do not believe Jesus understood the mysteries of science, the depth of the farthest galaxies or the intricacies of the grass and flowers that spoke to him of the wonder of God.

Being the mind of God did not mean he possessed superior knowledge beyond that of any other peasant of his day. He was and remained human.

But truly so, in ways we are not, except in the blessed flashes of graced moments.

What he knew, O Lord was you. He had your mind, he was your mind, and your mind is a mind of love that hungers for the earth to sing its beauty and every human soul to bubble with joy.

This is your mind, O God, the mind that is in Christ--and in me.

You, Christ, are the Son of God for you stand in constant communion with the Mystery who is love, the Source who is infinite, the grace from whom springs every beauty of creation. God is how we name this wonder, whose mind you are.

In revealing the mind of God, you also show us also ourselves. You show us the person we become when, in those flashes of graced moments, your mind is born again in us, in moments when we feel the rush of love and gratitude for life and all that lives, when we are amazed at beauty, moved beyond ourselves to compassion and angered by all that wounds and disfigures created goodness.

So come, Lord Jesus. Let us look upon you again as you rest in Mary’s lap. Open our eyes to see that you are the loving beauty of the Father. And in seeing, may the mind that is in you be born again in us that we, like you, might be truly human.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

2011-12-21T07:41:00.001-06:00

Today’s text

From a commentary on Luke by Saint Ambrose (bishop, 337/340-397)

You are blessed because you have heard and believed. A soul that believes both conceives and brings forth the Word of God and acknowledges his works. Let Mary’s soul be in each of you to proclaim the greatness of the Lord. Let her spirit be in each to rejoice in the Lord. Christ has only one mother in the flesh, but we all bring forth Christ in faith.

Reflection

I am fascinated by this mystery. You whom heaven and earth cannot contain dwells also within this heart of mine in light and love, in peace and purpose--and sometimes in frustration.

Frustration comes when I fail to express the heart of Christ in words and deeds of blessing. It comes when my fingers do not return often to these black keys to praise you, Holy One.

It comes when I turn from the depth of my heart to the details of the day, failing to see and seek what is in my heart. For your heart resides here within my own. It is known in the hunger to bless and the eagerness to proclaim that you are love--and that this love is what we most need to know and feel.

Frustration come when anxious chatter and furious figuring obscures the grace that we know and are when we gather around your word and open our hands to receive simple bread and words of blessing.

This grace is what matters among us. It is all that really matters to me. All else is distraction, the annoying clatter of faithless worry.

You live in this heart, and you are not all comfort and peace. Sometimes you are a prod, a frustration, an irritant that demands attention and expression.

Long ago you became my life and joy, a joy I know when I name your love and share your presence. Tension and disquiet build when even for a day or two I don’t say what I see and feel, blessing another soul with the love you are within me.

Then you become an uncomfortable presence. The discomfort disappears only when I do acts of blessing or speak words of love and praise of you who are the highest and best, the most lovely and wonderful--and yet who dwells within.

Did I give you birth by having faith? I cannot claim any merit in my own faith. I am not entirely sure how I got it other than by the example of parents and the witness of teachers, pastors and friends, old and young.

This faith is not something other than you, my Lord. My faith is you, present within, trusting the Eternal Father in me even as you trusted and called out to the Loving Mystery during the days of your earthly pilgrimage.

How, then, do I ‘bring forth Christ in faith,’ giving you birth again in my flesh? How do any of us do so if our faith is your presence already within? What can we do? What is your call?

Perhaps it is just to return to the places of your presence--to your word, to the worshiping community, to the voices of your grace.

Return again and again and listen. Listen for the Love who awakens love within--and trust that this is the eternal love of God who is pleased to dwell in you.

Each time this happens, each time Love is born within, Christmas comes again.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

2011-12-20T07:38:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

From a letter by Saint Leo the Great (pope, 391/400-461)

But through this wonderful blending the mystery of new birth shone upon us, so that through the same Spirit by whom Christ was conceived and brought forth we too might be born again in a spiritual birth; and in consequence the evangelist declares the faithful to ‘have been born not of blood nor of desire of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.’

Reflection

Be born in us, O Lord. This is my prayer as Christmas comes near. Be born again in the dark mystery of my heart. Illumine my soul with the light of your loving presence.

Be born in me that my coldness might be overwhelmed by your warmth,
that my confusion might be washed away by the certainty of a love that always was and always will be,
that my mortality might be filled with your immortality,
that my narrow heart might be expanded by the immensity of your all-encompassing, unfailing compassion.

Let Christmas come and banish all sadness. Let every soul see the cold winter world drenched in sunlight. Fill us with the joyful awareness that the golden rays of your divine love are filling every dark corner of creation.

Be born us. Raise us from the lethargy of grief, from preoccupation with what we have lost and from anxious fears of what we must face. Let us feel your love deep within that we may know that you are in us.

Then we shall know that you are greater than every sadness, stronger than the anxieties that erode our joy and more powerful than the forces of death that steal hope and cloud the future.

Make my soul like bright winter morning. I gaze out the back window of the house. The sun pours joy on the patio. It may be cold, but the world is clothed in light, joyous light, hilarious light. It laughs and plays.

It seeks out every cold corner. It does not force its way in, but silently rushes forward at unimaginable speed, lest the darkness get away and hide somewhere beyond its reach. But there is no such place.

You are light, O Lord, the light of onrushing love. And your light lives within me, or how could I know you? How could I be moved to praise you, to hope for you, to call out for you?

My prayer has long since been answered. You already have been born in me. And what is born in me--in us--is light, the light of eternal day, the joyous light of winter mornings playing on the patio.

It comes and reminds me that you, who come in Jesus, indwell my soul, seeking out every dark corner, every fearful place, every sadness over loss, every wound that hinders joy and purpose, every doubt that you, my Lord, are something less than all-embracing love.

And when my heart knows this, you are born again, not in Bethlehem, but in this soul, which is your holy purpose--and my great joy.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, December 19, 2011

2011-12-19T11:15:00.000-06:00

Today's text

From the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965)

He sent his Son, the eternal Word who enlightens all [people], to dwell among [human beings] and make known to them the innermost things of God. Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, sent as a man to [all people] speaks the words of God, and brings to perfection the saving work that the Father gave him to do. To see him is to see the Father also.

Reflection

I wonder about the work the Jesus the Christ was given to do. What is that work?

Many of the ways Western Christianity has emphasized in recent centuries make no sense to me. They never did. As a boy, I heard the idea that God sent Jesus to be strung up on a cross to pay the price of human sin, so that God, the Father, might be satisfied.

It made no sense. It God less forgiving than I was, and anything that does that must be mistaken.

This traditional “atonement theology” burns at the heart of virtually all conservative preachers and movements. It is at their core. But if to be Christian one must believe that this is Jesus work, well, I am not a Christian.

But I am, profoundly so, and I am more so as the years go by.

But this year again I come to the cradle of Bethlehem with the same question: How does this child, this Jesus help me? How does he help anyone? What difference does he make for those who are dying … or watching a loved one fade away? What does he mean for people I know who may be losing their little daughter? And what difference does this child make in a world where a billion or more are hungry today, or even starving?

Jesus is born to peasant parents with no prospects that they or he will amount to much, just more child in a world of poor children. The only thing that has changed in this regard is there now are far more poor children.

So what difference does Jesus “work” make; what work does he do?

The grand theories of theologians hold scant hold on my mind and less on my soul. They do not excite the imagination or touch the heart.

What does, however, is standing close to manger of Jesus and imagining that this child is the eternal desire of God for me and for all.

God’s eternal desire is to unite the great and uncreated divine heart with our created hearts, so that the Infinite Source of loving joy might pour through us. The loving and infinite God, who is everywhere as present, seeks to unite the created soul with the eternal heart of God--and has been doing so since before the beginning of time. All progress in humanity and grace is the product of such divine effort and presence.

This was God’s desire, an eternal desire, which has nothing to do with human sin and imperfection.

God’s great heart always seeks to give itself away for the sake of creating free and full communion of love and joy between himself and the created order. This is not the result of sin and human error. It is the eternal desire of God whose will is and always was love, and love wants but one thing--to unite with the beloved.

In Jesus, the eternal divine desire is fulfilled; the union of God’s heart and a human heart appears most clearly. And I see--no, I feel--that this child, this Jesus, shows me the union of Heart with heart, of Love with love, of Divinity with humanity, the union God is working to make happen in me … and in all.

When I look again at the child, when with shepherds I draw near the manger, listening again to the story … a love is awakened. I should say Love is awakened. God is born again in me. The heart of God is awakened in the narrow confines of my heart.

And at one and the same moment, my humanity and the great heart of the Divine Wonder dance with joy.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, December 16, 2011

2011-12-16T07:39:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

From a treatise Against Heresies by Saint Irenaeus (bishop, second century C.E.)

The Spirit prepares man to receive the Son of God, the Son leads him to the Father, and the Father freeing him from change and decay, bestows the eternal life that comes to everyone from seeing God. As those who see light are in the light sharing its brilliance, so those who see God are in God sharing his glory, and that glory gives them life. To see God is to share in his life.

Reflection

Seeing is all I want on most days. I want to see God. I want to be moved by the presence of the Holy One. This vision transports me beyond daily anxieties to a different space, a transformed consciousness in which fear cannot exist and daily anxieties cannot be found.

For the duration of this blessed vision of the Blessed, nothing else matters. Life’s purpose is clear, and the heart is at rest because it has arrived home. We see the loveliness we seek, the beauty from which we came. We experience the wonder toward which we move, until the day we fall asleep in the arms of the Blessed Mystery you are, my Lord.

Thank for you this vision, this awareness.

Through these tears, I move back through my week and see again where I have seen you. Sometimes I have seen with physical vision only because my spiritual eyes were blinded by anxious preoccupation with daily concerns.

I saw you on Wednesday, at a funeral. I stood and spoke, remembering a holy moment between me and a dying man.

He spoke his need for faith and hope, and I knew what to say. “Remember. Remember all the grace and beauty you have seen and known in your days, all the love you have given and received.”

Small pictures, I said; each one is a snapshot of the great love with which you are loved, a love stronger than death. Every graced moment is the Spirit leading us to the Son who is God’s eternal Word, spoken in time. Each one is a gift of eternal life right here and now, for those with eyes to see, each a share in God’s glory

Look and see, I said. And if I had held a mirror to my face, I would have seen the face of my brother, Jesus, calling him to the Father, for I had become the face of the Eternal Glory. I had seen light, and for a blessed moment shined with its brilliance.

There is no pride in this, only humility and the joy of being a small part of a great and holy purpose, a tiny flame in the immensity of God’s heart.

Thursday I saw you, again, My Lord, in an old woman’s wrinkled face. She had just turned 90, though she looks younger. There were many hard days in my life, she said to friends. But looking back, she continued, I know how good my life has been, what a wonderful life I have had.

There was no regret in her words or her eyes, only gratitude. She had seen your light in her life, and now in the shadows of old age, she shared its brilliance, your brilliance.

She saw you, and in seeing she shared in the life you are. And so did I.

May it happen again today. This is my prayer.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

2011-12-13T07:32:00.002-06:00

Today’s text

From a discourse On the Contemplation of God by William of Saint Theirry (abbot, 1075/1080-1148)

We hold you dear by the affection you have implanted in us. You are the one supremely good and ultimate goodness. Your love is your goodness, the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son! From the beginning of creation it was he who hovered over the waters--that is, over the wavering minds of men, offering himself to all, drawing all things to himself. By his inspiration and holy breath, by keeping us from harm and providing for our needs, he unites God to us and us to God.

Reflection

Are you hovering near, Great Spirit? Do you inhabit this quiet space where I wait for words to come out of the nothingness and flow through my fingers?

If so, come with all the love that you are--the love that ever flows between Father and Son at the heart of the Holy Trinity. Come so that my wavering mind may be drawn to you and my still heart may flow with the warmth of your goodness.

In the beginning, you hovered over the watery chaos of what was to be creation, a universe billions of stars that burn in the cold dark of space. But this morning I cannot think of their multitude or the wonder of yawning light years of dark space.

For reasons I do not know, I think again and again of a small grove of birch trees along 75th Street. I see again the huge yellow moon hanging over the dark wooded ridge high behind them, a quarter mile or so. The moon glistened on pale patches of snow beneath the birches, reflecting gentle white light on the trucks, as I drove home.

Right then, I knew you. I don’t know how or why, unless it is that every beauty and wonder in this world has the tendency to awaken thoughts of you as Ultimate and Loving Source.

But sometimes such scenes awaken faith and sometimes they do not. It is not automatic. On this average ride home from the office, wonder happened in my heart and my mind leaped into awareness that love lies at the heart of this crazy world. The earth in its wonder leaps from the heart of an impenetrable Loving Mystery, who speaks in the glisten of snow in reflected moon light.

The Holy Spirit hovers over the wavering minds of men and women and calls them home. In that moment, as I drove home, you brought me home. For home is awareness of you as Love, a love which manifests in the sacrament of the world, in the reality of life, and my Christian faith says, in the face of my brother Jesus.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, December 9, 2011

2011-12-09T08:58:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

From a sermon by Saint Peter Chrysologus (priest, 380-450)

In all the events we have recalled, the flame of divine love enkindled human hearts and its intoxication overflowed into men’s senses. Wounded by love, they longed to look upon God with their bodily eyes. Yet how could our narrow human vision apprehend God, whom the whole world cannot contain? But the law of love is not concerned with what will be, what ought to be, what can be. Love does not reflect; it is unreasonable and knows no moderation, Love refuses to be consoled when its goal proves impossible, despises all hindrances to the attainment of its object. Love destroys the lover if he cannot obtain what he loves; love follows its own promptings, and does not think of right and wrong … It is intolerable for love not to see the object of its longing, That is why whatever reward they merited was nothing to the saints if they could not see the Lord.

Reflection

I love you Lord for the way your people reach across 16 centuries and touch my heart. What have I in common with a soul from so long ago? And could I hold in common with one the church has name ‘saint?’

Nothing, it would seem, yet Peter’s words tell me that I am not alone. Other hearts have longed and long still for the fulfillment of their love, eager to see the One they love, the One who is Love.

And as he said, there is no moderation in such love. It never finds complete satisfaction but always pushes for more.

Oh, there are moments, of course, when the soul gazes into the early winter snows or looks into the faces of children and is seized by the awareness that a boundless loving beauty stands at the heart of all life.

The elevation of heart that occurs in such moments transports us beyond anxiety and fear, and a ‘Julian’ feeling washes through the soul, as we know with that old saint that all is will and all shall be well. But the moment passes.

And even in the moment of transport to higher awareness of life’s center and meaning, we know there is more. There is always more, and we want it. We are never quite satisfied.

You are the More, Holy One, the One immoderate love hungers to see and know, that we might touch and experience totally union with you. We hunger to be enraptured, so that nothing that is us is outside of you. It is an immoderate desire stirred by your immoderate desire for us.

The state of enrapture is known in this life, even by the likes of me because you are gracious love and give yourself even to the unworthy. Even now, as tears fog vision of these black keys while washing obstruction from the eyes of my heart so that I know you as that total love that gives peace passing all understanding.

I wonder: What was it like for Saint Peter Chrysologus 16 centuries ago? He speaks words that leap the great gulf of time to touch me and tell me that I stand in an ancient line of those who knew your love and wanted more, find final fulfillment.

I can’t get inside of his experience, but his words (golden words, which is the meaning of his name, Chrysologus) move me into awareness of you who inspired them. And I know Peter is my true brother, brothers in longing … to see you.

Show yourself to the eyes of our hearts in this holy season.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

2011-12-07T07:47:00.001-06:00

Today’s text

From a treatise on The Ascent of Mount Carmel by Saint John of the Cross (priest, mystic, 1542-1591)

By giving us, as he did, his Son, his only Word, he has in that one Word said everything. There is no need for further revelation. … God has spoken so completely through his own Word that he chooses to add nothing. Although he had spoken but partially through the prophets, he has now said everything in Christ. He has given us everything, his own Son. …[God says] Fix your eyes on him alone for in him I have revealed all and in him you will find more than you could ever ask for or desire.

Reflection

I have heard what I need to hear. I know what my heart needs to know. I await no further word of life’s meaning, unfolding its mysteries. That Word has been spoken in time and space--and in me.

Simple hearts rest it this Word without seeking great understanding, knowing this Word of ultimate grace and presence is enough and always will be. Sophisticated minds plumb its depths and never reach the bottom. There is always more to be known of this Word. It remains as inexhaustible as the Love who speaks it, and always will.

Sometimes, it is enough for me to be simple and simply trust, neither needing nor wanting depth of understanding. My heart rests totally at peace, simply knowing a final word of love has been spoken over my life, no, over all life, a Word that encompasses every pain, every loss, every sorrow, every broken dream and promise.

All of it is encased, embraced and encompassed in that single Word, in Christ.

In Christ God has spoken, a clear and unmistakable ‘yes’ to the human race and more. The Word is spoken in creation, through the means and substance of created matter, and it is spoken to all that is, all that ever was or ever will be. It is a Word, a word of promise and deliverance, spoken to the rocks, the rivers and everlasting hills as much as it is to me, a human soul

For, all that exists came to be in Christ--in him, through him, for him. He is the Word in which God says all we need to know. In him created matter and divine substance combine to reveal the beauty God intends and will work in and through all that is.

In this Word, divine reality and created substance unite, and God speaks the uninhibited, joyous communion of God and creation, the holy union God is working in me and all that is.

In this Word, God speaks unfettered love for all that is, a love that takes all that is into itself for the sole sake of a love spoken in a Word, a single life, the life of my brother Jesus.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, December 5, 2011

2011-12-04T20:16:00.002-06:00

Today’s text

From the Proslogian by Saint Anselm of Canterbury (bishop, 1033-1109)

Lord most high, what shall this exile do, so far from you? What shall your servant do, tormented by love of you and cast so far from your face? He yearns to see you, and your face is too far from him. He desires to approach you, and your dwelling is unapproachable. He longs to find you, and does not know your dwelling place. He strives to look for you, and does not know your face.

Reflection

The metaphor of exile is fitting to describe the feeling of those who hunger for God. We long for the One to whom we intuitively know we belong. We crave union with the Love from whom we feel separation, knowing no final peace on this earth until our tormented love is satisfied.

Saints and writers of every age have written of this experience, Christians, Jews, those of other faiths or of no faith at all. Awareness burns in the human heart, unsettling us, a restless knowledge that we are not at home until we are united with … something … someone.

We feel cut off from that mystery to which (to Whom) we ultimately belong. For the person without faith in God, this restlessness is an inescapable existential condition, the normal condition of the human heart living in a world in which one can never find the peace that the human heart is moved to seek for reasons it does not understand.

Although we find no peace here, we still want it, and we either live with the dis-ease of not having what we want, or we try to kill the desire with substances of constant busy-ness. We might tell ourselves that the unknown something we want is an illusion we had best ignore. Eat, drink and be merry, but don’t kid yourself: your hunger for final fulfillment is a false hope; it is chasing after the wind. You will never catch it.

But for the person of faith the yearning for the One to whom we belong is a search for home. It is the desire to return from the wandering of exile where we feel alone and lost, forgotten and perhaps forsaken, for we feel far removed from the One in whom rest and peace is found.

The Great Soul who is God, the One who loves and creates sentient beings out of an abundant store of love, creates us in order to share the boundless store of divine life and love with us, we who have life and love only by God’s gift.

God has fashioned our small souls so that in our exilic wanderings our hunger might moves us to seek to be reunited with the Mystery from whom we came, to return and find the holy union with the place, the Person, the home for which we have long searched, wondering at times whether it is even real.

It is, of course. It is real as are you, Loving and Holy Mystery. The pains of our wanderings through life are a great grace. They whisper in our ears that we belong to a Greatness which we cannot begin to imagine, the greatness of You, who made us for yourself.

So let us not run from the pain of our exile, nor kill or drown out the desire that moves us to search and long for union with the One who is always more. Our pain is a tormented love, moving us to search and watch for our Beloved, who continually draws us to the place where we might find oneness with the Source of our Being--and there, finally, to see the face of our Lord, face to face.

Pr. David L. Miller

Saturday, December 3, 2011

2011-12-03T17:59:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

From a biblical commentary by Saint Ephrem (deacon, 306-373)

About that hour no one knows, neither the angels nor the Son. It is not for you to know times or moments. He has kept these things hidden so that we may keep watch, each of us thinking that he will come in our own day. If he had revealed the time of his coming, his coming would have lost its savor; it would no longer be an object of yearning for the nations and the age in which it will be revealed. He promised that he would come but did not say when he would come, and so all generations await him eagerly.

Reflection

Just so, yearning, not satisfaction, remains the larger part of our lives.

We are always oriented and drawn to something more, hoping that the goodness we have known is but a part, a sample of what will be. We also yearn that the injustice and suffering, which is part of every time and every life, will pass away like a bad dream in the dawning light of our Lord’s eternal morning.

St. Paul counseled that it is a holy and good thing to be content with what the possessions and wealth one has. But contentment with what we have known and experienced of Christ is a sickness unto death. It invites a sleepy lethargy, pathetic apathy, depression and timidity.

To be content with what we know and feel of Christ turns us from the grace he is eager to share. We no longer meet each day, no, each new moment and encounter with the hope that the face of the person before us may turn transparent to that Love who seeks our hearts. It deadens the mind to the possibility that we might glimpse signs of the kingdom of God’s peace breaking into our daily routines, stirring our hearts to gratitude for the One who is ever at hand, always near.

To be content with such fragments of Christ’s reign, as we now experience on earth, turns us from the plight of the poor and those who suffer injustice. It makes us content with the status quo so that we become a friend of death, no longer challenging the powers and injustices that feed poverty and starvation while protecting the rich, not to mention our comfortable lifestyles.

The suffering of this age and every death we see should stir us to pray, ‘Come Lord Jesus,’ moving also to watch and not lose heart. For Christ promises to come, and we should be eager for his appearance. We have seen and felt the pains he has promised to erase, when he comes to make all things new and wipe every tear from our eyes.

We are eager for his appearance not only because of our own and the world’s pains, but because we have seen the graciousness of his love in our brother, Jesus.

We have witnessed his coming in a thousand ways and places, a thousand days and faces where the One who is Love shows his beauty and awakens the same gracious loveliness within our hearts that it may flow from our hands and our words.

All this should well move us to be eager for Christ’s every appearance, looking for him in all the places of our lives. For he who is … is pleased to come to you.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, December 1, 2011

2011-12-01T08:12:00.001-06:00

Today’s text

From a sermon by Saint Bernard (abbot, 1090-1153)

Keep God’s word in this way. Let it enter into your very being, let it take possession of your desires and your whole way of life. Feed on goodness, and your soul will delight in its richness. Remember to eat your bread, or your heart will wither away. Fill your soul with richness and strength. If you keep the world of God in this way, it will also keep you. The Son and the Father will come to you.

