The Holy Spirit is not an amorphous abstraction. Spirit is active and embodied in our efforts to transform ourselves and transform the world.
This was a long Minnesota winter. My snow-bound friends and I bemoaned the stubborn cold and the elusive thaw. We collectively longed for spring and for the warmth, the growth, and the new life it brings.
The renewal of life associated with spring reminds me of the activity of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is known in scripture and theological tradition as the life-giver, healer, and Perfector of creation. One of the “two hands of God” (Irenaeus), the Spirit draws, awakens, and breathes new life into creation and humanity.
In its original form, the Nicene Creed (325 A.D.) simply asserted, “we believe in the Holy Spirit.” In 381, more was added: the Spirit is “the Lord, the giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father; who with the Father and Son together is worshipped and glorified.” The Holy Spirit was understood to be fully divine, an equal “hypostasis” (person) with the Father and to the Son. Why did it take so long for the Church to articulate clearly and emphatically that the Spirit is fully divine and equally worthy of worship, prayer, and praise as the Father and the Son?
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by Tim Suttle
Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell used to tell a story about a mission he flew in his F2H Banshee off the coast of Japan in 1950. He had missed the rendezvous point when his instruments mistakenly picked up a signal leading him away from his aircraft carrier. Lovell felt hopelessly lost as he flew circles in the dark over the stormy Sea of Japan. As he tried to use his map light, suddenly all of the electronics in the cockpit shorted out and everything went black. A bad omen he thought, until he began looking down at the water below. With the absence of light in the cockpit his eyes began to adjust to the dark, making it possible to see the faint trail of phosphorescent algae which had been churned up by the propellers of the carrier. He began to follow the trail which lighted the way home to the carrier where he landed safely. Were it not for the failed light and the resulting darkness, Lovell might have been forced to ditch his plane. The darkness saved him.
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by Scott Hagan
Miriam’s pulse rate was soaring. So would yours or mine. Accountability was one thing, but having the Almighty personally deliver a lecture with a side of leprosy was quite another kind of experience.
One minute Miriam was exercising her “family license” by criticizing her adult little brother, Moses. The next minute her olive skin was oozing pasty white with leprosy. (See Numbers 12.)
Miriam believed her opening complaint against Moses was nothing more than a legitimate concern. After all, a Cushite had invaded her inner circle. Feeling nudged off her perch, Miriam saw Moses’ wife as an outlaw instead of a sister-in-law. Not even her love for her brother could stop her tongue. Her mouth sought to do what Pharaohs armies could not: Bring down Moses. With the aid of her younger brother, Aaron, the two sibling sewers erupted. Then suddenly, both her brothers — Moses and Aaron — looked on in horror as the God who destroyed Egypt now took on their sister.
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Recalling the earth-shaking, kingdom-sized message of Christmas.
Charles Colson with Catherine Larson
Sometime this Christmas season, you are sure to hear those rousing words of Handel’s Messiah, taken from Revelation 11:15: “The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ” (ESV). Tradition has it that the music so moved King George II that he stood to his feet out of respect for an even greater King. The rest of the audience followed, as have audiences for generations since. The Hallelujah Chorus is the culmination of our Messiah’s story, a story that Handel rightly showed was foretold by the Prophets, heralded in the Annunciation, and has at its heart a message about a king and a kingdom.
Sadly, that kingdom message is often missed in our saccharine retelling of the Christmas story. Somehow we glaze over the angel’s words to Mary, that she will give birth to a son whose “kingdom will never end” (Luke 1:33). The myopia continues as we read the Gospels. We skim over pages of kingdom references. We miss Christ’s inaugural address when he opens the scroll of Isaiah and proclaims that Scripture has been fulfilled in the people’s hearing (Luke 4:21). We muddle through the parables that tell us repeatedly, “The kingdom of God is like ….” And we glance over the very reason our Savior was crucified, a sign crudely scrawled beneath the cross: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” (John 19:19).
Along the way, the Good News is truncated. An earth-shaking, kingdom-sized announcement is reduced to a personal self-help story. Our gospel has grown too small.
So what was Jesus talking about when he came announcing a kingdom?
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