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Posthumous Guest Post – Walt Miller


Mentors.  What a treasure it is to have someone willing to come alongside us.  Someone older, wiser, and willing to invest in the next generation.  I have been blessed to have had such people in my life, especially during difficult seasons.

Two such mentors, Walt & Jane Miller, will always hold a very special place in my heart. I met Walt & Jane at church when I was in college.  Just as I was starting to unpack the trauma of sexual assault.  They became my “Arizona Parents” and they truly made me feel like their beloved daughter. 

Aside from spending time together, most often over a meal or a milkshake, their greatest gift came in the form of encouraging notes  Never have I met anyone so diligent in sending personal notes. Included in these notes were always reflections, meditations and spiritual wisdom.  Each ending with the simple reminder – “The Best is Yet Ahead.”

For my beloved friends, the best has already arrived as they are now both in Heaven. But last week I received an email from their daughter. A sweet tribute on what would have been his 93rd Birthday.

The email included a short meditation Walt had written.  Reading his meditation instantly reminded me how much I missed him and his pearls of wisdom he would so generously share.  As a much more seasoned Christian than myself his words were always so insightful and encouraging.  I was in awe of his faith, joy and constant reminders that “the best is yet to come.”

So today, with his daughter’s permission, I want to share with you the meditation she shared with me on his birthday exactly as he wrote it.  I pray these words bless and encourage you as much as they did me.  Enjoy these words from my late friend Walt Miller:

Just a thought from this morning:

 ‘HIS REMINDERS’  ****  for you and for me !!

For each of us there are days when we awake to a ‘gray’ world – – – the sun refuses to shine, clouds over-shadow the blue sky, the flowers have lost their bright hue, the news is all sad, and we can’t see over the heap of work.  On such days our God seems far away, and His love sheds little warmth on our heart.  We feel deserted, alone in the ‘slough’, the eyes of our hearts closed.

But each new day God sends reminders to us that He is close-by us, that He cares, and that He is involved with ‘me’ and ‘my world’.  Let us pause and consider.  Isn’t it likely that this morning, my loving God said to ‘my world’, “Do it again, just for Walt!”   “Do it again to the sun – – – make a gorgeous sunrise for him.”  “Do it again to the moon at night.”  “Do it again to the flowers, so that his world is bright.”  “Do it again to each little bird so his world is filled with glad song.”  “Do it again!”  “Do it again!”

I don’t believe that God’s world is on ‘auto-pilot’, but that each day, each moment, He makes each bright flower separately, constantly guides the path of each star, causes each note in each bird’s throat.   He never tires of creating.  He makes all things new.  Each moment He is created fresh.!!  The repetition in nature is not simply a mere recurrence of some natural phenomenon, nor the automatic motions of God’s ages-ago programmed creation.  Rather each creation is a theatrical encore, done just for us, for our today reminder and enjoyment.

Over- and-over-and over again, He reminds us He is HERE!!!