Reflection

Come to us, O Lord and set us free from bondage to our fears and sorrows, our selfish sins and worried souls, anxious for the future. Come to us and remove every impediment that prevents our entry into the heaven of your nearness, the presence that sets our hearts to soar.

There are three comings of our Lord, Saint Bernard tells us. Two are visible, one is not. The first is the appearance of a child in Mary’s arms, come to win our hearts with the humble courtesy of God. Our Lord comes not to overwhelm but to awaken love in us. The Immortal and Incomprehensible One puts all that aside to touch our flesh with divine gentleness.

In the final appearance, our Lord will come in glory to lift every valley and make low every mountain, to raise up the downtrodden and judge the proud and indifferent, and make all things new. All will reflect God’s glory, and we shall see it. Not like now, when we see … but so dimly, as if through dirty lenses, and so occasionally as if God’s glory was not visible in all God has made.

These two comings of God are visible, but in between is a silent and hidden appearance as God comes to our souls and lives there, seeping through the pores of our being to reveal the Love that God is, however obscured by our faults and failings.

This coming of our Lord is a path, a way that we walk. Each day is an invitation to enter again the goodness of the One who is all goodness, to taste the Love of the One who is all Love, to witness the beauty of the One is all beauty. Each morning is an invitation to draw the breath of earth into our lungs and know every breath as the hunger of God to give us life as a holy and irreplaceable gift.

So I come again, O Lord, to the start of the day. I come seeking to hear and be blessed by your word, hungry to see, no, to feel the Love that is the boundless source of every love and all life, so that you may live and have greater place in me.

I have no idea how this happens. I cannot describe the way it occurs. I only know that when I listen to you, when I read the words you speak through prophets and saints and in the stories how you came to us in the gentle flesh of Jesus, when I do this I find a life of gentleness and grace that takes larger place in me.

And in this I know you, and I know that although I keep your word … it is you who are keeping me.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

2011-11-30T08:25:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

From a pastoral letter by Saint Charles Borromeo (bishop, 1538-1584)

The Church asks us to understand that Christ, who came once in the flesh, is prepared to come again. When we remove all obstacles to his presence he will come, at any hour and moment, to dwell spiritually in our hearts.

Reflection

It has taken years to know the longing in my heart as a longing that is not my own.

I hear the words and songs of the Advent season. Isaiah, in particular, moves me. He speaks of deep and universal longings for a world made whole and for souls healed by the restoring love the One who is Love and most lovable of all.

The prophet writes that the Lord shall judge among the nations, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning hooks. One nation will no longer raise the sword against their neighbors, nor shall they learn war again (Isaiah 2:4-5).

The words stir the heart, awakening longing to be the peace God brings, so that every interaction of my life becomes a moment for offering the peace and gentleness of God in Christ to every soul I meet, whether on the phone, in the coffee shop, at the hospital bed.

I hunger for my whole bearing to be peace, the peace of God, the peace of heaven, the peace that fills the heart when one knows all is well, all is wrapped in the embrace of God, the Father.

Peace comes in quietness when the rush of the daily world fades, and we can hear the voice our heart. We feel our wounds, our hunger for healing, listening also to the longings that reside within us for a life beyond the life we are living, a life more beautiful and good, more graced and gracing, a life in which we are ruled more by joy and hope than disappointment and criticism.

Such longing is stirred when we hear the words of those, like the prophet Isaiah, whose souls have heard the Voice of the Eternal One in their own heart … and spoken what they have heard.

But we miss the point if we think the longings within us for peace, for love, for rising to a new kind of life are our own creation. They are the presence of God, the reality of Christ again taking on flesh within our flesh to make us the peace of God, the blessing of God, the presence of God in our time and place, wherever we are.

For God is not pleased to take on human flesh only once, in a manger, the child of peasants, in a time far distant from our own. Christ is born a million times and more in every heart where inner longing becomes words of peace and acts of mercy in a world that needs this most of all.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

2011-11-28T20:53:00.001-06:00

Today’s text

From On the Contemplation of God by William of Saint Thierry (monk and abbot, 1075?--1153)

O Lord, salvation is your gift and your blessing is upon your people; what else is your salvation but receiving from you the gift of loving you or being loved by you?

Reflection

It is the gift of loving that I find most freeing, dear Friend. But I cannot separate this gift from the gift of knowing your boundless love. These are one gift, not two, two experiences of the same reality.

There are moments in which I feel the world loved, totally, fully, completely--and me in and with it. Creation shines more beautiful and graced than any words can say, as I feel Your immensity embracing me and all that is.

Immediately, my soul flies open. A river of grace breaks loose in my heart, and my greatest joy is pouring that love into another life, onto another soul.

A flood of generosity fills me and flows from my smile, bursting free from a Source so deep in my soul that it is no longer my own soul, but yours. It flows in abundance from a dark and hidden place I cannot see, the place where my heart and your divine heart are one and the same.

This is salvation.

This word seldom crosses my lips, even in sermons. It’s so worn and weak it awakens no great thoughts or deep emotions in common conversation. I avoid it because it has no meaning for so many, no connection with felt experience.

But the experience of knowing great love and loving greatly, about this I cannot say enough. I crave this experience, for when I am in the midst of knowing the immensity of your love I become the Love you are. I am most human, most alive,

That is why I cling to certain stories of your ministry, Jesus. A leper kneels at your feet and says, “If you want to, you can make me whole.”

“I want to,” you say, as you reach to touch him.

And seeing this I fall in love with the Love you are. Love fills me again, freeing me every prejudgment and negative thought I have, thoughts about myself and even about those who hurt or dismiss me. Such thoughts cannot exist in the presence of Love.

The experience is fleeting, of course, but while it lasts I am free to be the person that hides so deeply within. I am free from wounds, anger and hatreds. I become your generosity, Holy One, knowing the Love you are in the Love that flows from my eyes, my face, my hands, my arms, my smile, my words.

And I know what salvation is: knowing You, knowing you as Love within my own heart and mind. It brings a sudden transformation into the image of God that I am, the image of the One who loves and always will.

This is salvation. One day I will enter its fullness. For now, I will allow whatever beauty and grace I know to awaken in me you, who are Love.

And I will look again and again into the face of Jesus, whose words and touch reveal your divine heart. He comes bearing a salvation we can feel in our flesh, a salvation that reveals who I am … and who You are.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

2011-11-22T09:13:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

Luke 17:12-19

12As [Jesus] entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, 13they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” 14When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. 15Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. 17Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? 18Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
Reflection

Teach me to see, Holy One; then I shall be free. Then my heart shall soar, for all I see shall sing the praise of you who staggers my imagination and moves me to tears in the morning hours … and beyond.

Teach me to see with compassion; give that God’s-eye vision that it is penetrating mercy.

You looked and saw 10 lepers. You saw their need. They were not flawed human beings, their skin, peeling, ugly, sickly white. You were not repelled. You saw their isolation from the rest of society, from family and friends, from long evenings when human souls lay down the weight of their lives and laugh over wine and food, reveling in the company of those among whom they are at home.

They were at home no where, and nowhere were they welcome. Children ran from them at the edge of towns they could not enter. Unclean, unclean, the cry would go out, and human faces fled their sight.

Alone, they were. Alone, always alone, the craving for human nearness echoed in their hearts, taunting their souls. They ached for companionship they knew they could never have, the gentle hand of a mother upon their cheek, the kiss of a lover in night, the playful hug of four-year-olds around their neck. Never theirs.

This is what you saw, Jesus. You saw them they way the Holy Father sees them, not the way they saw themselves. You saw their need. You saw their impossible hope for healing, for the holy human communion that love is. You saw all their hopes, all their sad longing for what their lives could never be.

You saw, and that’s the message. You see … me, all of me: my hopes and fears, needs and yearning, laughter and tears, the unending, incessant craving to live with fullness, to exhaust the possibilities of living and loving in this world so that my soul may find the utter contentment of tasting the life of heaven, where in loving my soul is one with the One who is Love and nothing but.

You see, Jesus, and in your seeing I know how I am seen by the One whom no eye has ever seen.

You eyes are upon me, and I feel the Love Who sees me, and heaven comes, here and now with the contentment of knowing, just knowing the Love I was created to know, that every human soul was created to know.

And I see. I see like the one healed leper. I see that I am healed, or at least that healing is well underway.

I see that healing comes in knowing, feeling the Love who made me and all that is, the Love who sees me, the Love who wants my soul to know joy.

I look and see. I see the late autumn trees, sparse, dull brown leaves clinging fast to branches against cooling winds that hint the snows soon to fly. I see, and I know they stand in the soil of the Source of all Being. I see that all that is grows from the Impenetrable Love who loves life and whose one business is life, making, nurturing, growing and bringing it to flower.

I see that everything that is expresses its Source, the Love who sees, and I know all is well and will be.

I see and my seeing praises You, Holy One. I see and I thank everyone who ever taught me to see, and everyone in whom I ever saw the One who sees me. You.

I see, and I know my brother is the one leper who saw you, Jesus, and returned to fall at your feet in thankful wonder for a Love that sees.

I see, and I know I am in the best possible company, those who see the One who sees.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

2011-11-15T08:06:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

Ephesians 1:20-23

God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Reflection

The year draws to an end. For the church, the end is Christ, an end we celebrate on Christ the King Sunday, Nov.20.

Recent years have seen a spate of apocalyptic-tinged films offering cataclysmic visions of the end of the world--or at least the end of the ordered, civilized world as we know it.

Difficult times when social, economic and political structures seem to erode and crumble always spur speculation about the end of things. Most human speculation about “the end” is violent and fearful, pitting human strength and determination against irresistible destruction.

This tension provides fodder for movie plots with lots of explosions and improbable special effects that kill and maim, as lead characters employ their cunning and strength as they try to escape and thrive by force of their will.

Whether they survive or not, the “end of things’ comes as threat, and human beings are on their own. They must do the best they can without thought that other, more gracious forces are at work amid the crumbling of society and the shaking of Earth’s crust.

But this is not the end of things, nor is it our end.

The end is Christ. All things were made for him, in him, and by him. All is shaped by the life and power that is Being, Life and Love.

In the Church, the poor, confused, often failing Church, the grace and power of Christ is present, filling that broken body with the substance of grace and care, life and joy amid the pains and challenges of life.

Christ is filling the Church with the fullness of the Loving Wonder, the Eternal Mystery whom no eye has seen, except ours, of course, for we see him. We see him in every act of grace and goodness, in the morning sun across the autumn tress, in bread broken and wine poured of the Eucharist, in the eager and empty hands of those who receive this gift of the life Christ is. Knowing the limits of the life they hold, they long for that Life which is filling the Church … and will fill all until all that is left is Life.

And that’s the end--Life, the Life that shines in the face of Jesus Christ, the Life that is the Life of the Eternal One, filling all that is … and us.

No exploding buildings, no fearful violent destruction, just Life. Our end, the end of things … is only the beginning.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, November 10, 2011

2011-11-10T08:16:00.001-06:00

Today’s text

Matthew 25:19-25

19After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. 20Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.’ 21His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ 22And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.’ 23His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ 24Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; 25so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’

Reflection

Ah, but you were wrong, so you lived in fear. You took no risks. You buried yourself, your soul in the field of your fears, missing the joy of your master, never nearing the entrance of the joyous life you might enter.

My heart sings these words again and again, moving joy in my morning heart.

I am filled with the joy the Holy One intends for all the beloved, and that is what we are: Beloved of the Loving Mystery, from all eternity.

I enter my master’s joy as I dare believe that the God of the heavens and the earth is not a harsh master, reaping where he did not sow. In utter delight, the master sows life and beauty, love and gifts to we who inhabit this good Earth, another generosity from the Eternal Giver.

Our lives begin as gift, and when we see this, when we feel it, we are gripped by the revelation that the Source of all Life is generous and good. The master gives being where there is none, breathing life into that which cannot know the joy of simply breathing … were it not for the One who if the Breath of all the living.

We are ever in the hands of the Eternal Generosity. Feeling this, we have already entered the master’s joy of being and giving life. We taste the joy of receiving from the Love who wills us into being, willing also that I should live beyond the fears that hem me into the half-life of never trusting, never risking.

What could happen? That I fail? That I lose? That the life I have been given be lost?

Fears, all of this, damning fears.

My life is the effluence of the One who sows freely, who gives gifts and life without me asking, whose joy is being Life and making life that I, too, may be.

So it is: You, Loving and Living One, invite me beyond the anxiety that my life hangs from a single thread, held by harsh hands, ready to condemn and release me to the darkness.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Fear flows from wrong faith, mistaken ideas about life’s master. Entering the joy of the master happens the moment we feel and know the master’s joy in being and giving life.

It happens everywhere and every time when we know, when we just know that Love holds us and always will, freeing our hearts to live and risk, to try and fail, to live as the selves we are.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

2011-10-05T07:46:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

Matthew 22:1-10

Jesus began to speak to them in parables once again, 'The kingdom of Heaven may be compared to a king who gave a feast for his son's wedding. He sent his servants to call those who had been invited, but they would not come. Next he sent some more servants with the words, "Tell those who have been invited: Look, my banquet is all prepared, my oxen and fattened cattle have been slaughtered, everything is ready. Come to the wedding." But they were not interested: one went off to his farm, another to his business, and the rest seized his servants, maltreated them and killed them. The king was furious. He dispatched his troops, destroyed those murderers and burnt their town. Go to the main crossroads and invite everyone you can find to come to the wedding." So these servants went out onto the roads and collected together everyone they could find, bad and good alike; and the wedding hall was filled with guests.
Reflection

I am interested, Lord. I want to eat the feast. That is why I am here, fingers on the keys, trying to chase down your heart and capture it within the tiny confines of my own.

“Quit trying,” you say. “You need not chase me, for I Who Am run after you. It is my heart within your own heart that moves your fingers to the keys. My Soul within your soul is the surging desire to satisfy the hunger that moves you.

“I am your hunger, and I am the feast that satisfies. I am the desire, and I am food that fills it. I will chase you down every pathway of your busy days until you stop running and eat the feast of eternal goodness amid laughter and tears of discovery, as you recognize how much I have always wanted you.”

You chase us Lord, yet so many go about their business, uninterested in your feast. Why do we turn away? Why do we turn violent, rejecting your invitation?

Perhaps we just don’t believe. Perhaps we can’t imagine that life is more than getting by, amusing ourselves as much as possible, distracting ourselves from awareness that one day we will die.

Perhaps we cannot imagine that every moment and morsel of earth’s bounty is a crumb from an eternal table of divine sharing: You, sharing the life that you simply are.

Perhaps we imagine that all we have and are must be made our own by the force of will and accomplishment, like bread ripped from a crusty loaf. Just so, we get what we can, never asking who baked the loaf in the first place.

Perhaps petty busyness is so much the normal condition of human souls that we cannot see life for the feast it is … and promises.

Perhaps I can and will never understand. But I do understand one thing, dear Friend.

I understand that boundless generosity is your normal condition. You give life and limitless love to me, whether I be good or bad, true or false, success or failure this day.

You want me to taste the feast that is life … and to know this is only the beginning.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

2011-10-04T07:13:00.001-05:00

Today’s text

Matthew 22:1-4

Jesus began to speak to them in parables once again, 'The kingdom of Heaven may be compared to a king who gave a feast for his son's wedding. He sent his servants to call those who had been invited, but they would not come. Next he sent some more servants with the words, "Tell those who have been invited: Look, my banquet is all prepared, my oxen and fattened cattle have been slaughtered, everything is ready. Come to the wedding."

Reflection

You want me, Lord. You want all of us at the table, eating and drinking, celebrating the goodness of feeling alive.

Even now, I see myself gathered at the feast amid the commotion of many others. Smiles light every face. Hearts expand with startling joy, exceeding our expectation of what was possible to know and feel.

I raise my glass high to toast the raucous tumult of sheer abandonment.

So what is this, Lord, an image of the future?

I see into that future every time I lift the bread and the cup and speak of the day when we shall eat the meal in the fullness of your presence. I see it with my own eyes, sometimes tripping over myself to get to the table and exclaim the holy words again, hoping that a few others may see it, too.

I want this future now. I want to taste and feel it today amid whatever else may come.

I am hungry for the celebration and the laughter. I want the companionship and the complete and unwarranted acceptance of my and every soul at your table of grace.

I want this awareness to wash over my soul and cleanse me from every discouragement, every sadness, every wound that casts my eyes toward the dust.

I want to feel and be finally and fully alive. This can happen in only one place, and yet in every place: as I find myself at your table of feasting … even if I am driving my car, listening to another soul, working at my desk … or writing these words.

So let the feast of your blessed future begin here and now with me, in the awareness that, today, you want me, you hunger for me, you crave my nearness, my attention, my love, my joy. Today and everyday.

Today, you chase me along the ways of my life, hoping, praying that I may see that the banquet of your nearness is now.

And when I do, I can be joy and love amid the grayness that clouds human souls. And maybe they, too, can join the laughter of tomorrow … today.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, September 29, 2011

2011-09-29T07:56:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

Matthew 21:33-35, 40, 41-43

'Listen to another parable. There was a man, a landowner, who planted a vineyard; he fenced it round, dug a winepress in it and built a tower; then he leased it to tenants and went abroad. When vintage time drew near he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his servants, thrashed one, killed another and stoned a third. ... Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?' They answered, 'He will bring those wretches to a wretched end and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will deliver the produce to him at the proper time. 'I tell you, then, that the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.'

Reflection

Is it me, Jesus? Am I the one who will lose the kingdom to those who produce its fruits?

You planted the word of your kingdom in my heart long ago. As I boy I already wanted you. I wanted to know you, to love you, to serve you. I prayed, ‘Lord, take away everything I most love that I may love you most of all.’

I think you answered that prayer and still are. This is good, since there is still much work to be done.

Insecurities about self and success can still make me anxious to impress and curry favor. Angers over minor frustrations and irritations spring more quickly from my lips than words of blessing or compassion for your troubled world. Harried days erode the trust that all is well, since all that is--and all I am--is surrounded and held in your gracious hand.

But even the knowledge of my failures to produce the fruit of your loving rule is, in fact, a sign of your determination that the seed you planted is still there, still alive, still seeking to produce the rich fruit you intend.

For I still hunger as I did as a boy. But now I know so much more. I have felt so much more. I have tasted you. I have sampled the fruit of peace and strength, of hope and love. I have known the blessed intoxication of the awareness of your all-surpassing care.

Despite every failure, the seed of the divine vineyard grows in my soul. And on my best days, my words and life speak and share fruit of your rule.

And then I know: my real failure and deepest temptation is the failure to trust that you who have planted will bring a harvest even in and through my life.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

2011-09-27T07:35:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

Matthew 21:33-35

'Listen to another parable. There was a man, a landowner, who planted a vineyard; he fenced it round, dug a winepress in it and built a tower; then he leased it to tenants and went abroad. When vintage time drew near he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his servants, thrashed one, killed another and stoned a third.'
Reflection

They forgot. They don’t own it. Neither do I.

I don’t own the vineyard of your creation, Holy One. I don’t even own my own life. The breath in my lungs is on loan. Someday it will flee this mortal form, and I will return to the dust from which you made me.

But for now you give breath in my lungs, strength in my limbs and power in my soul.

You give the power to remember who I am--or to forget that all that I am and have is a miracle of a creation I did not fashion and cannot fathom.

I simply wake up in this world, surprised to be alive and existing, knowing only that I did not create myself but am the breath of the Mystery who is Life.

You are Life, and you freely give it, asking only that I do not forget you, the Giver, who makes life out of nothing and my life from the lives of those who have gone before.

Forgetting is the greatest tragedy. It is death. It is separation from you, the Source, the Eternal Fountain. To forget is isolation, loneliness and fear. It creates distance between my soul and the Soul who breathes life into all that lives in the vineyard of creation.

Little wonder that when I feel far from you my breath grows short and my heart feels alone and anxious.

But not today. Today, tapping raindrops of a grainy fall morning whisper, “Remember.”

Today, the laughter of gracious people still rings through my soul, as the joy of last evening lifts me to the awareness that the vineyard of life is not mine. I am here, sharing it with other souls who are gifts to me, as I to them.

We shared, laughed and felt alive. We didn’t forget that our lives and the shining moments of feeling alive--all of it--is gift … on loan from You, who breathed us out and who will take us back into yourself.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, September 23, 2011

2011-09-23T07:55:00.001-05:00

Today’s text

Matthew 21:28-32

'What is your opinion? A man had two sons. He went and said to the first, "My boy, go and work in the vineyard today." He answered, "I will not go," but afterwards thought better of it and went. The man then went and said the same thing to the second who answered, "Certainly, sir," but did not go. Which of the two did the father's will?' They said, 'The first.' Jesus said to them, 'In truth I tell you, tax collectors and prostitutes are making their way into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you, showing the way of uprightness, but you did not believe him, and yet the tax collectors and prostitutes did. Even after seeing that, you refused to think better of it and believe in him.

Reflection

Is it me, Lord? Is this the truth of my life and of the church’s life today?

Are we those who say, ‘Yes, we will go into your vineyard,’ but then refuse to do the work of your kingdom?

Meanwhile, are those who say they do not believe responding to your silent presence in all life and doing works of mercy and justice, the deeds of your kingdom?

Believing in you has less to do with words than we imagine, a sobering thought for me as I relish words and what they move in me and others. Truly believing is not about my formulas or sentences, and it has less to do with reciting creeds or knowing Bible stories and proper theological clichés than most imagine.

It is about going and doing, entering the vineyard of creation and tending it with care. It is about loving as you love, Lord, giving as you give, healing bodies and souls and reconciling relationships.

It is about pouring out our lives in love as you poured yourself out for us.

Belief happens less in the mind than in the heart and intuition when we see people loving, nurturing and caring. It happens as our depths are moved to know that this is the truth of our life--and yours; this is that for which we were born; this is the face of the Loving Mystery of God.

The religious leaders saw people flock to John the Baptist and change their ways. They should have seen and known his actions--the affect he had on the human souls--bore the mark of God’s holy presence.

They should have seen that your healing touch, Jesus, flowed from that Eternal Source who hungers for the healing of all that is, including their own lives and commitments.

They should have seen divine authority at work in John and in you by the lives you made whole and free.

But the question is, do I?

Do I receive every moment as an occasion to pay attention to whatever mercy and justice is present--or needs to be? Do I see and celebrate the people who give life, who nurture love and beauty, joy and compassion, mind and strength?

And seeing, do I join them, working in the vineyard?

