Fully BelovedSample

As a church member once confessed to me, “With the Father and the Son, we speak of a face. They seem like personal beings—I could picture God as a Father, making the world, Jesus as a Son: I could look at his life and miracles and he seemed real, coming bodily to earth. I can relate to that. But the Spirit? That seems more vague.”

With the first two Persons, we take in the family-feel language of parent and child; it all carries a kind of warmth and invitation. We picture the Creator tenderly making or speaking gently to Jesus when John the Baptist baptized him: “You are my beloved Son.” Or we’ve heard somebody—or a bumper sticker, unconvincingly—say, “Jesus loves you.” . . .

With the Spirit, our thinking seems to get, well, more airy. Maybe in church we sang “Jesus loves me.” But have we lost the gift of expecting life and love from the Spirit? . . .

When Jesus sat with his disciples for their last supper, he spoke of leaving them: “I am going away. . . . I am going to the Father.” (John 14:28). He says in effect, “I will leave, but also leave myself with you—in and through the Spirit.” (John 14-17). While one of the key terms for the Spirit is breath, it is the breath of love, and that love comes as and comes from a divine Person. In the mysteries of the heavenlies, God reveals not vision-clouding mists, but a love shared between Father and Son and Spirit. The Spirit is not a third-position stand-in or gentle by-product of God, but a vibrant Person in his own right.

Wouldn’t the Spirit, then, come not with vagueness but with galvanizing epiphanies—an electrifying new vitality? The testimony of many believers is that the Holy Spirit is the most “intimate ‘contact point’ between the triune God and human beings.”* Here is a force to reckon with to convince us, against our worst doubts, that we are loved. That we are not alone. That we face anything accompanied by a grand Another. And the Spirit helps make that all real, vivid.

* Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, The Holy Spirit (Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 2.

Prayer

Father, thank you for giving me the Holy Spirit to remind me of your love and to guide me through this difficult life. Amen.