Every moment is a moment for seeing you, and joining the garden party.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, September 22, 2011

2011-09-22T07:48:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

Matthew 21:23

He had gone into the Temple and was teaching, when the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him and said, 'What authority have you for acting like this? And who gave you this authority?'

Reflection

Acting like what, Jesus? What were you doing to attract this challenge?

Those who obey the rules and follow the norm do not attract the interest of the big shots who run things. But you did something to threaten the daily order and those who control it.

Challenge was inevitable. Quickly, came voices telling you to stop, demanding, ‘who gives you the right to do this?’

The temple authorities were more interested in your authority to do things than in the things you were doing. But what were you doing to upset them?

You spoke, Jesus, and human hearts filled with hope. Wounded souls felt the loving goodness of the Father, the Loving Mystery who treasured them from all eternity.

You touched their bodies and souls, awakening freshness of heart and spirit in those whose ears were eager to hear. You called them to change their hurtful ways, and they turned to heal what was wounded between them.

Souls burdened and earthbound took flight in your nearness. Lighter than air, they took flight, basking in the crystal blue sky of the Father’s goodness. Their hearts swelled, and they knew that the joyous life that filled and surrounded them was the real truth of this life … and of their eternity.

This is what you did, Jesus. But by what authority?

The answer to their question should have been obvious: By the authority of the One, who wants us to live, the One who is Life, the Loving Mystery who takes pleasure in the death of no one.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

2011-09-20T07:51:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

Matthew 21:23-27

He had gone into the Temple and was teaching, when the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him and said, 'What authority have you for acting like this? And who gave you this authority?' In reply Jesus said to them, 'And I will ask you a question, just one; if you tell me the answer to it, then I will tell you my authority for acting like this. John's baptism: what was its origin, heavenly or human?' And they argued this way among themselves, 'If we say heavenly, he will retort to us, "Then why did you refuse to believe him?"; but if we say human, we have the people to fear, for they all hold that John was a prophet.' So their reply to Jesus was, 'We do not know.' And he retorted to them, 'Nor will I tell you my authority for acting like this.'

Reflection

And so it is in all ages: The powerful seek to maintain their power at the expense of truth, at the loss of soul.

Our lives shake in the winds of opinion and the changing styles and fads of the hour when position and status, reputation and influence replace our need to root our lives in the solidity of a truth that holds strong when all else is washed away.

Our conversations and our politics become empty and contentious (read the papers lately?) when our hearts seek standing, status, power and the good opinion of others more than the truth that satisfies the soul and creates common understanding and peaceful relations.

We are made to follow the scent of what is true, what is real, what is lasting, following it all the way into that Truth beyond all truths, all the way into the arms of One eager to receive us and give rest and purpose to our souls.

O Lord, may we seek what is real and lasting this day that we may fall into the arms of the Truth beyond all others. You.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

2011-07-20T09:36:00.002-05:00

Today’s text

Matthew 13:44
'The kingdom of Heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which someone has found; he hides it again, goes off in his joy, sells everything he owns and buys the field.

Reflection
We understand nothing of this until we have known freedom of heart, the kind of freedom that stirs us to surrender ourselves, risking who we are or what we have to give ourselves to a grace and beauty we have discovered--or which has discovered us.

So much of life commences with calculated care. Closely counting costs, whether in time or money or energy, we ask if each new activity, commitment or relationship in our path is “worth it.” Do we want to spend ourselves, our precious time, or protect our resources for something later?

It’s a safe way to live, and much of our living requires such care. But there is an element of soul that cannot and will not be fulfilled, its joy stunted, until we know a beauty, a grace, a cause, a holy love to which we can give ourselves without counting the cost, our hearts knowing that this is right, this belongs to the essence of my soul and life itself.

The freest human souls I have ever known are those who had found--or been found by--the treasure in the field, the pearl of great price which moved them beyond lives of bean-counting calculation to act, to love, to given themselves to a great love even though it cost them pain, or perhaps the various currencies our society most values--money, status and power.

In this culture, we sometimes have trouble understanding those who choose to step away from high-powered posts, moneyed positions or safe, easy lives for other values, commitments and joys that are not so easily enumerated.

Jesus did, and he invites us to listen to the depth of our hearts. The key to the treasure is in the field of our souls. There is a pearl of great price hidden there that, once discovered, draws us beyond the calculated life to one of joyful freedom--and perhaps risk and pain, too, which are always part of loving.

Before I graduated seminary, I, like all ministry students of that place and age, faced a panel of faculty members who could ask anything to test our knowledge and fitness for ministry. I have forgotten all but two questions from that inquisition, and only one is perfectly clear: “What would you die for? For what are you willing to go to the wall?”

Age 27 and foolish, I muttered an absurdity about a theological doctrine with which I had recently been infatuated. I’m surprised they didn’t laugh in my face. But a few years later I met people who truly did and would go to the wall for a holy love, a cause, a person God had given them to love.

Then I knew: My seminary inquisitor had asked me to name the pearl of great price, the treasure in a field that was so essential to my soul, my heart, my love that it freed me to rise above a life of mere calculation to give my life freely in service of more than my own petty concerns.

Find your freedom, the place where you don’t count the costs, and you will know yourself, you will know God and the treasure which the Loving Mystery gives you.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

2011-07-19T09:42:00.001-05:00

Today’s text

Matthew 13:31-33
He put another parable before them, 'The kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the biggest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air can come and shelter in its branches.' He told them another parable, 'The kingdom of Heaven is like the yeast a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour till it was leavened all through.'

Reflection
For hours we sat in an emergency room last night. Our names are not important, only our anxieties and hope.

Two women, one man, waiting to find if a troubled body and soul could find the help needed to birth a new life (please God) in the stuffy box of a room where we sat and felt the walls close in on us.

Hours dragged on, medical staff made promises of updates seldom fulfilled, and we stood by, sometimes praying, sometimes working our phones, periodically stroking and reassuring the soul in the bed that she’d done the right thing to come to this room where agitation and sickness only seemed to grow as the hours wore on.

But we were there, standing by, doing what little we could, waiting for breakthrough moments when our words might penetrate the thicket of emotions binding the soul who made the difficult decision to come … finally … to the admission that life is too much too hard to handle all alone.

There were a few moments when our blessings and reassurance made it through, and this morning I am certain we are glad we stood there, providing presence if nothing else, because we cared for one troubled soul and for the mysterious leaven of God in our hearts moving us to hope that something new, fresh and alive might come.

Sometimes it’s hard to hope that the future can be different from the present. Troubles bear such crushing weight upon human hearts that there seems no way out. Trapped in the human condition, however that is for us, the future stretches out, holding nothing more inviting than the dismal repetition of present bondage.

But leaven was stirred into our souls somewhere, sometime, raising in us the desire to be in this dingy, cramped room, loving as best we can. The leaven worked its magic in us; we know not how, exactly. So why not now, again, here?

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, July 14, 2011

2011-07-14T09:26:00.002-05:00

Today’s text

Matthew 13:24-30
He put another parable before them, 'The kingdom of Heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everybody was asleep his enemy came, sowed darnel all among the wheat, and made off. When the new wheat sprouted and ripened, then the darnel appeared as well. The owner's laborers went to him and said, "Sir, was it not good seed that you sowed in your field? If so, where does the darnel come from?" He said to them, "Some enemy has done this." And the laborers said, "Do you want us to go and weed it out?" But he said, "No, because when you weed out the darnel you might pull up the wheat with it. Let them both grow till the harvest; and at harvest time I shall say to the reapers: First collect the darnel and tie it in bundles to be burnt, then gather the wheat into my barn." '
Reflection
The day of the lilies has begun to fade. Their stems stretch five feet high, the ambitious a bit more. Many of the stems now are stumps, their orange and yellow blossoms having trumpeted their beauty, opening and closing with each cycle of the sun through summer skies.

Maroon and deep purple blossoms open now as dog days approach, and the mercury pushes 90. Their colors divert attention from crisp, faded remnants of the vivid orange that have had their day and now hang loosely from dozens of stems. They hang, poised for me or the next breeze to separate them from the veins through which their life blood flowed. They fall into the soil and become the hope of a tomorrow that I know will come.

It will come. I know this even as I savor the late colors and remember carefully pulling the weeds that, two months before, threatened to choke the young plants. Button weed, thistles, switch grass and a half dozen others I cannot name were stronger, more aggressive, and I pulled them, careful not to break off young lilies only beginning to throw their height.

Sometimes I was clumsy and broke one, which is heartbreaking. A unique created thing, God-fashioned to sing divine beauty, was denied its day in the sun--and I, such joy as it would have given.

My spring-time concern for the weeds appears overwrought now. What few weeds remain long since have been shouted down by the lilies insistence that they, not the weeds, are the rightful heritage of the flower beds. Their beauty is stronger than the early aggressiveness of their opponents in the soil.

Beauty wins again. So it is and will be next year … the next, forever. Let those with eyes … see.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

2011-07-13T09:16:00.001-05:00

Today’s text

Matthew 13:24-30
He put another parable before them, 'The kingdom of Heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everybody was asleep his enemy came, sowed darnel all among the wheat, and made off. When the new wheat sprouted and ripened, then the darnel appeared as well. The owner's laborers went to him and said, "Sir, was it not good seed that you sowed in your field? If so, where does the darnel come from?" He said to them, "Some enemy has done this." And the laborers said, "Do you want us to go and weed it out?" But he said, "No, because when you weed out the darnel you might pull up the wheat with it. Let them both grow till the harvest; and at harvest time I shall say to the reapers: First collect the darnel and tie it in bundles to be burnt, then gather the wheat into my barn." '
Reflection
What today am I to nurture? What goodness is here that I might seek to grow?

The questions are painful and pressing when one considers a loved one in pain, an adolescent living on the edge of trouble, a beloved soul who is hurting themselves--or the bottomless needs of the world’s poor strafed by evils of indifference, addiction, abuse or oppression.

It is so tempting to be angry at evil, to rail and condemn people, systems and forces that maim and deface human life. Evil fascinates the soul. It seduces us to imagine that it is more powerful than it is, and that we can and should try to reach into others lives--or our own--and pluck out such evil influences we see or feel are there.

But the life of faith, it appears, is not about fascination with evil and its destruction, whether in our souls, those of others or the systems of the world, although we must seek to change and improve what we can.

Real change, truest growth comes not from the elimination of life’s weeds but in caring for the wheat, trusting the seed of God implanted in one’s soul and in the soil of the world.

Even in the poorest of places, in the most troubled adolescents and yes, amid the brambles of our own souls, seeds of the kingdom, the tender plant of God’s precious life grows.

Fixing our eyes on the beauty of this growth, on the health that exists amid the brokenness, on the goodness that is present even amid its opposite, we see the beauty of God, the strength of seeds of life, the wonder of the kingdom.

Tend to this, and divine beauty uproots our fixation with what is wrong with life, peace replaces anxiety and hope pushes fresh stems through sadness.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

2011-07-12T08:43:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

Matthew 13:24-30

He put another parable before them, 'The kingdom of Heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everybody was asleep his enemy came, sowed darnel all among the wheat, and made off. When the new wheat sprouted and ripened, then the darnel appeared as well. The owner's laborers went to him and said, "Sir, was it not good seed that you sowed in your field? If so, where does the darnel come from?" He said to them, "Some enemy has done this." And the laborers said, "Do you want us to go and weed it out?" But he said, "No, because when you weed out the darnel you might pull up the wheat with it. Let them both grow till the harvest; and at harvest time I shall say to the reapers: First collect the darnel and tie it in bundles to be burnt, then gather the wheat into my barn." '

Reflection

What quickly impresses me is the unperturbed response of the farmer to weeds in his fields. No startled exclamation or condemnation springs to his lips. He accepts the news as a matter of course. These things happen, and the best we can do is to wait and continue on without worry.

Who or what has disfigured the field is of no concern. He points no fingers and wastes no time trying to find or destroy the source of contagion.

The weeds will disfigure the field for now, getting in the way of the wheat. But the seed will produce its goodness in its time.

This is how it is, and it’s best to accept what is--evil and good, beauty and ugliness, love and hate, care and apathy inseparably mixed--as opposed to declaring war on the weeds, lest your violence destroy what is good.

Our job is not to root out evil, as if we could. Would to God that the makers of our nation’s foreign policy better recognized this, fewer innocents would get killed.

The same is true of too much Western Christianity, which historically (and especially in evangelical circles) has been more concerned with pointing out sin and impurity than with the goodness of the seed God sows everywhere in human hearts, celebrating and nurturing divine beauty in mortal hearts.

Trust is the word that comes to mind. Just trust. Good and evil, beauty, ugliness and all the rest are and will remain inseparably mixed in this world--not to mention in our own hearts.

Ours is not to sort it out, but to see and trust the beauty of God in the midst of it all.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

2011-06-28T09:35:00.001-05:00

Today’s text

Matthew 11:16-19

'What comparison can I find for this generation? It is like children shouting to each other as they sit in the market place: We played the pipes for you, and you wouldn't dance; we sang dirges, and you wouldn't be mourners. 'For John came, neither eating nor drinking, and they say, "He is possessed." The Son of man came, eating and drinking, and they say, "Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners." Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.'

Reflection

It is not just Jesus’ generation. It is every generation.

Unrest distresses the soul. Deep at heart, we are confused about what we really want, better, what we truly need. So we keep ourselves busy, distracted, drowning out the echo of our inner emptiness.

And we look askance at the missions of the Spirit that come each day to our spirits, missing what is right before us.

Distrust colors the heart. We evaluate and discover what is wrong and flawed with what comes each day, missing divine beauty and invitation where they so regularly appears in words and faces and the new light of every sunrise, little asking: from what immensity, from what infinitely generous dimension does life (and my life) appear?

Blind to Spirit, we live dissatisfied lives, dismissing beauty, simple graces and moments of happiness and freedom as diversions or exceptions to “real life,” instead of invitations to truly living.

John appears, gripped by God’s overwhelming holiness, demanding a change of heart and action to honor the author of all life, and he is dismissed as a crazy man. Jesus parties with outcasts and no-counts--the well-heeled, too, and he is discounted as a party boy.

Both were an appeal of Spirit to human spirits, giving knowledge of the God who can never be fully known, the Mystery who seeks us in all beauty and comes in every small grace.

We discover what we want and need, amid surprising joy, as we give ourselves to the moment, to the now, receiving what is given there, ready to accept and receive rather than dismiss whatever the Spirit sends our way.

The Spirit’s missions of life come each day and in every moment. The wise do not dismiss but receive what comes, trusting that each is an invitation to know and become the Seeking Love who seeks them.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, April 5, 2010

2011-04-05T09:20:00.004-05:00

Today’s text

1 Samuel 10:6

The spirit of Yahweh will then seize on you, and you will…and be changed into another man.

Reflection

I want this change. I want to be changed, not into some other person but into the man I am when the strong Spirit of God’s grace and goodness fills me. I want to bring out of my mind and heart the best I have, the best I have received from God through creation and all the days of my living.

Sometimes it happens, unleashing joy and immense freedom. I become what I am, powered by the Spirit of Love, who moves me into the fullness of my beauty and strength that I may pour it into the task of blessing and caring for the daily duties and people who have been given to me.

There’s no feeling like it in the world. The heart is filled with gratitude, and satisfaction of soul fills my being as I know that at least for one moment or hour I have done or said what I was born to say and do.

So it is when the Spirit of God fills us. Samuel, the Prophet, was sent to find and anoint Saul, a tall, strong, handsome youth who was traversing the hills of Palestine, looking for his father’s lost donkeys. Saul was to be king, the first one over Israel. But he could not lead until the Spirit seized on him and made him a different man, the leader God saw in him.

May it be so also for us.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

2011-03-22T09:07:00.001-05:00

Today’s text

John 4:7-10

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, 'Give me something to drink.' His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, 'You are a Jew. How is it that you ask me, a Samaritan, for something to drink?' Jews, of course, do not associate with Samaritans. Jesus replied to her: If you only knew what God is offering and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me something to drink,' you would have been the one to ask, and he would have given you living water.

Reflection

If you only knew … .

But I do know. I have drank the water of life and been refreshed by its sweetness. I have been lifted beyond the plane of earthly concern to know that everything I strive for on this earth is nothing compared with the ecstasy of being encompassed in the mystery of a love that has neither beginning nor end.

I know. I have dwelt in that delicious space where all earthly care is illusion and only you are real.

And I want to return, to flee this desert and rest at the well of life where all that matters is being with you, tipping high the cup until the water runs down my chin with no worries because there is always more.

It is hard to say what this water is. Divine presence? If so, it is a presence at once in me and surrounding all that is. It fills me with complete peace and freedom from every anxiety--and the knowledge that only this … flow of love … matters.

If you only knew ... .

I have known, yet the concerns of this age--human respect, accomplishment, reputation, the demands of time and work--replace you in my soul.

There is no time to sit and drink, no time for the refreshment of life, no time just to be with you at the well of life waiting for the moment when the waters of your soul fill my own and teach me again what I already know--and what I so desperately want to feel … again.

So again I pause from all doing and ask, “Give me something to drink. I want to live.”

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, March 1, 2010

2011-03-01T09:39:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

Matthew 17:1-3

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There in their presence he was transfigured: his face shone like the sun and his clothes became as dazzling as light. There in their presence he was transfigured: his face shone like the sun and his clothes became as dazzling as light.

Reflection

In a moment of graced awareness, they saw you as you are, Jesus, and they knew you as the light of heaven. I want to live in this awareness always.

My reasons are not noble, although they are quite human.

I have stood inside the light of your presence and known you as you are. Everything else goes away when I am in that space, and nothing else matters. I know everything, and I know nothing except that you are the love that holds all life … and me. And that’s all I need.

I want to live and die in that awareness. I have seen people do it. I always thought they were better than me. I suppose they were.

But I feel no shame in this, only an invitation to come to this place again and again, hoping that graced moments will come, and the light of heaven will wash from me all that is not awareness of you.

Then the light of your eternal day will illumine dark and anxious places of my soul, and I will know that the beginning and end of all things is love. My soul will breathe free, and for a fleeting time I will know the joy for which you created me.

And I will thank you, even as I do now, for this moment.

For again I come to you, and again the light of heaven warms a winter morning.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, December 16, 2010

2010-12-16T09:05:00.001-06:00

Today’s text

Matthew 1:18-23

This is how Jesus Christ came to be born. His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph; but before they came to live together she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being an upright man and wanting to spare her disgrace, decided to divorce her informally. He had made up his mind to do this when suddenly the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, 'Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because she has conceived what is in her by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you must name him Jesus, because he is the one who is to save his people from their sins.' Now all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken through the prophet: Look! the virgin is with child and will give birth to a son whom they will call Immanuel, a name which means 'God-is-with-us'.

Reflection

Your promise is always the same: Immanuel, God is with us.

Jesus, you are the sign of Immanuel, the flesh and blood mark of what is always true. You are the physical presence of the constant abiding of the One who knows no boundaries, the Mystery who is ever here, everywhere.

You invite me to enter the true state of things, to come out of illusion into the reality of Abiding Presence.

I may live as if life is what I make it. I may imagine that I am largely on my own on this green planet, save those nearest and dearest to me. I may dwell in the fantasy that I face my trials and sorrows alone and that my joys and small victories are shared only by those closest.

I may imagine, but imagining is not the reality that You Are. You Are everywhere I am and go. You Are grace that makes and savors life, my life with every true and false step on the way. You Are love embracing each moment of existence.

Your appearing in the arms of your mother and under the watchful vision of your confused earthly father speaks the truth I most need: Immanuel, God is with us.

In life and death: Immanuel. When I feel alone: Immanuel. When the load of my beloved is too heavy: Immanuel. When I am fail and sin: Immanuel.

Immanuel comes in a sign I can hold in my arms, with a tender face I can trace with my fingers.

He comes to save me from my sin, the most important of which is the big lie, the illusion that I live anywhere but in the presence of Immanuel.

Save me today. Make my heart dance to the music of Love ever near.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

2010-12-08T08:45:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

Isaiah 35:4-6

Strengthen all weary hands, steady all trembling knees and say to the faint-hearted, 'Be strong! Do not be afraid. Here is your God, vengeance is coming, divine retribution; he is coming to save you.' Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf unsealed, then the lame will leap like a deer and the tongue of the dumb sing for joy; for water will gush in the desert and streams in the wastelands, the parched ground will become a marsh and the thirsty land springs of water.

Reflection

Our God comes not with vengeance but to restore sovereignty. Vengeance does not best capture the reality.

God is the power of deliverance at work in the universe. God’s delight is to save. God comes to reorder life, to set things right, to establish that God rules. God is the final and ultimate power over a cosmos that threatens to devolve into chaotic disorder.

The end is always joy. Sorrow may endure for an evening, but joy comes in the morning. This is the constant message, the profound hope that runs throughout all of Scripture. The reason is simple. This has been the experience of those who have looked and prayed for God’s deliverance in every age.

Deliverance may not come in the form we want. Our family struggles may not be resolved. Our cancer may not find healing. Death and pain may come to us and those we love.

But in the midst of human struggle, God comes.

That’s the message of hope to which we cling in all times. Joy starts the moment our souls begin to trust that God will come to deliver our souls from despair and dissolution.

Joy and strength do not return to reinvigorate our bodies when all we want or pray for finally happens. Our souls rise from dead when we are lifted by a simple, single truth: God comes to us and always will.

The living hope for appearance of the One who is the Power of Deliverance makes us strong in ways we doubt we could ever be. The strength we hold is not of our making, and it is more powerful than all that disfigures life and tempts to despair.

It lifts weak arms and troubled heads. It turns desert hearts into streams of living water. It gives silent souls songs to sing and moves lame legs to dance to the music of God’s future, which is life, always life.

Be strong. God shall come, and you will laugh.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

2010-12-07T10:01:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

Isaiah 35:3-8

Strengthen all weary hands, steady all trembling knees and say to the faint-hearted, 'Be strong! Do not be afraid. Here is your God, vengeance is coming, divine retribution; he is coming to save you.' Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf unsealed, then the lame will leap like a deer and the tongue of the dumb sing for joy; for water will gush in the desert and streams in the wastelands, the parched ground will become a marsh and the thirsty land springs of water; the lairs where the jackals used to live will become plots of reed and papyrus. And through it will run a road for them and a highway which will be called the Sacred Way; the unclean will not be allowed to use it; He will be the one to use this road, the fool will not stray along it.
Reflection

The prophet speaks of the joy of returning home for a people long separated from the place they belong. This is one of the great stories of Hebrew Scripture, the deliverance return home of exiles.

I have seen the anguish of exile. As a journalist, I walked through refugee camps on more than one continent. The language, culture and skin color of the refugees were different in each case. But the single question on their lips was always the same: When can we go home?

Home may have been in shambles, ravaged by looting, bombs and fire. They may have known or suspected that their physical dwellings no longer existed. It didn’t matter. Their hearts’ desire was the same … home. I want to go home.

Every strange face of a journalist or aid worker was one more person to ask the sad question: When? Will it be soon?

I dreaded the question. I had no answer, and the answer I suspected might be accurate was depressing. I would shake my head, look at the ground and say, “No, not soon,” all the time wondering if the honest answer was, “not ever.”

Almost every person I met longed to return home. Their eyes said it without words, “I need to return to my place in the world, to the place I know, to the place that knows me. Until then, there is no peace.”

Such longing is the ground from which the prophet Isaiah’s joy springs. The land, the animals, all nature participates in the exiles’ joy as they walk the road home, a holy road that only the faithful could walk, only those who kept hope alive, only those who were not reduced to foolishness of despair by interminable waiting for a release they could never assume was coming.

When release comes all nature lights up with the joy of souls whose hearts’ delight is coming true. Such feeling is not unknown to us. We well know what happens in our hearts and in the entirety of our outlook when the sun comes out after a long or deep sadness.

The hopeful message is that God is the loving power of deliverance that seeks to bring us home to the joy for which we are intended, to the places we know and the places that know us, to our true home. Foolishness is failure to trust the good and gracious will of the One whose name is Deliverance.

I could speak of this as a physical coming home to a place we once knew or perhaps a place we never knew, until we stumbled into a somewhere that became a true home for us, after years of never really having a home.

Or we might speak of the home as the spiritual discovery that we have spent much of our lives wandering about, going places, doing work, living in ways that left our souls uneasy and dissatisfied.

There is a coming home, here, too, a return to the Love for which no name will do. When we begin to feel and know it’s stirring, our lame hearts leap in joy and streams of water flow in the wastelands of our hearts. And we know: This is the sacred way.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

2010-12-01T08:33:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

Matthew 3:5-9

Then Jerusalem and all Judaea and the whole Jordan district made their way to him [John the Baptist], and as they were baptized by him in the river Jordan they confessed their sins. But when he saw a number of Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism he said to them, 'Brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming retribution? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance, and do not presume to tell yourselves, "We have Abraham as our father," because, I tell you, God can raise children for Abraham from these stones.

Reflection

Come as you are, beyond all presumption. That’s what I hear, and it’s a good word, one I need.

The day arrives, and I see opportunities that promise growth and goodness, but a sinking feeling wafts through me as my mind enters the possibilities. Entering the future I perceive means more work, more dedication, more than time or energy allows.

Quickly, I am cast back upon my limitations, knowing the strength of my abilities and will are not up to the tasks that I see as most crucial. I need help. I cannot stand alone. Others must stand with me.

This makes me part of a crowd to which I want to belong, the crowd of faceless and nameless souls who made their way to John and Baptist to confess their sins, their failures of will, nerve and goodness.

He did not refuse them. No shaming tone colored his voice as they came. We are told nothing of what he said to them, only that he received them willingly with acceptance, it appears. And he baptized them as a sign of their desire to change and be more fully given to God’s dream for their lives.

He thundered no anger or denunciation upon them. That was reserved for the entitled and presumptuous, those who imagined they didn’t need what John offered.

But what is that, and why does it still draw … me?

John called people to stand in the river shallows beside him, without or fear or shame. He invited them to put away all arrogance or presumption that they had life figured out or that they were any but human and needy.

Through John’s bluster and demand, a deep whisper echoes. “Come, bring what you are, your weakness and need, your failed attempts to fulfill the promise of your humanity. Come stand with me. There is a place for you here, and you will never be cast out.

“Come and taste the rule of heaven.”

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

2010-11-30T08:46:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

Matthew 3:1-3

In due course John the Baptist appeared; he proclaimed this message in the desert of Judaea, 'Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is close at hand.' This was the man spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said: A voice of one that cries in the desert, 'Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight.'

Reflection

For what should I repent? I can list a dozen things, but my heart is in none of them.

I really don’t want to change. I am attached to the way I live and see things. The thought of changing how I see (and pigeon-hole) people and situations is harder work than I care to do. I am comfortably stuck in patterns of living that feel better than any alternative, if only because I know them. They are my ruts, familiar and well-worn.

My heart knows I can’t change anyway. I am stuck with the same sadness and fears that long have hemmed in my life. As much as I want to be happier, stronger and less able to be hurt, nothing will change unless you change me, O Lord.

Fear holds me back, which proves that again that I am 100 percent human. Fear is always the root of our problems and sorrows, our hatreds and our resistance to grow into your dream of what our lives could be. There is no greater enemy.

Fear keeps us from letting down our guard to enter a new way of life, a new way of being. John the Baptist (Jesus, too) called it the kingdom of heaven, the administration of the heavenly king, a rule quite unlike governments we know.

John describes this kingdom as a threat to all that resists it. This new godly administration will violently wipe away everything that is contrary to its way.

I don’t think John got it right. He understood a new king, a new rule was coming, but he failed to grasp how radically different the rule of heaven is from anything we have ever known or felt.

God’s new kingdom strikes at the root of our problem: our fear of each other, our fear of being hurt, our fear of losing what we think we most need, the fear moves us to strike at others, the fear that stops us from opening our hearts and being truly human with each other so that we may grow into God’s dream for our lives.

The kingdom of heaven, unlike earthly kingdoms, rules not by force but through the persuasion of love. The king appears in the form of Jesus, our brother, inviting us to enter a circle of blessing. The mercy of forgiveness and unmerited grace pours through him from the heart of God, drawing us into a new arrangement of things where each passes along blessing and grace, receiving the same in return from others. The circle of blessing melts away our fears, whispering that the rejections and pains we feel, the threats to our life and health, the sorrows we know do not finally matter.

They don’t matter, for heaven rules, and heaven is this circle of blessing with neither beginning nor end. When you get caught up in this circle, in God’s kingdom--if only for a moment, you feel the freedom from fear that changes you from the inside out. You know: the circle of blessing is more real and powerful than anything you fear.

The kingdom of heaven is near, always. The only thing it threatens is your fear.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, November 29, 2010

2010-11-29T09:05:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

Matthew 3:5-10

Then Jerusalem and all Judaea and the whole Jordan district made their way to him [John], and as they were baptized by him in the river Jordan they confessed their sins. But when he saw a number of Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism he said to them, 'Brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming retribution? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance, and do not presume to tell yourselves, "We have Abraham as our father," because, I tell you, God can raise children for Abraham from these stones. Even now the axe is being laid to the root of the trees, so that any tree failing to produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown on the fire.

Reflection

Long ago an image appeared in my prayer, a tree. It stood in the back field behind my aunt’s home, across the street from where I went to grade school. A small yard surrounded her house, and then the land dropped precipitously to a narrow stream that cut across town from the northeast to the southwest, on its way to the Apple River.

In my meditation, I saw that tree, thick at the trunk, tall and strong, an oak or spreading maple. It rose from the grassy field around the creek, limbs stretching wide, its foliage so thick with wide green leaves that the sun could not reach the ground beneath it.

But there was no tree in that field behind my aunt’s home. It appeared only in my prayer. In the inner eye of heart, I saw people coming out of the sun to rest under the tree, finding shelter from the sun’s searing blast.

I did not go there. I was the tree. This was the desire of my heart and the call of God to me. Somehow I was to be that tree, a place of shade and rest from the heat of life. Souls could come and just be there, free from the wearing heat of the day, at home in the calm shade of grace, strong and unwavering as that tree.

That was--is--the good fruit that my Lord commands me to bear. It is written on my soul, and I cannot escape it. The voice of one’s inner purpose can get drowned out amid the noisy distractions of living. We can ignore it. We can pretend God’s call is romantic nonsense.

But (I think) it never goes away. It is always there amid the myriad voices in one’s mind. It stirs feelings of restlessness and longing when we move too far from it, and it calls us home through that nebulous, vague sense that somewhere along the line we have lost something important--ourselves, the core of what the Loving Mystery has written on our hearts. As long as that voice niggles deeply in us we are not totally lost; we can still hear our Lord speaking, calling us to peace.

I don’t know if the Pharisees and Sadducees felt this niggling any longer or if they had ignored the calling of Spirit in their lives for so long that that their ears could no longer hear. They were trees of God’s shelter for the people, and John was calling them back to themselves, calling them to produce the fruit of blessing, help and hope for which they had been fashioned.

As harsh as John’s voice sounded in their ears, I hear also a call of grace from the wounded heart of God, and a promise: God will cut down that which doesn’t bear fruit. There is much too much in me that needs cutting down and clearing away so that this one tree, the one in my aunt’s grassy field, may grow strong again.

John’s harsh message sounds like grace to me.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, November 18, 2010

2010-11-18T11:43:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

Colossians 1:15-16

He is the image of the unseen God, the first-born of all creation, for in him were created all things in heaven and on earth: everything visible and everything invisible, thrones, ruling forces, sovereignties, powers -- all things were created through him and for him.

Reflection

Formless substance passes through you and becomes a world, a universe of relationships and order, purpose and beauty. No, I say, more: Substance itself flows from within the Mystery you are into surprising existence.

All is made in you, an expression of your own life, of you who are Life, the flowing fountain of Being. All passes from and through you, bearing the gift of existence because you will it; you want it.

It is your nature that life should be, that the substance of your hidden heart, the content of your all-surpassing mind should be shared with that which doesn’t yet exist, so that it may exist.

This tells me all I need to know of your nature. You live to give life, to make life, to share the Mystery which you are so that we and every twig and tree in the stark autumnal woods should be.

So the face of my brother, Jesus, shouldn’t surprise, the face of one given, of one who loves his own and loves them to the end, whose heart is fixed on healing a world that threatens at every point to separate from the Source (you) from which it springs eternally every moment.

He is the Image of the Eternal Giver, the face of the Eternally Given, and the life we are is, too.

Words fail. I have none to capture the mystery of what I see and feel. My hopeless meanderings of thought cannot corral the wonder you are.

I stand in awe, constant and holy wonder knowing that all I see--and am--flows from the hiddenness of your divine being, each an expression, a clue to the Mystery of every age: Who are you? From what do we--and all life--spring?

You are the all-generous Source who gives life to what is not. I am that which is not life, given life as holy gift.

It is your nature to give. It is your work to create life, life that shares in your nature, your image in multifarious manner and expression.

You are giver, and you are gift, the gift we have simply by existing. By existing we are alive with the life of you, O Infinite Source, Flowing Fountain, Unceasing Generosity.

This is how I name you, words of praise for you whom I have no chance of ever understanding. May my overwhelmed wonder and tortured prose praise you.

It’s all I’ve got.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

2010-11-02T09:53:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

Ephesians 1:17

May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you a spirit of wisdom and perception of what is revealed, to bring you to full knowledge of him.

Reflection

I fell into a pattern of prayer more than a year ago that continues to appear from time to time. I was writing a small book when I first noticed I kept returning to a particular phrase.

I did not want the book to flow from my mind, but from a deeper and truer place in my being. I wanted to experience oneness with the words and ideas that flowed from the end of my fingers, so that there was no distance, no separation between what appeared on the page and what I felt within.

The words needed to express what my soul knew by way of deepest feeling and intuition. So, each morning I knelt in the place of my writing and prayed: “May I hear the voice within the voice that renders all other voices irrelevant.”

I sought that voice that speaks within my own being that, when I hear it, all else flees my heart, all anxiety and uncertainty, all other truth and awareness.

Following this prayer, I would write.

I do not know if I can describe the sensation or awareness that frequently arose from within me in this process of putting fingers to the keys. I always knew when the words were forced, coming from mere thought and not from some hidden point within me where my spirit and the divine spirit rested comfortably within each other, abiding.

I could feel it. I knew when the words where right, and when they were clever ideas but not the expression of that deeper voice. When I heard it I did not need to ask whether the words were true, for they resonated with the calm of a grace-filled love that filled the soul with the sublime sweetness of utter peace, often with tears.

In such moments, the voice I heard within, the voice that spoke back to me from the computer screen, was so much greater than my own, more calm, utterly certain and unperturbed.

Yet, it was my own voice, speaking divine wisdom and truth through my experiences and struggles, which had become the medium for the voice of the Loving Mystery who was pleased to join divine Spirit with my frail and mortal spirit … to speak.

And, I think, this prayer of Ephesians was answered: “May … the Father of glory give you a spirit of wisdom and perception of what is revealed, to bring you to full knowledge of him.”

There was a voice inside of my own to which I listened. It spoke wisdom I do not possess and gave knowledge, however full, of the Unimaginable One, of you my Lord, Holy and Loving Mystery.

In that time, nothing else mattered. All other voices were irrelevant. All that mattered was hearing, listening, feeling and speaking from the point of soul where my spirit and your own merged into a single speaking of total love for a crazy world … and for me.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

2010-10-26T09:24:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

Jeremiah 31-34

'Look, the days are coming, Yahweh declares, when I shall make a new covenant with the House of Israel (and the House of Judah), but not like the covenant I made with their ancestors the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of Egypt, a covenant which they broke, even though I was their Master, Yahweh declares. No, this is the covenant I shall make with the House of Israel when those days have come, Yahweh declares. Within them I shall plant my Law, writing it on their hearts. Then I shall be their God and they will be my people. There will be no further need for everyone to teach neighbor or brother, saying, "Learn to know Yahweh!" No, they will all know me, from the least to the greatest, Yahweh declares, since I shall forgive their guilt and never more call their sin to mind.'
Reflection

They will all know me.

What is it to know you, Holy One? How can I say that I know you any more than the squirrels scampering across the patio can know me?

They bark curses at me when I rake up their autumnal bounty or startle them. Standing off, they assume a belligerent stance, protecting their turf, ready at my slightest twitch to scurry up the backyard birch, toenails ripping through peeling bark.

Do they know me? I suppose, but only as the alien who invades and occupies their space from time to time--and only as threat, a beast of which to be wary.

But they don’t know me any more, I suppose, than I can know you.

But somewhere and somehow I have come to faint knowledge that you are not threat, though you are always alien to me.

No, maybe you are a threat. You threaten the understanding of life and self that I fall into every time I think I am alone, every time I feebly imagine that life is only what I make of it, that we are cast-offs here on this minuscule but oh-so-wondrous planet.

And you are as alien to me as I to my squirrels, as they keep sentry over the bonanza summer’s sun has yielded, sustenance for winter’s long cold.

You are alien because you are love and unending mercy, who casts my failures and sins into the deep from which they shall never reappear. My soul is alien to such love, or is it?

Even now I know a love--for myself, for this beautiful earth and for this screwed-up rat race of a world where fear and callous meism moves so much of what we do.

Even now, I love it, and I love it with a love that is here, in me, alien though it is, for it is born of higher and infinite heart, so far beyond my own that I am reduced to the status of the squirrels.

Yet, it is your pleasure that I should know this moment, this love … you, … and fulfill again, your promise.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, October 21, 2010

2010-10-21T09:51:00.003-05:00

Today’s text

Psalm 84:2-3

My whole being yearns and pines for Yahweh's court. My heart and my body cry out for joy to the living God. Even the sparrow has found a home, the swallow a nest to place its young: your altars, Yahweh Sabaoth, my King and my God.

Reflection

The place of your presence is hope, my abode, my home. So why do I wander so far, driven by forces, from within and without, that I neither understand nor command?

I long for home. Bring me to that inner palace where I feel and know myself surrounded by eternal arms of unfailing mercy.

Even now, through the grayness, this home calls me to my heart’s desire. I see, within my hidden soul, a life, my life, surrounded in the darkness by your embracing presence, a watery cushion conformed to the contours of my life, lest any part of me slip beyond the divine circle of your care, constant and silent, ever there.

And I lie within your constant silence, an orb, an ellipse of life within your Love, and within myself stretches a child, arms and eyes reaching for daylight; an infant within, waiting to be born.

It lives. It is me, O Lord, that deepest element of the life that I am, awaiting full birth into whatever glory your divine DNA encoded into the mystery of my life.

I see all this, clearly, yet my soul is a wandering vagabond, coursing the earth and despairing days as if it has no home, no identity except that assigned to it by others, some in care others not.

And all the while, this inner palace awaits my return, calling to me, whispering my name--the one I forget--until I return to the one place where I may know the joy of the sparrow upon her nest.

So with these few words I step toward home, the inner palace where all that matters is you and me in the secret silence, where I am born … anew.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

2010-10-13T09:24:00.002-05:00

Today's text

John 14:1-3

Do not let your hearts be troubled. You trust in God, trust also in me. In my Father's house there are many places to live in; otherwise I would have told you. I am going now to prepare a place for you,and after I have gone and prepared you a place, I shall return to take you to myself, so that you may be with me where I am.

Reflection

It is important to know your place.

Everything Sunday morning a ritual is acted out on the step at the front of our sanctuary. Readings from the Bible are read, and children are invited forward to sit on this step to hear the children’s sermon.

Children rush … they run forward to beat me to this step because I have a place, my place, right there in the middle. But I am too slow. They beat me to it. They look at me and giggle.

I try to squeeze in, and they push their skinny butts together so that I can squeeze in. But I can't, so I must sit on the floor in front of them. This is my place they tell me.

So I sit on the floor and talk to children, as they line up on that step and sit with me. In mock anger,I shake my finger at them and say, “You’re in my place.” But they just laugh … because they are in their place. It belongs to them, and they know it.

We are all in our place: We belong there. We are safe there; we are wanted there … and cherished. So we tell stories and laugh, and they make fun of me, and between the lines of all that happens we realize how much we love each other.

And the love that we share there, sitting together, is not ours, but flows from the reservoir of an infinite love that draws and holds us together.

Whether the congregation knows it or not, whether they see and recognize it or not, whether they have ears to hear what is happening, we are a living sacrament, sitting right there before them. We act out and make present the central truth of our lives. The truth: There is a love that is for us, a love that always has a place for us, a place with our name on it.

Right there on those steps … heaven appears. The love of Jesus enfolds us and silently whispers in our ears: 'You belong. You belong to me. In my love there is a place just for you … and it is yours forever.'

This day, O Lord, let us know our place.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

2010-10-12T10:15:00.001-05:00

Today’s text

Luke 18:1

Then Jesus told them a parable about the need to pray continually and never lose heart. 'There was a judge in a certain town,' he said, 'who had neither fear of God nor respect for anyone. In the same town there was also a Widow who kept on coming to him and saying, "I want justice from you against my enemy!" For a long time he refused, but at last he said to himself, "Even though I have neither fear of God nor respect for any human person, I must give this widow her just rights since she keeps pestering me, or she will come and slap me in the face." ' And the Lord said, 'You notice what the unjust judge has to say? Now, will not God see justice done to his elect if they keep calling to him day and night even though he still delays to help them? I promise you, he will see justice done to them, and done speedily. But when the Son of man comes, will he find any faith on earth?'

Reflection

A comic appeared in last Sunday’s paper, a single frame. A thick, muscled arm descends from a cloud, setting an enormous elbow on the ground. A huge hand extends to a stump where a small person grasps that hand and says, “On the count of three.”

There was nothing funny about the cartoon. I suppose the artist sought to comment on the lunacy of arm wrestling with God, “on the count of three” or any other count.

But such contests are not quickly over and done as the drawing suggests. They go on … and should.

Oh, we lose every skirmish. We are not going to wrestle God to the ground and demand whatever it is that we want.

But in the struggle with God we might find ourselves in the presence of a Mystery worthy of our worship, a mystery who in the end is Love, even when our heart’s desire doesn’t happen, even when what we fear becomes the bitter crust of our reality.

It is not uncommon for me to sit with souls who rail again heaven for the injustice and pain in their lives. Often as not, heaven has nothing to do with their pain, which has obvious causes closer to home.

Even then, we want what we want, an end to pain, relief from threats to those we love and healing from whatever illness, misfortune or just plain bad luck that makes life hard.

“Step in God. I demand that you do something about this. I’m talking to you God.”

For the strong ones, the blessed ones, the fight against heaven doesn’t soon end. They persevere. They press on, pressing home the justice of their cause, their honest need for blessing and relief from their unending run of miserable luck.

Blessed are they, for you, my most holy Lord, are real to them, even when your silence brings them pain.

Blessed are they, for they will wrestle with you (losing every skirmish) until the mystery of your love breaks their heart, and they stand, like Job, before the inscrutable chances of life, blessing you for being a God who refuses to be reduced to our size.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, September, 23, 2010

2010-09-23T06:00:00.000-05:00

Finding joy

I don’t think I ever met a child I didn’t like, at least a little.

I love the playful innocence of children who make fun of me during children’s sermons. I love the unfiltered connection between what they feel and what they say.

I love feeling the brand new tender life of infants. I love the wonder and openness of four-year olds discovering the world. I love the spontaneity and fidgety energy of third-graders who can barely keep their butts attached to a chair.

And I want to bless them all.

This is biggest reason I love children: They elicit the deepest beauty and care that is in me. When I am with them I become the love that I am. They draw from my soul the best that is in me.

I feel their acute need to know that they belong, and I ache for them to feel treasured for what they are--irreplaceable expressions of life who is Life. Each enters the world a craving center of near-infinite need, crying out for blessing.

I want to supply that blessing. Truth is, however, I also want to do it for myself. For in blessing them I discover in my heart the One who is Blessing Himself.

God is this energy, this gravity who continually draws me to people and places I can love so that my heart may bring forth whatever hidden decency and beauty might yet be there.

This is all average, of course. This is how God works. This is how human beings are.

We are made for blessing. We crave it, needing to bless someone else just as much, if our lives are to know the joy that God intends.

This is why I find so much joy at baptisms. It’s why baptism is one of the two most sacred acts of the church’s communal life. We are drawn into the central activity of God--blessing tender and fragile life, there to see who God is and for what we are made.

It’s not just that we bless a child with the infinite grace of an unimaginable Love. Together, we also engage in an action in which we act out the central purpose of our life and discover the place where lasting joy is found.

We bless a human soul with a love we can’t begin to understand, only to discover that this unsurpassable love is also in us--and that joy is found in blessing.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, September 6, 2010

2010-09-06T09:47:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

Luke 15:1-2

The tax collectors and sinners, however, were all crowding round to listen to him, and the Pharisees and scribed complained saying, 'This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.'

Reflection

Tell me, Jesus. How did your church become narrow and judgmental? You weren’t, and you paid a high price for your failure.

Deep unrest roils the souls of many U.S. Christians and churches. They are exercised by the imperative to protect the country and its children from the perils of gays or liberals or Islam and even from quieter Christians who are less adamant (or convinced) of such moral judgments.

Ironically, so many who fill the pews of American congregations have more in common with the Pharisees than with you. Right and wrong, good and bad, holy and secular are precisely parsed in their souls--one to be avoided the other embraced.

That’s what the Pharisaic spirit does, and it appears n every age, faith and society. But it is uniquely bothersome when it’s found among those who confess your name. They should known better

You embraced the secular, the bad, the wrong, a host of messy souls who populated the wrong side of the social divide. You didn’t tell them to go take a shower before they got too close.

And they liked you, too. They elbowed each other out of the way to hear what you said. They leaned close lest a stray word drop ungathered in the dust.

They wanted what was in you: the radiating Spirit of divine welcome that does not judge but draws into the gravity of an all-possessing love.

I have felt that welcome and long for it the more. Moments appear when we stand near a soul in whose presence all pretense fades, all concerns of judgment or rejection disappear. Soul encounters soul. Communion occurs, and self-consciousness flees like a lost dream upon awakening.

The life of needing to being judged and judging others--also ourselves--is the dream (the nightmare) that disappeared in those messed-up souls. It fled your presence.

So they flocked to you, seeking to be with you--soul to soul--divine welcome and human neediness wrapped up in a single embrace.

Yes, it’s true. The dream--the nightmare--of judgment is a human fiction, created from the need of threatened selves to imagine that some of us are better than others. Some are to be feared and kept out lest they spoil the lot.

Bu tin your presence, Jesus-- enfolded in that single embrace, illusion disappears in the warmth of morning light that drives off the shadows of night, and we see: the judgment of He who is Love is all that matters.

Only messed-up souls can know this, so they come to you, not the Pharisees, as do I.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, August 16, 2010

2010-08-16T09:41:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

Luke 13:10-13

Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment." When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.

Reflection

I see no hesitation in you, Jesus.

You do not wait for her to ask for anything. You do not question her to check out whether she is good or worthy. You do not look for signs of faith or wonder if she is looking for God’s kingdom.

You do not know if she is a gentle soul or whether all that she has suffered has made her bitter and nasty, a scourge on the village whom everyone avoids.

The condition of her heart at this moment seems of no concern to you.

Your concern is singular: she must be set free.

All that matters is your mission, carrying out your work so that another kingdom, another way of being appears and beckons us to enter.

The way of your kingdom makes us nervous because it obliterates our judgments. We judge the worthiness of a human life by many measures, some known to us, many more utterly unconscious. Some we call good; others we reject.

That is not your way.

You do not walk the path of judgment and condemnation. Despite centuries of misunderstandings and misrepresentations the church has taught, you are not into guilt. You are not the Acme Judgment Company.

You are in the setting free business. You make things whole again, releasing bodies and souls from the bitter pains that enslave them so that they--that we, that I--might live free from all that prevents me from being human, graced and gracious.

That’s why you do not ask whether I or this crippled woman is deserving of your care. It is irrelevant.

All that matters is that we be set free and enter a way of being where judgments don’t count, even our judgments upon ourselves, because you have named us all beloved, leaving no place for guilt or deserving.

Such is the desire of your divine heart, a desire made clear when you heal and bless without request.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

2010-08-04T09:43:00.002-05:00

Today’s text

Luke 12:32-34

'There is no need to be afraid, little flock, for it has pleased your Father to give you the kingdom. 'Sell your possessions and give to those in need. Get yourselves purses that do not wear out, treasure that will not fail you, in heaven where no thief can reach it and no moth destroy it. For wherever your treasure is, that is where your heart will be too.'

Reflection

Recently, I was accused of employing a “heavy political and one-sided lens through which [I] have presented the ill-conceived ‘social gospel’ from the pulpit.”

Initially, I was profoundly angry and disgusted, not to mention surprised. I could more easily have been accused of being an unreformed German pietist who over-spiritualizes the gospel and is too little concerned with its social and political implications.

For the past decade, my ministry emphasis has been on personal spirituality and prayer, discernment and meditation, the knowing of God with heart and soul that relies less on the mind than on inner experience and intuition. I have studied, spoke and written hundreds of thousands of words about the teaching of great spiritual teachers of the Western Christian tradition.

Being accused of following an ill-conceived ideology rankled me. It also made me wonder if the person making the charge understood the term he was using, not to mention the deeply Christian convictions of the movement he used to insult me.

The social gospel movement was Protestant in origin and became prominent in the late 19th early 20th centuries. Proponents applied Christian ethics to social problems, such as social injustices, inequality, liquor, crime, racial tensions, slums, poverty, bad hygiene, child labor, weak labor unions, poor schools and the danger of war.

The movement encouraged people to be involved with the world’s problems, analyzing and responding to them from perspectives rooted in their Christian convictions.

A few of the movement’s theological beliefs were far too optimistic and died in the trenches of WWI. Most notably, some movement founders taught that human beings by their own efforts could build the kingdom of God and usher in the millennium.

But the influence of the movement outlived its founder’s optimism and helped shape significant events in the 20th century, such as women’s suffrage, the fight against poverty and the civil rights movement. The soaring rhetoric of Martin Luther King Jr., ringing with the language of Jesus and the prophets, reflects the deepest instincts of the social gospel movement.

The hunger and poverty ministries of major church bodies and many Christian organizations such as Lutheran World Relief and Feed my Starving Children also bear witness to the way this movement raised the consciousness of Christians in North America, even among believers who did not accept some of the theological baggage of its original founders.

Reflecting on this history, my anger fades, and I realize that I stand among good company: the company of Christians who seek to take their beliefs out of the sanctuary to address suffering and injustice, the company of those who don’t rush by Jesus’ warnings about the dangers of wealth … or his words about justice for the poor.

Sometimes the compatriots in this company have been right and helpful to the entire church and the broader society; sometimes they have been naïve and not well informed: just like the church in this and every age since Jesus.

And it is to Jesus that I return each day, listening for the assurance that urges me to trust that the Father cares so much for me that I can throw off my self-concerned worries and seek God’s love and justice for those who need.

I urge you to do the same. You will find good company, the company of Jesus.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

2010-08-03T09:00:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

Psalm 33:20-22

We are waiting for Yahweh; he is our help and our shield, for in him our heart rejoices, in his holy name we trust. Yahweh, let your faithful love rest on us, as our hope has rested in you.

Reflection

I wait for you, My God. Impatiently, I wait. Come and lift the burden of past days’ sadness that I may again rejoice with uplifted heart in freedom of spirit.

I have no will or power in my soul to lift myself beyond grayness. I do not even want release, not if it requires much energy for me. I have no effort to give.

My soul is hostage. Only my fingers can move and pray. My soul cannot lift itself above the chair.

So come to me through my fingers. Let my hands become the media of your presence, the path of your approach.

Use them to surprise me, to break through sad helplessness. Move them to find the right words, the precise sound needed to startle my soul into life, my will into action that, I, with you, may fight through this gloom of soul and find the joy of your saints.

I am not alone here. You come, even through fingers. Who knew fingers could form tears of relief and release?

Many. All who have felt the gloom, bore the sadness of the hour and found you, sitting and waiting in the depths, expecting them--now me--to show up. Just sitting there … and smiling.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, July 29, 2010

2010-07-29T09:49:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

Luke 12:16-21

Then he told them a parable, 'There was once a rich man who, having had a good harvest from his land, thought to himself, "What am I to do? I have not enough room to store my crops." Then he said, "This is what I will do: I will pull down my barns and build bigger ones, and store all my grain and my goods in them, and I will say to my soul: My soul, you have plenty of good things laid by for many years to come; take things easy, eat, drink, have a good time." But God said to him, "Fool! This very night the demand will be made for your soul; and this hoard of yours, whose will it be then?" So it is when someone stores up treasure for himself instead of becoming rich in the sight of God.'

Reflection

‘The demand will be made for your soul.’ It sounds grave, the facing of death. Truth is the demand for one’s soul occurs daily.

It is a banal occurrence. It happens quietly in the course of the common and average. The demand for our soul is whispered in each encounter with every person in all circumstances. Most often we fail to hear it.

The manner in which we meet the final demand for our soul, when we face our demise, depends entirely upon on whether we have heard and responded to this whisper--and sought the wealth of God’s unfailing presence.

So what is the condition of my soul, O Lord? How well am I? Am I ready for what comes this day?

Has this soul of mine spent enough time encircled in your Loving Mystery? Have I found freedom rapt in the awareness of your love, or do I dwell in the anxiety of my fears and inadequacies?

Is my soul harried with many things, or do I know myself, my center, the core of being from which you want me to speak and act? Can I live with purpose moving deliberately amid the daily and distracting, able to pause, give, bless, laugh and listen?

The rich man sought his life in wealth and ignored the condition of his soul, dying in poverty. He’d starved the one thing he could take with him.

I know his name: Average. He is the average American. He is me … and most of those among whom I live and move. We are not evil, just busy, and often as not we are wholly out of tune with the condition of our souls. Until, of course, big challenges come, and our souls are demanded of us.

Then we know, and we regret our neglect and wish we’d done something more, paid attention, spent our time a differently, so that we knew how to touch and find the immovable rock of your loving life at the center of our souls.

The day to become rich is this one, now. And God is eager to give the wealth of the kingdom to those who come with empty hands and a willing heart.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

2010-07-28T09:39:00.002-05:00

Today’s text

Luke 12:13-15
A man in the crowd said to him, 'Master, tell my brother to give me a share of our inheritance.' He said to him, 'My friend, who appointed me your judge, or the arbitrator of your claims?' Then he said to them, 'Watch, and be on your guard against avarice of any kind, for life does not consist in possessions, even when someone has more than he needs.'

Reflection

Why are you here, Jesus? You clearly grasp the reason that resides at the core of your being and the nature of your life.

Settling family squabbles over money and possessions has no interest to you. You are not defined from the outside, by what others want or expect. Frustrating the expectations and perceived needs of those who came to you doesn’t bother you.

You are not anxious about pleasing them or winning them over with a wise word or felicitous answer to their query.

You quickly dismisses the role of arbiter or judge and frustrates the desire of those you might have “won over’ with a wise or pleasing answer.

I don’t think you go out of your way to trouble or annoy people, although there are other stories in the Bible where it appears that you are dong exactly this. Not here.

Here you are clear that settling fights or offering an equitable solution to a family problem is an annoying distraction that you brush away like a pesky fly.

You knew this did not connect with the substance of your being, the depth of your soul.

Your soul was focused on life, what brings it, what takes it away, of what life consists.

And it certainly doesn’t consist of most of the things on which we spend much of our time and substance.

I think that is at the core of frustration for me on some days. When the day is done I wonder: how much of this day flows from the depth of my soul, from deepest loves and convictions?

How much of it truly satisfies the heart because it comes from or leads to my deepest loves--and the Deep Love who holds me?

How much is done to satisfy expectations or desires foisted on me from the real or perceived expectations of others, expectations I sometimes take on even when they distract from the deepest substance of my soul, from being the person I am, the one you call me to be?

Today, Jesus, let me be true to the substance of my soul. I hunger to be so clear about my reason for being as are you.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

2010-07-21T09:20:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

Luke 11:1

Now it happened that he was in a certain place praying, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said, 'Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.'

Reflection

Teach us to pray. The request is simple and unadorned. The desire beneath it is anything but. It arises from a morass of feeling and intuition that is as ancient as the human soul.

God speaks life into existence and from the depth of that life sounds an echo searching for its Source, knowing it is the child of an unknown immensity, craving to touch, to feel, to move in seamless rhythm with that from which it comes and to which it belongs, and there, finally, to find its peace.

The desire to pray is the restless heart’s hunger to know the mystery of its own life, of what and for what it is made--and to taste how dearly it is treasured by the Immensity to whom it owes its existence.

There is no rest until the soul echoes the voice of its Loving Maker, and the sound of that echo resonates in harmony with the Creator’s voice, so that the soul feels encompassed in the immensity of a love, a mercy it can never fully know.

It is in this resonance of prayer that I know you Holy One, and all my anxious worries and questions fall silent.

I understand your friend’s simple question, “Teach us to pray.” It is the searching echo of your search for us; it is the divine hunger within that my life should dwell fully within your immensity, moving in perfect harmony with the love you are.

I do not choose to want this. Your loving word fashioned such desire into our souls. You speak us into existence, and depth of soul echoes its answers. Prayer is that echo.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

2010-07-07T09:55:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

Colossians 1:9-10

That is why, ever since the day he told us, we have never failed to remember you in our prayers and ask that through perfect wisdom and spiritual understanding you should reach the fullest knowledge of his will and so be able to lead a life worthy of the Lord, a life acceptable to him in all its aspects, bearing fruit in every kind of good work and growing in knowledge of God … .

Reflection

I wonder if any idea has been more misunderstood and abused than that of “the will of God.”

Millions of lives and myriad gallons of blood have been sacrificed to this idol in unnecessary and idiotic wars, to say nothing of programs of ethnic and religious cleansing carried out in God’s name.

When someone utters the phrase “will of God” in conversation, I hear echoes of puritanical preaching and sense the shadow of a great juggernaut hanging over our heads, ready to fall from the hand of a God who is eager to squash poor sinners for their peccadilloes.

At the very least, the phrase conjures up the notion of unpleasant and painful fates to which we must acquiesce and bear with stoic patience. They are “the will of God” don’t you know. Ours is not to question why.

Perhaps I overstate, but in most cases I feel the “will of God” presented as a power that stands over and against me, not for me, making me wonder who this God is and why I should love or serve such an arbitrary force.

But I do, however poorly, because the bitter and cruel nonsense attributed to God’s will is so far removed the knowledge of God of which I have but a pittance. But I am thankful for the meager knowledge I have been given.

It comes not from thick books but from the intuition of love that flows through the heart whenever I consider Jesus and the experience of those who first knew and believed the truth he is.

They found freedom and joy bubbling up in them, moving them to acts of generosity and great hospitality. Knowledge of God and God’s will did not move them to fear or to rail against infidels. It moved them to deeper humanity and grace.

Their knowledge was not the dusty concepts of books but of a love that abided and held them. They knew this love and the hope it stirs, and it enabled truest humanity and joyous purpose for which they sacrificed, even their lives.

Such lives are worthy of you, Holy One. They are the embodiment of your life, inspired by true knowledge of who you are and what you desire for us and from us.

Some claim knowledge of you and your will, but their knowledge doesn’t inspire love. They are still in the dark.

‘Knowledge’ that doesn’t inspire love is darkness.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

2010-07-06T09:32:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

Colossians 1:3-4

We give thanks for you to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, continually in our prayers, ever since we heard about your faith in Christ Jesus and the love that you show towards all God's holy people because of the hope which is stored up for you in heaven.

Reflection

Love through hope: that is the sequence, and it stirs both hope and skepticism in me this morning.

You call us to yourself, Holy One, promising a love that outstrips every other we know or seek. Falling into the Love you are, our souls fly open, no longer grasping at life but relishing all we see and touch as a gift from your open hand.

Knowing you stirs hope that all our days will be immersed in the grace that transports our souls in moments your love frees us from gray despondency.

This land of grayness has been my home in recent days. More than anything it is the church that confines me there.

I need to feel the love hope stirs in your holy people, as you call us. But are we really?

I find too much, that is not love, that doesn’t reflect the holy presence of the love you awaken in depth of soul when we know that we eternally belong to your gracious care.

The hope stored up for us has not so impressed itself on our busy, distracted hearts that its seed can grow into the love that I need to find, if I am to escape the land of grayness.

Disappointed, I often turn from the church in despair, distancing myself from the people and place that first taught me that I have a soul and that every grace points to that Source for whom I yearn for union.

I turn from the home that long has pointed me toward Home, the people who at their best have been a sacrament of your welcome. I turn from those I need, disappointed that they cannot love any better than I can--or sometimes not nearly as much.

Can we, who are distracted, too busy and often apathetic and callous, bear the love you awaken in your people in so many other times and places?

I am skeptical, yet I hope. Mine is a fearing hope that wonders if we can truly be your people, brimming with the love you are, awakened by the hope that we are forever yours.

Remind us again that we are forever yours. Perhaps, today, we will listen … and learn to love.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, June 17, 2010

2010-06-17T08:53:00.001-05:00

Today’s text

Isaiah 65:1

I have let myself be approached by those who did not consult me. I have let myself be found by those who did not seek me. I said, 'Here I am, here I am!' to a nation that did not invoke my name.

Reflection
I seek you, my Lord. Yet, my seeking is wane and weak. So much gets in the way, blocking the path, and I let it happen.

And still you seek my heart; still you haunt my mind; still you call in my restlessness, stirring me in the hunger I cannot satisfy, the yearning that knows no fulfillment.

I know where fulfillment lies. It rests hidden in the moment of mercy, the exquisite timelessness when nothing matters but your enveloping love.

In that blessed time--in that time alone, I know you. All other knowledge fades to beige in the bright light of Presence, and the completeness of your love completes my soul, rendering irrelevant everything else that I think I know.

I have lived too long and too far removed from the time of knowledge, but even now in the nagging and longing of an unsatisfied heart I feel you. I hear you calling, ‘Hear I am. Right here!”

You wave your arms in my hunger. You shout aloud in my yearning. You beckon me to come home and to find you who are eager to be found.

For I am never lost to you, no matter how far I wander from the places of true knowledge where you are all and all is in you.

And you find me again, even here and definitely now.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

2010-06-15T08:29:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

Luke 8:26-28

They came to land in the territory of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. He was stepping ashore when a man from the city who was possessed by devils came towards him; for a long time the man had been living with no clothes on, not in a house, but in the tombs. Catching sight of Jesus he gave a shout, fell at his feet and cried out at the top of his voice, 'What do you want with me, Jesus, son of the Most High God? I implore you, do not torture me.'

Reflection
Sanity, reason, hope, healing--that is why you come, Jesus, not to exact torture on a world bent on forgetting its Source, its Creator, its purpose.

You come to us to restore us to our right mind, for much of the time we live insane lives in one way or another.

There is no apparent end to the variety of ways we lose our minds. The old prophet, Isaiah, asked the operative question: “Why do you spend your money on that which is not food, on what does not satisfy?”

Like children finding their voice, we insist on finding and going our own way, thinking that autonomy, independence is the highest human expression. But we do so ignoring the markers of what it is to be human.

We seek ourselves in our fun, in lives overburdened with activities, in work, success or the obsession with making and having and doing enough. We cram every possible minute with some activity or another.

And often we wonder why our bodies and minds are restless; why do the ways we invest our hours do not totally delight the heart and leave us at peace, at rest?

Since we are insane, we scheme to find what we are missing and make plans to do more of the kinds of things we are already doing, expecting different results, the very definition of insanity.

Why have you come to us, Jesus?

Not to torture a confused and harried race, not to exact punishment for forgetting who we are or for ignoring our need to know the One who put us here. Not at all.

You come to restore our sanity that comes only when we listen to you, when we know you, when we hear the voice of a love that enters our insanity with a quiet word of mercy.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

2010-06-09T08:50:00.001-05:00

Today’s text

Luke 7:36-39

One of the Pharisees invited him to a meal. When he arrived at the Pharisee's house and took his place at table, suddenly a woman came in, who had a bad name in the town. She had heard he was dining with the Pharisee and had brought with her an alabaster jar of ointment. She waited behind him at his feet, weeping, and her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them away with her hair; then she covered his feet with kisses and anointed them with the ointment. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, 'If this man were a prophet, he would know who this woman is and what sort of person it is who is touching him and what a bad name she has.'

Reflection

You did not care, Jesus. You are unfazed by the tension that charged the air.

The irony is that the one who criticized you for being no prophet knew nothing of prophecy. If he had, he would have known that what glorifies God is mercy to the poor, the widow, the outcast, the alien. He would have understood that the Holy One desires mercy not sacrifice, compassion not self-righteousness.

But faith for him was a matter of division--separating the clean from the unclean, the divine from the common, the holy from the unholy, the righteous from the unrighteous.

Draw lines and stay on the ‘right side’ and all is well. Cross the line and you enter the disfavor of God and the rejection of those who know better.

His religion was a tool of prejudice, rejection, arrogance and self-aggrandizement. It was a device to lift him above the common run of men and women.

His understanding was a tool of detachment, with which he kept humanity’s crying needs at arms length, pretending he was not as needy or vulnerable as the woman weeping at your feet, Jesus.

It’s an attitude with which we are most familiar. We turn on the television and see CEOs and politicians able to accept anything except responsibility for their errors, failures and shortsightedness. Masters of the universe--then and now--are quite alike. Image control is always at the front of their minds.

Of course, denying one’s humanity and frailty is a sure way to fan mistrust, destroy relationships--and avoid receiving anything from you.

For the face you turned to the world showed little concern for purity or image control. You had nothing to give to those living the illusion of their mastery of life.

You were and are a paradigm of the prophetic faith of Isaiah and others before you who were consumed by the incomprehensible mercy and grandeur of the God who transcends our every thought and attempt to understand.

Faith in the face you reveal has nothing to do with drawing lines or separating oneself from impurity. It is about trusting an unspeakable mercy and loving each other in the holy fellowship of gratitude for what we will never fathom.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, June 3, 2010

2010-06-03T08:24:00.001-05:00

Today’s text

Luke 7:12-16

Now when [Jesus] was near the gate of the town there was a dead man being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a considerable number of the townspeople were with her. When the Lord saw her he felt sorry for her and said to her, 'Don't cry.' Then he went up and touched the bier and the bearers stood still, and he said, 'Young man, I tell you: get up.' And the dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Everyone was filled with awe and glorified God saying, 'A great prophet has risen up among us; God has visited his people.'

Reflection

The moment of reunion most moves me in this story. I can see it. Jesus stands beside the litter where the widow’s dead son had lain.

The young man stands between him and the widow, as Jesus, hand on his shoulder, moves him gently toward his astonished mother.

I do not see her face, but I feel her amazement in that split section before startled disbelief turns to exhilaration. And I feel my own tears at the pathos of the moment when the lost is returned and life is restored, not just to the young man but also to his mother.

This scene is frozen in time that I may leisurely take it in and know its meaning, a meaning that is better known by heart than mind. So I listen to my tears to hear what they say about human longing (or at least mine) and about the mystery of God.

What do I desire? What do I, like the widow, need returned to me by the One called Lord, because he has the power over life and death?

The widow surely enfolded her son in her arms and felt the life restored to his body. Surely, she wept, reunited with the one she most needed and wanted for her to know joy and the protection of a loved one.

The lonely silence of a too-quiet house and an empty soul was broken apart by happy tears in the presence of love personified. And she stepped into the arms of love personified: no, not the love of her child alone, but an incarnation of the love that she didn’t need to hold … because this is a love that holds her.

Stepping into her son’s arms, she stepped into the Love who seeks the soul on every day of every street. In this precious moment, she felt and knew beyond all the shadows of all doubts that Love who is Lord, the power of life who brings life from our every death.

I want to know what she knew. I want that love to melt away every sadness and still all anxiety. I want to step into the arms of love personified in every encounter and relationship.

I hunger for days and places this is real, and I grow weary when the joy of the woman is nowhere in sight, when life is more like a sad march to the grave than a celebration of reunion with my heart’s desire

That’s my want. But then it is what God wants, too.

My want--so average and human--is not different from the desire of the divine heart. It is a mirror image of what God wants to give every day, and especially on days we trudge along as if to a cemetery, instead of to a great party of life and love that is without end.

Restore to us the joy we lose, Lord of Life. This day, may we step into personifications of your love present on our way.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

2010-06-01T09:37:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

Luke 7:11-13

It happened that soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, accompanied by his disciples and a great number of people. Now when he was near the gate of the town there was a dead man being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a considerable number of the townspeople were with her. When the Lord saw her he felt sorry for her and said to her, 'Don't cry.'

Reflection

She had every reason to cry. A widow without a son to care for her was bereft. She had no means of economic support and no one to care for her in her old age.

Her son’s death condemned her to a life of loneliness, scraping by on the handouts of others in a community that would treat her as an object of God’s disfavor--and their own. You can almost hear the tongues wag.

“She is about as low as you can get.”

“I heard she was difficult to get on with.”

“They say she didn’t treat her family well.”

“And now they’re gone.”

Nothing like this ever happens today, of course. We are much more compassionate than ancient societies that treated widows as disfavored by God. Nor do we cut ourselves off from those who suffer great loss and grief, or those who suffer from mental illness, or from the loss of job or foreclosure, or from other tragedies. Right?

A deep repellent force within us resists getting too close to suffering and misfortune. We may say, “I don’t know what to say to her,” but most of the time this is cover for deeper psychological reactions we don’t understand.

Most of those reactions spring from fear of vulnerability. Even the idea that we need to know what to say comes from that fear. We want to be in control and being with those who suffer reminds us that we are not.

Being with those who grieve, who are caught up in irresolvable dilemmas and pain reminds us that it could be us, and we resist that awareness. We don’t want to see it, for to see it shakes us into the undeniable reality that we are mortal.

In our society talking about death, about one’s mortality is an obscenity, something that is not done in polite company--or perhaps in any company.

But there are those among us who run into burning houses, so to speak. They do not shy from the grief of the mourner, the struggle of the cancer patient, the fear of those for whom the future impends threat.

And there are parts of our fearful souls that want to be involved, that want to care, that may even want to say with Jesus, “Don’t cry. I am here.”

Those parts of our souls are inhabited by the Spirit of Jesus. His Spirit is not hard to recognize. It is the desire to care, the yearning to live beyond the safety of our walls, the craving to become the compassion we feel in depths of our soul that we too seldom visit.

That Spirit is known in the hope that the touch of Jesus will also raise us when our life is slipping away. And it continues to say, “Don’t cry. Grace is here … and life. No matter what.

Pr David L. Miller

Thursday, May 27, 2010

2010-05-26T23:08:00.004-05:00

Today’s text

John 16:13-14

However, when the Spirit of truth comes he will lead you to the complete truth, since he will not be speaking of his own accord, but will say only what he has been told; and he will reveal to you the things to come. He will glorify me, since all he reveals to you will be taken from what is mine.

Reflection

I shy away from any notion that I can possess “complete truth.” How can my finite mind and heart grasp that which is total, complete, leaving nothing out?

And how would I ever be aware of it even if, for a moment, I knew such truth? With what measure would I judge it to be true and real, let alone complete?

Yet, isn’t this your outrageous promise, Jesus, that I will be led into complete truth?

And this is to say … into you, for you are complete truth.

This is our crazy confession. You are the ultimately real, the solid, the lasting, the unerring and unchanging.

Looking into your face, perceiving the reality that you are is to gaze into the Truth which is before time, the Truth which will remain when our old earth is frozen stone-cold and gray, rotating silent and lifeless for countless millennia around a burnt-out sun, collapsing beneath its own dying weight.

But we will not end in such lifeless futility. For you send your Spirit, the Spirit of truth who lives and breathes your present Presence, encompassing my little existence.

Your Spirit’s hungry desire is to lead me--and all--into complete Truth--into you, so that the life that I am--and the life that is in all--is taken into the fullness of the loving intimacy and eternal life that you share with the One you call Father.

And there, in this intimacy, we shall live where life is complete, where there is nothing but life.

I cannot imagine this, except in rare moments, moments even now. For moments come when some sweet Spirit transports me into a ‘space,’ into a moment of truest being in which I know complete love--and recognize it as truth unchanging and unassailable.

And I know: this is not a truth I possess, but the Truth who possesses me.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, May 24, 2010

2010-05-24T15:06:00.002-05:00

St. Cashmere, pray for us

Cashmere Castillo was found yesterday.

He was eight. Full of play and mischief, he wandered too near the quick current of the Chicago River at a park near his home on the northwest side of Chicago.

It took a week to find his body. I think his school photo appeared in the paper every day that the search continued, and every day tears came to my eyes when I saw his face.

Dozens of stories go by us every week. Tragedies and successes, murder and mayhem fill hundreds of column inches and hours of television overage each week. Most of those stories pass by our eyes leaving no mark.

Then one comes along that grabs you by the heart and won’t let go.

I can’t say why this one has attached itself to my heart. Maybe I look into Cashmere’s young face and see the colors and contours of two of my grandsons, who share his Latino heritage.

Maybe it’s because I chase those boys around and witness the utter abandon of their playful joy that eliminates all awareness of danger. Maybe it’s because I know how easily what happened to Cashmere could happen to them.

Maybe the fragility of life is so real because I read and respond to the prayer list that hits my desk at the beginning of each week.

And maybe I will never figure out real reason why Cashmere’s photo pulls at my heart. I just know that the boundaries that protect me from caring about a hundred other stories in the paper disappear each time I see his photo.

May God grant him the fullness of joy. May he run free in the fields of heaven.

And may he be a holy saint revealing the thrill of being alive, the delight that God intends--and the joy that comes when we realize how fully we are loved and can love. May he teach us how utterly beautiful and gratuitous life on this planet is.

His young face teaches me at least this much, lest I forget. And I often do.

It seems profane to say it, but this child’s death has made me more alive. His face makes me aware that there is a love in me that hungers to get out. I didn’t create it. It’s just there. And I feel more alive when this love bursts the narrow confines of my constricted concerns.

This should not surprise anyone. God is love. Christian tradition said this from the start. To love, to feel love, to have love awakened within is to know God truly, literally, physically inside one’s body.

To feel love awakened is to know the Infinite Source of life within your own life, moving you beyond isolation, connecting you with the beauty and tragedy of living--telling you that all you are and all that is rests securely in the hand of the Love who reveals holiness in the face of eight year olds.

Pray for us, St. Cashmere. Break down our walls that we might truly live.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, May 20, 2010

2010-05-20T09:49:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

Acts 2:5-8

They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak different languages as the Spirit gave them power to express themselves. Now there were devout men living in Jerusalem from every nation under heaven, and at this sound they all assembled, and each one was bewildered to hear these men speaking his own language. They were amazed and astonished. 'Surely,' they said, 'all these men speaking are Galileans? How does it happen that each of us hears them in his own native language?

Reflection

It had been years, but it happened again last week. I joined hands with another man to pray. Seconds into my prayer for the healing of his heart and relationships, a soft and persistent river of sound flowed from his depths.

It was no language I understood, yet I understood everything. He was speaking in tongues.

A rhythmic pattern of consonants stumbling over a few vowels streamed from his lips in a counterpoint to my attempt to put his need into words. However strange, the stream of sound didn’t overwhelm or drown out my speaking. It moved in tandem, a continuo bass line beneath my prayer, a foundation holding it up, affirming plain language in an unexpected harmony.

It didn’t feel strange, nor was I was startled even for a moment. It all fit together. Two voices, two ‘languages’ in one human speaking, from the Spirit within us to the Spirit who was so far beyond us, seeking the full presence of the Holy Mystery who bound us together, though an hour before we’d never met.

I have no idea what my prayer partner was saying, nor do I feel any need to know whether my companion in prayer had any idea what was coming out of his mouth.

It didn’t matter. I understood that God was being praised, honored and sought. The core of our humanity was affirmed and expressed as words, understood and incomprehensible, flowed from us, bearing our need and hunger for the Inexpressible One, who transcends all human speaking.

Unity in love and purpose was spoken in a harmony of words the meaning of which transcended our abilities to comprehend.

Pentecost happened again. As always, it was a gift. We did nothing to make it happen, except, I suppose, to open our mouths and speak from our hearts.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

2010-05-18T09:36:00.001-05:00

Today’s text

Acts 2:1-4

When Pentecost day came round, they had all met together, when suddenly there came from heaven a sound as of a violent wind which filled the entire house in which they were sitting; and there appeared to them tongues as of fire; these separated and came to rest on the head of each of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak different languages as the Spirit gave them power to express themselves.

Reflection

Wind, fire, energy, movement … all in all it sounds like what happens when my grandsons visit, including strange languages.

The boys descend on the house with sound and fury and exhausting dynamism. Ethan, at two, the youngest, gestures emphatically, arms open wide as he declaims in a language unknown to me but for a stray word here and there.

So it is with the Spirit, and this shatters conventional understandings of church, worship and of being Christian.

The Spirit is about one thing: life.

From the beginning to the end of the Bible when the Spirit shows up there is life. With the appearance of the air, the wind, the breath, the Spirit of God, all the same thing, life happens. There is movement, energy, purpose, compassion and joy.

Without Spirit we are dispirited, disheartened, discouraged, dejected; the wind is knocked out of us. We don’t feel truly alive; our arms and spirits fall limp and lifeless.

So send out your Spirit, Jesus, the Spirit of your resurrected life, for I want to feel alive. I want to be alive.

I want to feel the pulse of your energy, joy and purpose in my inner being. I want to be filled with courage for the purpose of God, the desire of the Spirit, which is the fullness of life, not just for me but for all God’s creation.

The life to which you call us is not one of playing safe, being cautious, avoiding risks or fearing failure. It is life come fully alive, filled with courage and hope, a life beyond the fear of giving myself--all my energies and joys--to the world that you so love.

The Spirit moves the desire to pour myself out fully, so that when I come to the end there is nothing left to be given, for it has all been spilled out on the great field of living.

This honors you. This praises you and glorifies you who loved his own and loved them to the end, until all was finished and there was nothing left of you to give.

Can I live like that? Can I be so fully given? Can this heart so easily cowed and anxious at the normal exchanges of living begin to live into the fullness of Spirit, speaking the language of given-ness that every soul understands?

There are days, my Lord, my best days. May today be such a day. And tomorrow I will return again … with the same prayer.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, May 14, 2010

2010-05-14T09:47:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

Luke 24:49-50

'And now I am sending upon you what the Father has promised. Stay in the city, then, until you are clothed with the power from on high.' Then he took them out as far as the outskirts of Bethany, and raising his hands he blessed them.

Reflection

You blessed them. This is my favorite posture in which to see you, an image carved deep in my soul.

Perhaps it started in the old limestone church in Warren. From behind the high pulpit a mural looked back at me every Sunday. You were risen and ascending high in the air, your hands held head-high, your palms open and wounded in a gesture of blessing.

You looked down at your huddled friends in the painting and at us, a huddled few, gathered to go again through motions of standing, sitting, praying, singing and listening.

Week after week it went on, always under your gaze from the wall, as you silently blessed us, the confused and uncomprehending

Simple things, frequently seen, seem to leave the deepest mark.

The mural is still there, looking down on the generations who followed me in those pews. You are still there, Jesus, blessing them … and me. Only now, miles and years removed from the old church I carry the image in my mind. But it is no less vivid.

It tells me that blessing is what you are about, blessing the confused and uncomprehending, the failed and the fools, the stumbling and the wounded, the arrogant and those who believed they had no need of you or that room and fled as quickly as they could.

Sinners, all of us, that we much held in common, that and the truth that you bless us with a peace and presence that is ever for us, if we realize for the briefest moment that our lives are forever held in the mystery of those up-raised hands.

Silently, unceasingly, they tell us who we are and that we, who huddled beneath your gaze, are intended to live as free beloved, owing you nothing more than to be ourselves, that self that comes out to play and laugh when we know what those hands tell us.

I am sure I undershoot the mark, but for me this is the power from on high, the power, the freedom to be what we are, ourselves, and to give ourselves to those who need us without anxiety or arrogance, self-importance or worries about how we shall be seen or judged. This is power. And it flows from those hands.

You blessed me from that wall. Your hands told who I am, for what I am made and gave me the life you intend me to live. They tell me the power I will have from the Loving Mystery on those days I have the good sense to let you bless me.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

2010-05-12T08:57:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

John 24:44-46

Then he [Jesus] told them, 'This is what I meant when I said, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses, in the Prophets and in the Psalms, was destined to be fulfilled.' He then opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, 'So it is written that the Christ would suffer and on the third day rise from the dead … .'

Reflection

Destined … it needed to happen. But didn’t you have choices, Jesus? Surely you did, or you are not human like me, and I know that you are, though perhaps with fewer struggles over whom you really are and for what you were made.

You knew your destiny, and your decisions were guided by that knowing. You knew your life was to be a sign of the Father’s rule.

You knew every moment of your existence--of every person’s existence--was lived in the field of Loving Presence. You knew the truth you lived would be resisted and denounced.

You knew your life was a threat to ‘business as usual,’ a contradiction to life as we most often live it. You knew this contradiction would bring conflict and that faithfulness to God’s dream would destroy you.

It was destined, necessary, and you chose that destiny. I love you for this. You move me. You chose, and the life you choose is a portrait of everything I want, everything I most value and everything the world should and will be.

But try as I might may soul falls downcast when the things I do are not successful, when my life seems so forgotten and lived in a corner, so different from once upon a time.

Can I surrender to this destiny, to living and loving in my place, knowing my successes will be few and small, my failures common and my best labors soon forgotten or dismissed as having little import?

Can I choose, as you chose, the necessity of living and loving in the place and way the Loving Mystery has given me?

And why, oh why, should that last sentence bring such tears?

They are tears not of shame but of recognition of the central truth of one’s life: how small and yet how great one person’s life truly is … when the destiny of time, place and circumstance are not refused but chosen.

In that choosing, we--I--become as you, one who recognizes in the next task, in the day’s simple duties the destiny for which one came into the world, a simple destiny: to love, to give oneself, to choose one’s place and time as gift and grace, however great or obscure.

In that choosing, the Father’s holy kingdom shines amid whatever struggles, resistance or apathy prevails. But by choosing and living that destiny, in given-ness to our moments the Word in us is fulfilled, and the heart comes to know that this, alone, is enough.

Pr. David L. Miller

Saturday, May 8, 2010

2010-05-08T09:03:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

John 14:28-29

You heard me say: I am going away and shall return. If you loved me you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. I have told you this now, before it happens, so that when it does happen you may believe.

Reflection

Your friends hear you, Jesus. But they hear only that you are going away, and sadness with fear sinks their souls.

‘Don’t go,’ their hearts immediately cry. They can’t help it. The reaction is involuntary not chosen. They know only the sadness immense loss. ‘Don’t go,’ that is the entire awareness of their souls.

‘Don’t go. We have barely come to know you. Only now have we begun to know how you change us. We are more alive when you are here. The air is warmer and clearer. We feel lighter, safer and happier. Our hearts are secure in your nearness. We are less alive, no; we don’t really live without you.’

But the cry is not theirs. It is mine. I understand them completely. My soul languishes in sadness and distraction of its own making and confusion when I don’t feel you near.

I fall into self-preoccupation, consumed with my failure to live a truly human life; a life lived in joy, aware of its purpose, filled with the energy of eternity which is that glistening love with which you fill me in those times when I am most aware of your presence.

So don’t go, Jesus. When I don’t sense you near my life is but a half-life, a shadow life in which the light of your face fails to shine through the gray mask of my melancholy.

But you go, and you go in order to return. You come back to me again and again, appearing with the full gifts of the Father’s great and invincible heart to light my soul with joy. I know that you go to enter the fullness of the One who is Fullness of life and joy. You go so that you may pour the nectar of this living delight into souls who run dry.

So pour your life onto the dry dust of this soul that I may live as fully as you, brimming with a joy born not in pleasant moments but in the deep reaches of the divine heart.

Then I shall be alive, and all the death that clings shall be washed away.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, May 6, 2010

2010-05-06T09:16:00.001-05:00

Today’s text

John 14:25-27

I have said these things to you while still with you; but the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you. Peace I bequeath to you, my own peace I give you, a peace which the world cannot give, this is my gift to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.

Reflection

“Don’t let your hearts be troubled even when life is troubling.” That’s what you say this morning, my Friend. “My peace I leave you, even when life is troubling. The Spirit of Life abides with and in and around you.

“You have all you need, for you have my words, my life and my love ringing in your ears and stirring in your soul, surrounding you in the hearts of those who love me. You are not and never alone. You have me, and I have you.

“So don’t be troubled or afraid even when life is fearful and threats lurk unseen in the bushes waiting to pounce. Every trouble and fear is already overcome, overwhelmed, over-powered by that from which the universe springs, by Love Itself, and Love Itself abides every place, breaking the walls of tombs and fear.

“Even in the loneliest haunts of your soul, in the hollow halls of mind where your voice echoes weak and alone, longing for some presence to break up the fearful emptiness, I am there. Your silent voice is heard.

“Hear also mine: ‘Let your heart not be troubled, for I am greater than your heart, greater than your troubles.’ In the beginning, my love exploded, making a world in which I take delight, and my delight is for you. Never are you alone or forgotten. Love forgets not its own.

“Every moment, every trouble and fear, yes, every joy, too, is an invitation to intimacy; to come near; to speak your heart into the darkness trusting that the darkness has ears. Every moment is an invitation to know that I am the enveloping darkness you cannot see, surrounding and encompasses even the darkest and most fearful places in the immensity of Love Unimaginable.

“Nothing will steal you from the enveloping cloud of my presence.

“So don’t let your hearts be troubled or afraid. Even your troubles and fear are held in the grasp of life and love. In darkest moments, I whisper, ‘Trust. Believe. All is well. Come close to my heart. Bring all that is in your own, fear, trouble, the whole load.’

“You dwell in the field of my immensity. Everything does. And everything that will ever come to you is a door into a love of which you will never know the end.”

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

2010-05-05T09:41:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

John 14:25-27

'I have said these things to you while still with you; but the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you. Peace I bequeath to you, my own peace I give you, a peace which the world cannot give, this is my gift to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.'

Reflection

What is your peace, Jesus, if not the inseparable oneness you shared with the Holy Mystery, the Father?

Most often I confuse peace with imperturbability. It is undisturbed serenity, free from distress and disordered desire. But if this is peace, you didn’t have it yourself, Jesus, so how can you give it to me?

You were disturbed, angry, disappointed, distressed and deeply moved. Your generous heart knew pain and impatience over suffering and cruelty, hatred and apathy.

But did you also know some paradoxical peace amid the swirl of distress?

Part of me wants peace without distress, serenity freed from the tensions of living. But this doesn’t exist. It can’t be had, and I wouldn’t want it even if you gave it to me. For it would be a peace stripped of feeling for life. It would not know revulsion at hunger and suffering, or the swells love that wash over me when I touch and bless the heads of my little grandsons.

Who wants a life without such feeling? Such stirring within reflects deep connection with the world its needs and joys. Serenity without passion has nothing to do with you, Jesus. It is not an expression of your Spirit.

Still, I want peace, and your offer to give it draws me to you. I want to dwell, to make my home in the peace you knew, and the only way I can conceive of your peace is as unity, harmony, oneness with the Eternal Love to which your soul was transparent.

You lived in felt awareness of the loving delight in which the Father held you. You constantly knew your life was a singular expression of the Being of the One who is Love. Your life was not yours but the substance of the Infinite Source who is Life.

Dwelling in that awareness released joy, mercy and freedom from self-conscious anxiety so that a fountain of love flowed through you.

My lack of peace is comes because I lose awareness of truth you never lost.

I am no more separated from the Loving Mystery than were you, Jesus. My life at every moment is an expression of the Ultimate Source of Being and Love. It is always held, treasured and delighted in by a Love that beggars all description.

That’s what you knew Jesus. Always. That’s what my anxious self forgets.

But it is this awareness that you give to me, so that even now I feel the power of Being in my hands, my heart and my mind, and know again what you always knew.

Today let me not forget.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

2010-05-04T09:02:00.001-05:00

Today’s text

John 14:23

Jesus replied: ‘Anyone who loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make a home in him.’

Reflection

Tuesday comes. The day off ends, not that it was devoid of work anyway. Responsibilities and care intrude even on the most protected days.

But with the morning light, the unending to-do list asserts itself with unrelenting vigor. I suppose I should be thankful for good work to do, but I am not.

Insistent anxiety compels me to rush by these quiet, daybreak minutes and rush headlong into the fray. I’m driven to silence the nagging voice that hectors my mind until I can cross a clutch of neglected tasks off the list.

Peace of mind, I am certain, depends upon getting things done. Only then can the heart rest.

It’s a lie, of course. It isn’t true. The list will always be there. Faces and phone calls, administration and neglected conversations you will always have with you. (Didn’t you say something like that, Jesus?)

I cannot meet all the needs on the list, let alone do all that I demand of myself. Not even close.

This awareness splinters consciousness at the very point--now--when I want (and badly need) to dissolve all self-consciousness in you, so that there’s awareness only of Presence, so that I know that I am with and in you, so that I feel my being encompassed in divine immensity; so that this awareness fills every internal space, and the peace of oneness floods the mind.

A divided mind cannot have this awareness, only a mind that turns again and again from habitual lies to singular truth.

I love the awareness of oneness with you, so I keep your word, which, I believe, means waiting here, refusing the urge to throw myself into the day before my soul has had time to be with you and receive its freedom.

The word I keep is the truth that I am made by and for you. You hunger to dwell in me, even as I yearn to dwell in you. So being here, with you, must be the day’s first business, a quiet keeping of the truth in the face of noisy lies.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, April 29, 2010

2010-04-29T08:40:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

John 13:34-35

[Jesus said], 'I give you a new commandment: love one another; you must love one another just as I have loved you. It is by your love for one another, that everyone will recognize you as my disciples.'

Reflection

All my life I have read these words as an individual invitation and challenge. “Come,” you say. “Enter the love that I am. Be transformed by infinite warmth that welcomes you and always will. Then live your life in the warmth of my embrace.”

I still hear that, but now so much more.

Your words are spoken to community, a group. The love you are is the air your church is invited to breathe and to become. Breathe this air for a while, and grace becomes flesh, even in one’s own.

Sitting on the floor talking to children, goofy kids, hearing their memories and stories it occurs to me that we breathe that air, Jesus, the fresh breath of Spirit. They listen to each other as well as they can, and I have the urge to tell them how much I love them all. I want to gather them in my arms and love out of them anything that keeps them from knowing and feeling the wonder that each of them is.

I want to become the love you are for them, at least as best I can, which isn’t much I admit. But sitting there on the floor, laughing and telling stories, there is a moment when affection is mutual, and your command to love is utterly unneeded for loving is as natural and easy as looking at each other and realizing that we are not many but one.

Somehow, we are one beating heart in harmonious rhythm, moved by a force invisible as air but just as undeniable. It’s holy, and we are part of it, not as individuals but as a single body whose principle is an affection and care that feels limitless.

I’m not entirely sure how this happens. I don’t know what any of us did to open the door that let eternity flood the moment. Maybe we just opened our hearts and spoke of what we love, what makes us laugh and brings joy. Maybe we were just ourselves … beyond any fears that who we are or what we say isn’t welcome. That certainly happened.

And in its happening your command, your desire for us became as real as the hugs with which we sent each other on our way. And just then, loving as you love was no towering achievement or act of will, but a gift given in community by children who had no idea the wonder they freely gave to one tired soul.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

2010-04-27T08:46:00.002-05:00

Today’s text

John 13:31-32

When he had gone, Jesus said: Now has the Son of man been glorified, and in him God has been glorified. If God has been glorified in him, God will in turn glorify him in himself, and will glorify him very soon.

Reflection

It’s intriguing that this exclamation should come right after Judas leaves the room. Emotionally, the scene feels right, but it also makes you, Jesus, look too much like me.

It’s as if Judas leaves, and immediately you are freed to be … yourself, as if something hindered you from being the fullness of who you are.

That is not exactly good news to me, although I empathize with your feeling, if I understand what might be happening in you.

There is nothing more that I want today than to be myself, and it seems there is nothing harder to be. Why is that?

There are moments of flowing freedom when the feeling, the passion I have for the people and things I love streams effortlessly from my soul.

Defensiveness flees, self-consciousness disappears and the soul is a fountain of generosity. All that matters is this flow in which action and identity are one, and there is no separation, no distinction between the heart’s deepest desire and one’s words and acts.

But there are far too many moments when the mouth can’t or won’t speak the truth the heart knows. Fears and angers block the flow, and the core of the soul is lost from view. Try as I might, I can’t prime the pump and make it come out and reveal itself.

I want to return there; to find the center of the soul, to live from the fountain that I know is there, but something blocks the way.

Until it is removed, until those fears or angers or struggles subside, what I most deeply am remains hidden, and life has no flow.

I don’t know how I dare project all this on you, Jesus. But I can’t help but notice: Judas leaves, his simmering hatred of what is happening with you and your inner circle departs the room, and your first word is of glory.

And this?

Glory is the showing forth of the love in which you live, the love that lives in you.

Can it be that the humble love that is God’s glory cannot flow so smoothly or cleanly in the presence of hatred? Hatred and overheated emotions surely block the flow of your life in me, but in you, Jesus?

Did you, like me, feel stymied by fears or concern about the reactions of others? Did you struggle to be the soul you knew yourself to be, the soul of holy love, craving to be known and given?

I want to believe you are above all this, elevated beyond the frailties that hem in my heart. Certainly, you struggled with these more valiantly and successfully than I. But I wanted to imagine that if I fully could give myself to you, this struggle would cease for me--just as I imagined that it had for you.

But it can’t, for the love that is the heart of your soul--and so deeply hidden in mine--is endless and infinite. Revealing such a glory can’t help but be a struggle for finite, mortal flesh.

Revealing this glory is central struggle of our lives, the one that makes us human and opens our souls to the joy of knowing and being the glory you are.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

2010-04-20T08:42:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

John 10:22-26

It was the time of the feast of Dedication in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was in the Temple walking up and down in the Portico of Solomon. The Jews gathered round him and said, 'How much longer are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us openly.' Jesus replied: I have told you, but you do not believe. The works I do in my Father's name are my witness; but you do not believe, because you are no sheep of mine.’

Reflection

Where is the place of meeting? We can only notice this. No one can really tell us. We must answer: Do heaven and earth meet here? Are eternal realities known here?

It is the reason my fingers are on these keys, Holy One. This is a place of meeting, a temple where the holy and the mundane overlap and your beauty pours into and through me.

It doesn’t happen every time. Or does it?

Perhaps it’s best to say that I don’t feel it every time. But this little space in a basement office, this time of listening to no one but you, this desk where my fingers poise over dark keys ready to receive a word from you, this is a temple, a place of holy meeting.

The grace of all eternity comes to me here. You cross whatever invisible membrane that separates my consciousness from knowing you near, and the joy of awareness of you who are love comes and touches me and makes me alive again.

So this must be a temple, for you and I meet here. It doesn’t look much like a holy place. There are books and papers on the desk, a printer and this computer. Three or four cards with symbols and religious pictures perch precariously atop the book case, and Dixie’s photos of flowers and trees peer at me from the wall.

So I suppose there are those elements that point to your beauty and the heart ties that bind me to other souls who love and need you as much as I do.

But it is not these external signs but an internal awareness that moves me to come and sit here this place of meeting where I wait for you to break through my dimness and light my heart with the joy of love.

I wonder about those who asked you to answer, “Are you the Christ.” Did they ever ask themselves what it was like when they were with you? Did they ever feel moved to praise God for the power or the grace present in your deeds?

Did they ever look into their hearts and notice if that eternal love for which no name will do … did that One come to expression in you?

Perhaps they couldn’t because you defied all their expectations. But I think that’s what you wanted them to do: to stop, to look and to ask, “Do heaven and earth meet here?

If so, then you are the temple, Jesus, the place of meeting, the one even I meet even here.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, April 15, 2010

2010-04-15T09:46:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

John 21:15-18

When they had eaten, Jesus said to Simon Peter, 'Simon son of John, do you love me more than these others do?' He answered, 'Yes, Lord, you know I love you.' Jesus said to him, 'Feed my lambs.' A second time he said to him, 'Simon son of John, do you love me?' He replied, 'Yes, Lord, you know I love you.' Jesus said to him, 'Look after my sheep. Then he said to him a third time, 'Simon son of John, do you love me?' Peter was hurt that he asked him a third time, 'Do you love me?' and said, 'Lord, you know everything; you know I love you.' Jesus said to him, 'Feed my sheep. In all truth I tell you, when you were young you put on your own belt and walked where you liked; but when you grow old you will stretch out your hands, and somebody else will put a belt round you and take you where you would rather not go.’

Reflection

So it is. The things we love take us beyond ourselves, beyond our limits, beyond our will.

Do you love me? It all comes does to this. Am I playing a religious game, clever with words and ideas about ultimate concerns and unsolvable mysteries?

Or do I love you, Jesus?

Do I love the thought and sight of you? Do I love the mysterious someone who touched and healed those that society tossed to the edges of life?

Do I love the non-conformist way you fought with all who drew lines to separate people from God and each other?

Do I love the soul I meet when I turn your words over in my mind?

The fact is that I do. In you, 20 centuries later, I feel like I am meeting the only real human being who ever lived, one who knew the mystery of his connection with the Infinite Source for whom no name will do.

In you I meet a true soul who was always, unfailingly himself. In you I see a beauty I am not, but which I want to be.

So ‘yes,’ I say with some surprise. Yes, this morning I discover that I love you more than I thought I did. I have known that love in recent days, and it takes me beyond where I want to go.

Loves does that.

I am not like Peter, led away by brutal hands that inflict physical wounds and, ultimately, death. But something similar happens for all of us who love you.

For me it’s more like this: The phone rings, a shaky voice asks for conversation. It happens most often in the middle of dinner and especially when I am tired and feel that I have nothing left to give. I want my couch, a glass of wine and some gentle conversation.

I don’t want to go. I’m tired. But I go. I go beyond the limits of what I think is reasonable because the love you are requires it, Jesus, because the love you have put in me moves it.

This is no external force compelling me. But it’s something no less deniable, the presence of love for the love you are moving me beyond myself, beyond my limits, beyond my own willing.

And for that time, I am as human as you, Jesus, and as blessed. And I am happy. Funny how that is.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

2010-04-13T09:15:00.002-05:00

Today’s text

Psalm 30:8-10

To you, Yahweh, I call, to my God I cry for mercy. What point is there in my death, my going down to the abyss? Can the dust praise you or proclaim your faithfulness? Listen, Yahweh, take pity on me, Yahweh, be my help!

Reflection

My soul cries for a great open space where my heart may breathe free.

The morning sun awakens in the Earth the full promise of spring. Green shoots push insistently through winter’s cold dust. Nothing can stop it. The good Earth will bloom with joy and color.

May it lift also me, for the weight of the past clings to my heart. I want only that my steps should slow and anxiety cease. I hunger for freedom from all constriction that tightens the chest and prevents me from living in the fullness of loving joy. This alone is really living.

In my mind’s eye, I see the life I want, a life I sometimes live but too often am unable to enter. I see the life for which you intend me: unrushed, confident, gentle, a soul quiet amid the contingencies and constant changes of life.

It is the calm of love that I want, the peace of walking in a love that is so total, so complete that the slings and arrows of dumb chance and human pettiness no longer disturb.

Death is not a condition at the end of my days. It is any day when such love is not known in the pit of one’s soul. For it is this that made me, and this for which I am made. Apart from such knowing of love I feel separated from my Source, from the fountain that is your life.

So I cry for mercy. No great peril faces me this day, only small challenges. But it is these that most threaten the soul as years and decades pass. They slowly wean us from the richness of love we need.

So slowly, so insidiously we begin to imagine we can live, truly live, without this sublime knowledge of you, Holy One. After a while we fail to notice we are eating crumbs from the table, scrambling to get by, living on morsels of the banquet of grace that would flood our soul and fill our being with the love you are.

Our souls are famished for want of the love that fills the heart with every confidence and the music of easy laughter.

So have mercy on me. Do not let me fall into death this day. May the life I know only in the fullness of your love fill me--and fill another heart well known to me, a soul who this day faces challenges far greater than my own.

Lord, have mercy. Do not let her fall into the abyss, for who can praise you there?

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, April 9, 2010

2010-04-09T08:59:00.000-05:00

Today’s text

John 20:27-29

Then he spoke to Thomas, 'Put your finger here; look, here are my hands. Give me your hand; put it into my side. Do not be unbelieving any more but believe.' Thomas replied, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him: ‘You believe because you can see me. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.’

Reflection

Thomas routinely gets a bad rap, and we get a bad example. Thomas bashing through the centuries has made people ashamed of their questions and doubts. He becomes the deficient disciple, lacking a heart of faith, the perfect illustration of what not to be.

So we squelch our searching questions, our confusion and doubts, hiding them from public view.

What’s missed is that Thomas’ doubts and his demand to see are the royal road to discovery and the joy of real faith.

It is Thomas and no one else who exclaims, “My Lord and my God,” which is the premiere affirmation of all that Jesus is. His words are not shaded in shame or sorrow but explode with the joy of discovering that your fondest hopes have been realized.

I want this joy, my Lord. No, I need it. When I don’t have it I die inside.

And I find it, or should I say it finds me, not in the utter blindness of faith, but when I see something that tells me again that you live. I need to see. We all do. Few of us believe or can believe without seeing something.

Prove that your mother loves you, the skeptic challenges. And we cannot. We can only point to actions, gestures and words that add up to something that suggests that we are or are not cherished.

So we look at the record, at what your disciples did, Jesus, how they witnessed to you, how they lived and died. We listen to their words and look at the lives of those who most closely clung to you, people we knew, people who touched us.

And we are moved to believe that something amazing and utterly incomprehensible occurred, that the life you are came out of that tomb and lives.

As for me, I look at your wounds, the wounds of those whom I know have loved you best. They bore wounds of love for the sake of others, for the sake of so many wounded by life’s great injustices.

I look at them and see you, Jesus. The marks they bear are your wounds, the wounds of love freely and fully given.

Seeing them, I believe. I believe that the immensity of the Love you are … lives, resurrected in lives and places where I may see and believe and say with Thomas, “my Lord and my God.”

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, March 26, 2010

2010-03-26T08:41:00.002-05:00

Today’s text

Luke 19:38-40

They cried out: Blessed is he who is coming as King in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heavens! Some Pharisees in the crowd said to him, 'Master, reprove your disciples,' but he answered, 'I tell you, if these keep silence, the stones will cry out.'

Reflection

We know the trappings of victory, Jesus. When the contest is won shiny medals hang around the victors' necks, and trophies are brandished high, glinting under spotlights and the flash of cameras.

Winners laugh, cry and hug each other, sharing their triumph which often has come after many thousands of hours of practice and too many set-backs to remember.

I, too, smile when I see such joy on the TV screen, but these moments stand in stark contrast to the joy and accolades lifting you, Jesus.

When the glory of heaven, the victory of God appears on earth, it rides a humble beast and is hailed by shouts of the poor waving palm branches, emblems of peace.

I take nothing from those who strive for excellence and find reward in human contests of strength and skill. These, too, teach us the excellence and striving for which the Holy One makes us.

But the contrast between our understanding of victory and your appearance, Jesus, is too striking to miss. You ride among the poor, the forgotten, those outside the inner circles of human significance.

You spent most of your days among those on whom no spotlight ever shined, ignoring human distinctions between winner and loser, rich and poor, acceptable and outcast. It is they who hail you as the glory of heaven on earth--not those whom we spend far too much of our life trying to impress.

They know: true glory is not the golden glint of victory, but the peace of God extended to every last living thing--no matter who, no matter what, and definitely to the most defeated parts of ourselves.

And when true glory appears, even the stones speak.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, March 25, 2010

2010-03-25T09:04:00.001-05:00

Today’s text

Luke 19:35-38

So they took the colt to Jesus and, throwing their cloaks on its back, they lifted Jesus on to it. As he moved off, they spread their cloaks in the road, and now, as he was approaching the downward slope of the Mount of Olives, the whole group of disciples joyfully began to praise God at the top of their voices for all the miracles they had seen. They cried out: Blessed is he who is coming as King in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heavens!Reflection

Strange details catch the eye. They lifted you on the colt. They surround you: a couple in back, another in front, while a fourth stoops in the dust, cups his hands and lifts your foot.

It’s a group effort, and there is joy on the faces of those blessed to touch you. Others gather around and smile at what they are doing for you. They know it is right and proper.

With joy they surround and praise you, waving their palms, little suspecting what would soon come. This is a moment of joy for hearts that are certain they have seen and been found by the presence that they never knew they’d always wanted and needed.

You offered a vision of a world where mercy not rigid lines of separation and division ruled, and their hearts hungered for it. Your words and way, the hunger in your eye for a world barely born, embodied all you taught about this kingdom that sought and treasured them, despite the outward circumstances of their lives.

So they came and praised you for miracles of healing and wholeness--and for the fact that they never felt more whole than when they were with you.

Blessed, you are, Jesus, for the fullness of God shines in your eyes and reaches out with your hands. You bring the peace of heaven that is the glory, the beauty and the wonder of God.

The peace you bring is not that of the conqueror who deposes the enemy, but of a grace that tears down the divisions that divide one human soul from another by boundaries of wealth or nation, culture or creed, color or language.

You draw all that is into the unity of your life where the only thing that matters is the one great sharing of love you are.

I see that unity as they lift you on your horse.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

2010-03-10T08:48:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

Luke 15:25-31

'Now the elder son was out in the fields, and on his way back, as he drew near the house, he could hear music and dancing. Calling one of the servants he asked what it was all about. The servant told him, "Your brother has come, and your father has killed the calf we had been fattening because he has got him back safe and sound." He was angry then and refused to go in, and his father came out and began to urge him to come in; but he retorted to his father, "All these years I have slaved for you and never once disobeyed any orders of yours, yet you never offered me so much as a kid for me to celebrate with my friends. But, for this son of yours, when he comes back after swallowing up your property -- he and his loose women -- you kill the calf we had been fattening." 'The father said, "My son, you are with me always and all I have is yours."

Reflection

All the years. All the wasted years. All the time he knew neither himself nor his father, missing the place of privilege that was always his.

The whole time he thought life was about him, about his faithfulness and hard work, about toeing the line, obeying the rules, keeping his nose clean and making sure the old man was happy.

He missed what was always there. What made his life possible had nothing to do with his work or being a good citizen.

He failed to notice that life is not about the brownie points he piled up, building credits he could cash in on a rainy day.

He thought life was about keeping score. He was wrong.

Life is about knowing its Source, the Giver of Life---and recognizing that all we ever are is receivers. No matter who we are or what we do we remain receivers from the Infinite Fountain who is always there, always willing, always sharing the gift that life always is.

“All that I have is yours. Always was. Always will be.

“The same way it is always there for the ones who wander off, finally to slink home at 3 a.m., smelling of stale beer and cheap perfume and offering apologies in which I have no interest.

“Didn’t you know this? Didn’t you see that you could take from my completeness at any time and know life in abundance, love without measure and joy beyond expectation?

“It was there for you all the time. Still is.

“Don’t waste another moment.”

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

2010-03-09T08:33:00.001-06:00

Today’s text

Luke 15:17-22

Then he came to his senses and said, "How many of my father's hired men have all the food they want and more, and here am I dying of hunger! I will leave this place and go to my father and say: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired men." So he left the place and went back to his father. 'While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with pity. He ran to the boy, clasped him in his arms and kissed him. Then his son said, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son." But the father said to his servants, "Quick! Bring out the best robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.'

Reflection

No speeches. Please no speeches. I have heard enough words, and all of them are tin and clatter on the ear.

I want no apologies, no explanations, no pious confessions, no wallowing in guilt or shame. I have no desire to listen to your attempts to name your sins or work up sorrow for your offenses. Keep it far from me

To offer me such is to misunderstand … everything.

I am not moved by your words. I am not changed by your sorrow or repenting. My plans are not altered by the pain you suffer when you wander far from me by rebellion or hardness of heart.

I remain what I always am, what I always have been, what I always will be. And that is love beyond all comprehension. I am abundance of heart beyond all knowing, immensity of compassion whose end you will never know.

I do not change when you come to your senses and decide you need to come home.

I simply am. I am the seeking love that haunts your heart and tells you that you are meant for more than some kind of half life. I am the hungry heart discontent until all that I love---all whom I love---are home in me.

I am the eager energy of every real love you will ever know. I am desire of the welcoming father who longs not for words or apologies, pieties, guilt or shame. I want none of it.

I want only that my beloved should know that they are just that … beloved--and that the abundance of my heart is theirs.

So, no speeches please; no words, no apologies, no explanations. Just come and receive the welcome I offer … and always will.

That’s all I want from you.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

2010-03-02T09:21:00.001-06:00

Today’s text

Luke 13:1-3

It was just about this time that some people arrived and told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with that of their sacrifices. At this he said to them, 'Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than any others, that this should have happened to them? They were not, I tell you. No; but unless you repent you will all perish as they did.'

Reflection

You don’t single out the worst of us for special treatment, my Lord. You don’t look upon our deeds and imagine that they require special handling by you.

You are not as shortsighted as we. Your purpose is eternal, and you seek it in every circumstance. You incorporate our free acts into your intentions, working in them, through them and in spite of them.

You waste nothing but are undeterred from the union of all things in love that is your goal. May your will be done; may that kingdom come.

So many fearful minds imagine their pain and misfortune is punishment from you. Bad things happen, and their consciences accuse them. They imagine that you have singled them out for some grave sin or rebellion. Often, it is the very good and overly sensitive who are so unnecessarily troubled.

Others operate by the “just world” theory. They think the world is or should be carefully ordered, and that if something bad happens to you it is right because you must have done … something. Earthquakes shake Haiti and Chile and hurricanes strike New Orleans because folk there are obviously bigger sinners than the rest of us.

It’s neat theory, though also crazy … and brutal, especially to those who suffer hunger and great deprivation. Obviously, it’s their fault or that of their ancestors.

No, you don’t single out certain sinners for special treatment, making an example of them for the rest of us. What kind of god would do this? Certainly not one deserving our praise, our service, our love.

Still, you call us to repent.

Perhaps what we most need to repent of … is every idea in our head that imagines that you are something less than love. Perhaps what we most need to change is the idea that you, Loving Mystery, are like us.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, February 25, 2010

2010-02-25T09:10:00.001-06:00

Today’s text

Luke 13:34

'Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you that kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! How often have I longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you refused!’

Reflection

I want to get inside your emotion this morning, Jesus, but I am not there. Not yet, at least. So draw me in that I may know the love that burns at your soul for the lost and alone--yes, and for the lost and lonely parts of our hearts, too.

I want to crawl inside your heart, see through your eyes and know the pain of loving as you love. Maybe then I would know how to care for wounded souls within my reach.

They are beyond me, many of them, even though they are near. But I can not reach or touch the deep wounded places in their souls to set them free to live and breathe in fullness. Their lungs and lives remain constricted by festering wounds, pains and sorrows that tie their souls to earth’s cold crust.

Some wounds are self-inflicted; others the scars of cruelty and apathy, left by those who live their lives oblivious to the damage they left in their wake. Doesn’t seem fair, but then it isn’t.

But my anger for those who wound and abuse heals no one. It gathers no soul beneath protective wings so that the wounded little ones may at last come home and know the love you are, a love that covers all things--that forgives the sins, melts the wounds, heals the scars and leaves only tears of gratitude.

Can they know this, Jesus? Can they know you whole and complete? For knowing you so well is all that can make us well. And we hope and need to well again.

So let us in, let us feel, let us know the yearning you feel to gather all your little ones beneath your wings and make them whole. Let us feel this. Maybe then we shall be released.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

2010-02-24T09:27:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

Luke 13:31-34

Just at this time some Pharisees came up. 'Go away,' they said. 'Leave this place, because Herod means to kill you.' He replied, 'You may go and give that fox this message: Look! Today and tomorrow I drive out devils and heal, and on the third day I attain my end. But for today and tomorrow and the next day I must go on, since it would not be right for a prophet to die outside Jerusalem.'

Reflection

Why Jerusalem?

I suppose there are historical reasons, but reasons of the heart have always been more persuasive to me, and why shouldn’t they be when the question is a matter of where one chooses to die, a rather personal concern no matter how you look at it.

Your last stand, last statement, final testament must occur there, in a place where messengers of the God’s mercy and justice had for centuries stood and spoke, even when no one listened. Prophet’s blood had been spilled before on those ancient cobblestones.

So you head there, Jesus, to the city considered the center of the universe, there to make clear the center of the divine heart, which long before had become the center of your own.

You journey to the center of the world to reveal the center of the One who is central to all of life in this and every cosmos.

It is as if you hang out a large blinking sign, “Watch! Don’t miss this! The final act reveals the meaning of the whole story!”

That would be the big story of all life … and of my life, Jesus. On those ancient cobblestones, a story plays out revealing holy beauty and human ugliness, divine intention and determined rejection, dogged hate and indomitable love.

These forces will parry and clash in Jerusalem, setting out the eternal conflict that goes on in human souls and societies in every time and place. But at the end, one will stand; one will emerge walking unbound from death’s bitter ashes.

And we will know … Love will have its way. This is the central truth shining bright at the central place where the whole story comes clear.

May that love form the center of my soul this and every day.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

2010-02-23T08:39:00.001-06:00

Today’s text

Luke 13:31-32

Just at this time some Pharisees came up. 'Go away,' they said. 'Leave this place, because Herod means to kill you.' He replied, 'You may go and give that fox this message: Look! Today and tomorrow I drive out devils and heal, and on the third day I attain my end.

Reflection

I admire your self-possession, Jesus. I envy and want it.

Faced with threat, it is not threat that determines your course. Your path is set by your own internal compass, not the decisions of others about you, not even when they seek your life.

You go your own way, your heart set to true north. There is work to do, a purpose to fulfill, a commitment to complete, a mystery to reveal.

Nothing deters you, not even the machinations of tin-pot despots whose hands drip with blood.

It is not your courage that most moves me, but your abiding sense of self, of identity. You know who you are, what you are to do and what must be done for your life to have served the purpose for which it is appointed.

How do you manage such singular focus? How is it that external events fail to bump you off course? Did you wake each day and claim again the Father’s purpose for you? Did you grit your teeth and steel yourself for whatever might come?

I don’t think so.

But my experience of waffling makes me wonder how you stayed on true north when resistance, rejection and threat blocked your path.

For you always walked true north, deeper with each step into the holy purpose of revealing a world ruled by mercy alone. My end will take care of itself, you said, and reaching that end was all that mattered to you.

I am moved by such single-hearted dedication to mercy’s deed. Always have been, always will.

What I notice when I look most closely is the lack of jut-jawed defiance in your words and bearing. I see a measure of humor--“that fox,” indeed! And I sense the conviction of mercy, of love, of compassion for every last and lost corner of earth.

The conviction of mercy moves you. That is true north, and you live joyously aware that this singular truth requires that your feet move always and only in one direction.

For mercy will come. Mercy will be all in all, and all you do must show this.

Accept my amazement and thanks, and hear my hope that perhaps, I, too, may walk as you.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, February 11, 2010

2010-02-11T09:38:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

Luke 9:28-32

Now about eight days after this had been said, he took with him Peter, John and James and went up the mountain to pray. And it happened that, as he was praying, the aspect of his face was changed and his clothing became sparkling white. And suddenly there were two men talking to him; they were Moses and Elijah appearing in glory, and they were speaking of his passing which he was to accomplish in Jerusalem. Peter and his companions were heavy with sleep, but they woke up and saw his glory and the two men standing with him.

Reflection

They woke up… and saw. How many times do we experience this, Jesus?

They woke and saw your glory, a glory of oneness with the Mystery to whom you prayed and called, “Father,” in utter love and trust. They saw the glory of a life transparent to utter mystery and love, to the Infinite Source of their being and all that is.

They saw, awaking to a truth they had begun to grasp in the valleys and plains, but here on the mountain, in an instant, all was clear, so, too, was the answer to the question of every human heart: To whom shall I listen? Who will tell me truth? Who can I trust in all things and places?

This one. You, Jesus.

This certainty, this clarity would not last for them. On the mountain, things are clear. In the muddy day-to-day, the mind forgets, and hearts fail to cling to the truth of unveiled moments. Fear uproots our certainties, as joy and confidence fade.

Always, we must return from the mountain to valleys and plains where hard work awaits, where disappointments occur, where people are difficult and the things we most fear come true.

We return to the daily and mundane, where average joys and common frustrations tempt us to think that this is all there is; this is reality; this is good as it gets.

But the mountain top tells us we are made for something more, for the truth of the love that shines through you, Jesus. We are made to known, to bask in it, to live it.

We are made for constant remembrance of the glory we see in you, wherever and how ever we see that glory. For it is this and these moments that tell us the truth of our lives, a truth that must be reclaimed many, many times.

Until face-to-face, we dwell fully in the glory you are.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

2010-02-10T08:49:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

Luke 6:19-20

People tormented by unclean spirits were also cured and everyone in the crowd was trying to touch him because power came out of him that cured them all. Then fixing his eyes on his disciples he said: How blessed are you who are poor: the kingdom of God is yours.

Reflection

You turned your eyes from the desperate and hoping to find your friends. Overwhelming joy and gratitude swelled in your inner being, and you cried out, “Blessed. Blessed are you.”

I know why. You were healing, touching, making whole the broken lives and hearts of those who were loved far more than they could imagine. Their lives were … and are … enveloped in the height and depth of grace, held in the arms of the Loving Mystery for all eternity.

You saw this. No, you felt it. This grace expanded your heart to infinite proportions removing any and all doubt about the fundamental reality of our lives. We are held, known and treasured by an incalculable love that has neither beginning nor end.

Your heart stretched to the uttermost reaches of Earth’s forgotten corners,--and on … to the cosmic reach of darkest space. Your heart took it all in … and loved it, loved it as the Loving Mystery who is the Father embraces and loves it all.

Your heart and the Father’s were one, and now your heart and mine are no longer two but the same.

For a single moment, the blink of any eye, I enter your consciousness and see with the love that is there looking out at me … and at all that is.

And I, too, know beyond question why you cry out, “blessed are you poor.”

My faltering words cannot capture it, but I know you look at our broken and confused lives and see them enfolded in grace unbounded, and we in our poverty can receive, can know the grace that swells your heart in this tiny instant.

Our hearts, too, can expand and embrace the uttermost parts and the outermost reaches. We who are poor can know this. We can be this, for we know the emptiness of our hands and the incompleteness of our souls.

Yet, only in this state can we be filled by the fullness of the Love who is all Fullness, the holy and Loving Mystery who, in this moment, filled you, Jesus, and moved you to embrace the world without reservation in utter joy.

Make this joy mine not only for a moment, but for all time. It is in this moment, seeing through your eyes, that I know the end of time, and it is Love unspeakable.

And I know but one word for you, “blessed, blessed, blessed.

Beyond my wildest imagining, you are blessed, and it is exactly this into which you draw me. And all I have to offer is a single word of praise and a gratitude that’s beyond all words.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

2010-02-09T09:08:00.001-06:00

Today’s text

Luke 6:17-19

He then came down with them and stopped at a piece of level ground where there was a large gathering of his disciples, with a great crowd of people from all parts of Judaea and Jerusalem and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon who had come to hear him and to be cured of their diseases. People tormented by unclean spirits were also cured and everyone in the crowd was trying to touch him because power came out of him that cured them all.

Reflection

The scene is unsettled, noisy, disordered. People come from across the countryside, jostling for position amid the crowd trying to glimpse you. They come with hope but are moved by desperation, seeking release from their torments.

They want to touch you and to be touched by something they can’t understand. But I understand, for this is what I want too.

Some have known little more than torment in their lives. But the deepest intuition of their humanity tells them life is more than agitation of body and spirit.

They come seeking release. They want freedom, the freedom of wholeness, of health, of souls and arms they can lift to the sky with joy.

They want to feel what their lives can be beyond the distortion and diminishment of disease and suffering. They want to feel alive and human, joyously eager for each new day, something they may have never felt.

And you cured them. You released them. I wonder what that moment was like. How did they feel? What expressions filtered across their faces as they realized they were free from the chains that bound them to lives of struggle?

I imagine tears of joy, laughter and disbelief. I imagine praise to God and grateful souls falling into your embrace. I see faces struck dumb in stunned silence, but I also hear the thump of feet running for the first time in years. I can’t think of if without smiling.

And that smile is magic. It’s healing and freeing. It covers my face and fills my soul, releasing me from the bondage of sadness.

I see you touch desperate souls and once again, for the umpteenth thousand time, I, too, am touched by the love that I see, the Love whom I see.

“Come and see,” you once urged a would-be disciple. “Come and see.”

Today, I came, and I saw. And in seeing, you give me the healing I need. As of old, you touch and set free. And I discover that, just maybe, I know exactly how they felt.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, February 5, 2010

2010-02-05T09:11:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

Luke 5:8-11

When Simon Peter saw this he fell at the knees of Jesus saying, 'Leave me, Lord; I am a sinful man.' For he and all his companions were completely awestruck at the catch they had made; so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were Simon's partners. But Jesus said to Simon, 'Do not be afraid; from now on it is people you will be catching. Then, bringing their boats back to land they left everything and followed him.

Reflection

At the end, what do I want to have done? Who do I want to have followed?

When all my time here is memory and few moments of earth’s sweet air remain for me, what do I want to be able to say, “This I have given? This I have thought. This I have loved. This I present to you, Jesus.”

They left everything and followed you, these few fishermen. Perhaps I should feel shame in the face of such self-giving, for I give so little. But I do not. Nor do I believe you want such feelings, despite the guilt your followers stir in themselves for no good purpose.

Joy and desire color my heart, not guilt or shame. I want the joy of giving each act and word, each hour and day to the love you are. And I want to do it mindfully, aware and present to each moment.

I want to rise above unconscious living, little thinking of how this moment can be lived in and for you. I want my mind to leave everything else to follow you so that in each moment, this is all that matters.

Yes, I know: I want a life beyond those lived by your first friends, this Simon, James and John. They were unconscious most of the time, and they followed you not knowing, not being aware of much of anything, except that being with you was better than being without you.

But they left everything to follow, and this stirs joy and desire in me to do the same in my own way and time. For I am little different from them, slightly more conscious, I suppose.

But I, too, know that being with you is better than being without you. And each time my mind wanders away to thoughts and motives other than your love, it enters a netherworld so monochrome and draining compared to the bright joy of knowing you near.

So keep calling to me when I wander. Call me from my meandering thoughts, my wild hare impulses, my self-indulgent narcissism and self-important posturing.

Call me to leave them all, even if you must call me a million times and more. I will keep leaving them, again and again, until the day I when all here is done for me, and I can say, “This I have done; you, I have loved.”

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, February 4, 2010

2010-02-04T08:50:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

Luke 5:8-11

When Simon Peter saw this he fell at the knees of Jesus saying, 'Leave me, Lord; I am a sinful man.' For he and all his companions were completely awestruck at the catch they had made; so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were Simon's partners. But Jesus said to Simon, 'Do not be afraid; from now on it is people you will be catching. Then, bringing their boats back to land they left everything and followed him.

Reflection

A first act of courage is here, the first steps from a mind of fear to … well, they didn’t know. They did not know where they were going or what might happen. They had not idea what was just beginning.

But as they left their boats the way of fear was ending for them. This journey would take the rest of their lives and then some.

It’s that way for all of us, Jesus. You invite us beyond the mind of fear to a new mind, a new consciousness, a new way of seeing and being. Uneducated fishermen take their early steps on this way by being intrigued or amazed enough to follow you into the unknown.

They wanted to be near whatever you had, to hear whatever you might say, to see whatever you might do and to know whoever you are … because being with you was better than being anywhere without you.

This much they knew … and little else. But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was following, being with you.

In your presence the fear, the anxiety, the dead clay that weighs our spirits all fall away, as we find, to our amazement, that we are children of God’s abundant delight, whom the Father favors with grace everlasting and inexhaustible.

You knew this, Jesus. And when this awareness sinks into our minds, into our being and bearing, other souls feel lighter and more alive in our presence, captured by the life that is you.

Fill me with all that you are. Grant me your own mind, Jesus, that with the Christ mind I may live beyond my fears and with such joy that hearts may be warmed by your nearness, even in the likes of me.

I know; it’s a journey. You don’t arrive all at once. It takes a lifetime and then some. But today, may I take a few steps on the way.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

2010-02-03T08:54:00.001-06:00

Today’s text

Luke 5:3-10

When he had finished speaking he said to Simon, 'Put out into deep water and pay out your nets for a catch.' Simon replied, 'Master, we worked hard all night long and caught nothing, but if you say so, I will pay out the nets.' And when they had done this they netted such a huge number of fish that their nets began to tear, so they signaled to their companions in the other boat to come and help them; when these came, they filled both boats to sinking point. When Simon Peter saw this he fell at the knees of Jesus saying, 'Leave me, Lord; I am a sinful man.' For he and all his companions were completely awestruck at the catch they had made; so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were Simon's partners. But Jesus said to Simon, 'Do not be afraid; from now on it is people you will be catching.'

Reflection

“Do not be afraid.” How many times do those words appear on your lips, Jesus? How many times in all of Scripture?

It is as if this were the central truth we must know. Forget all else. Remember this: There is no reason for fear.

Life is uncontrollable. Unexpected and painful things will happen. Friends will forget and betray you. Work once meaningful will drain your soul. Youth, health and strength will fade. Threats from without and within will come.

But don’t worry. Don’t be afraid. All you are and all you have, all you hope and all you fear rests in the infinite abundance of the Father’s heart. Know this, and fear is gone.

There is such a contrast between you, Jesus, and those who surround you. Anxious crowds push nearer to hear, and you take to a boat. The fishermen doubt anything good can happen after a long night’s labor gains nothing. But you quietly direct them to deep water.

Amazed, they struggle at the nets to gather the catch. You stand silently in the background, watching. I wonder, do you smile at the startling abundance they haul in?

Peter confesses his unworthiness and the discomfort of being in your presence, a presence he cannot possibly understand. His eyes are fixed squarely on himself.

Wrong place. Everyone in the story dwells in the wrong place. Their hearts rest in their emptiness, their need, their inadequacy, their anxiety about having and being enough. Little wonder they are amazed when abundance appears.

But you are not surprised, Jesus. No amazement appears on your face or in your voice. You dwell in perfect peace, knowing the infinite abundance of the divine heart is always enough … and always will be.

May my mind dwell with yours, Jesus. May all your children share your peace.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, February, 2, 2010

2010-02-02T08:56:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

Luke 5:2-6

Jesus got into one of the boats -- it was Simon's -- and asked him to put out a little from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking he said to Simon, 'Put out into deep water and pay out your nets for a catch.' Simon replied, 'Master, we worked hard all night long and caught nothing, but if you say so, I will pay out the nets.' And when they had done this they netted such a huge number of fish that their nets began to tear … .

Reflection

“If you say so … .” I doubt Peter’s words were spoken eagerly, as if he were itching to pull at the oars and lug the nets over the gunnels of the boat after a long night of wasted effort. Food and a nap in the heat of the day were far more attractive.

“But if you say so, Jesus, … we’ll do it again.”

That’s what I hear, resistance to hard work that already proved fruitless.

My body feels that on some days, but not today, despite the enervation of energy from my limbs. Perhaps it is an oncoming cold, perhaps just a snowy winter Monday resting heavy on my shoulders.

But despite these aching muscles I remain quietly unwilling to surrender to the voice that says it doesn’t matter, the work, that is--the commitment and effort required to stay faithful to the duties of the day. There are calls to be made, promises to keep, appointments to make, plus letters to write, scattered papers on the desk and yes, prayers for human pains likely to cross my path.

Who knows how many there will be? It’s still early.

The voice that asks, does any of this really matter, never fully goes away. I hear it as I step from the shower and dry my head. But the question doesn’t drag me into its gravity. It lacks power to discourage or stop me from taking the next step into the day.

This has nothing to do with the strength of my will or the courage of my resolve. I learned long ago not to depend too much on those.

I go, stepping into the duties of the day because you, Jesus, tell me to do it all again. Take care of the detail, pray with the people, make the calls and keep the appointments. Throw out the nets because … well, you never know.

Unexpected graces come. You need to be there to catch them.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

2010-01-27T08:41:00.001-06:00

Reflection

Happiness and Haiti, funerals and politics, Genesis and church chatter come together in unexpected ways.

A couple of years ago, a journalist published a book that lived on my daughter’s shelf until she gave it to me, knowing I was intrigued by the title, The Geography of Bliss. The book is a funny and illuminating read.

The author traveled to a dozen countries to learn why those who live there are so happy--or not. The countries were not picked at random. He chose his destinations after visiting the World Happiness Database (I’m not making this up) in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

The WHD compiles and compares studies from social scientists across the world, who examine the age-old mystery of what makes for happy contented lives. Countries even receive scores on a 1-10 scale, based on extensive surveying.

In case you’re wondering, the United States is not among the 20 happiest places on Earth. It ranks below places like Costa Rica, Malta, Malaysia, Bhutan and Iceland, way below Iceland.

No surprise there. During my lifetime, Americans have become many times richer, but the divorce rate has tripled, violent crime has quadrupled, the prison population quintupled and mental health disorders like anxiety and depression are much more common, not merely more commonly diagnosed.

This leads to the obvious conclusion that money matters less we imagine. After having enough to satisfy basic human needs, happiness plateaus and having more money makes little difference.

What matters are social and family connections, belonging to a people, a history and a culture that transcends oneself. Trusting others is essential, your neighbors and fellow citizens. Envy is totally toxic, as are unrealistic expectations for personal success and accomplishment.

Happy places allow people to try and fail without shame, providing them freedom to reinvent themselves. They have space for idleness beyond the daily rush. They also inspire an expansive consciousness, the awareness that life is bigger than me and my personal needs.

Summing up his view--and much of this happy, thoughtful book, a public official in the tiny nation of Bhutan said, “Happiness is 100% relational.”

The Bible connects here. Once we move beyond silly arguments about whether the creation stories of Genesis are literal history, the stories speak deep truth about human nature and how we connect with God.

We are created from and for each other, to complete each other. We are fashioned for harmony with the earth and those with whom we share it. Recognize it or not, we are deeply connected, and we find our joy and purpose in the community of those connections.

Little wonder that human happiness is 100% relational. We can’t deny our communal nature or hide it under the myth of the “self-made man” or beneath foolish ideas that suggest that we can live separate lives. We are intimately connected with every other human family with whom we share this planet.

Occasionally, the narcissistic walls that keep us from seeing these connections crumble. Earthquakes do this. Pictures from Haiti move us in ways we can neither understand nor deny, as we witness faces of suffering and recognize those faces as our own.

So we care, we act, we give, becoming more human and, dare I say it, happier, having fulfilled in our bodies the humanity and communal connection God fashioned in our depths.

This is why two funerals I recently led were happier places than the American political marketplace. At the funerals, we remembered, cried and laughed together. We felt the sinews of love, struggle and history that bind us together. Amid sorrow, there was joy as we experienced those connections--and our connection with God.

This is so different from American politics where the reality that we are all in this together is daily ripped asunder by tactics of denunciation and excoriation.

Different, too, were the circles of conversation that continued longer than normal in the narthex last Sunday. Serious exchanges and laughter spiced the air. People shared news of illnesses and treatment, of family visits and children’s activities, of hopes and anxieties for the coming week.

Connections were savored and nurtured, and we were happier and more human for it. In some not-so-hidden way, the kingdom of God’s delight was real.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, January 22, 2010

2010-01-22T09:29:00.000-06:00

Today’s text

Luke 4:18-19

The spirit of the Lord is on me, for he has anointed me to bring the good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free to proclaim a year of favor from the Lord.

Reflection

Today, I want to be free. Everyday I want to be free, but I am free only on some days. And recently, they have been too few.

So I come again and listen to the voice of freedom, and I hear your desire, singular it is: to set captive souls free from every bondage that prevents true humanness.

I am well acquainted with bondage. In recent days, my impatience with long meetings, human pettiness, administrative minutia and my own limitations of time and grace have made me less than a reasonable soul.

Perhaps I should ask for forgiveness for ways in which my anger has owned me, but I know forgiveness is already there for the taking. And I take it.

Plus, my soul is less bound by guilt than by my own perfectionism and my insistence that life should be lived as much as possible from the center of one’s soul, from the grace and beauty that is there.

That comes easily when I listen and talk to souls, seeking their good, when I pray and speak of the Loving Mystery you are, Holy One. But it disappears behind a thick gray cloud of frustration and melancholy when the big picture of life and grace gets lost in a dense cloud of detail.

So what is my captivity? Dealing with the detail? Shutting off my soul when the minutia and pettiness comes? Or perhaps it is my secret belief that I should not have to (and do not want to) deal with the nuts and bolts of the machinery that makes life … and congregations run?

Frankly, I can’t name my own bondage at this moment, but I am freer just for acknowledging this. I sense the center of my soul that has been lost to me in recent days. And the love I feel there--yours and mine--frees me to live with the joy of freedom that is your desire for me. And mine. Thank you.

Let me live this day from the heart.

Pr. David L. Miller

2010-01-20T07:13:00.000-06:00

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Today’s text

Luke 4:18-19

The spirit of the Lord is on me, for he has anointed me to bring the good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free to proclaim a year of favor from the Lord.

Reflection

Listening to your words, Jesus, I no longer see you in ancient Palestine. I see a hilltop in Haiti with a crowd seeking you, flowing, scrambling up the steep side to get close.

They are the afflicted, and like the afflicted of every age their hearts--to say nothing of their stomachs--move them to seek food that fills the anxiety of emptiness, the emptiness of body and spirit.

Empty they are, lacking food and medicine for broken bodies and balm for souls that may well live out their earthly lives in perpetual grief for the destruction of their city, the death of loved ones and the obliteration of hope.

They want what I want: to feel alive. They want to know the exhilaration of truly living, no longer weighted to earth by sorrow and fear.

They want to feel the surge of joy and love in their depths that makes them eager for the day.

They want to live beyond the grief of today and the dread of tomorrow, knowing that Love is near, that Love will come, that Love surrounds and enfolds even the horrors of devastated cities and the cry of broken children. And I believe that you do, Holy One.

I don’t know why the earth shudders and kills a multitude in a moment. I don’t know why the sun doesn’t grow dark and weep in abject sorrow at the destruction of human life that happens every day on this planet.

I have no adequate answers for my own questions, let alone those of others.

I simply know the lilt of heart that happens when I hear you, Jesus, telling me that you come to set captive hearts free, liberating us from all that binds us from living in hope and joy.

That’s why crowds sought you. They wanted to live. Me, too.

I want this life for those whose lives are unimaginable to me, lives that must stumble amid the rubble of places like Port au Prince. Let love and the passion of care surround them all, Lord Jesus. Release their souls from the anxiety of emptiness and the dread of tomorrow.

Free their captive souls--and mine, that we all might live. We all want to live, which is why we seek you, Jesus, from ancient times to hilltops in Haiti.

Pr. David L. Miller