A Blog for Pentecost

 
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters […] and God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” Genesis 1:1, 31a
 
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. You know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.” John 14:15-17
 
 
The Spirit hovering over the face of the deep; a picture that is both eerily mysterious and ethereal and yet precedes the most physical, tangible era of recorded history: the creation of the physical world. It is this same Spirit that lives in us in the context of our very material, physical, seemingly unsacred, daily lives.
 
I think as humans in the post-Christian, post-Modern West we walk a fine line of not knowing where the spiritual begins and ends and where the physical starts or stops. A lot of false doctrines and cultural ideas have drawn a solid line between things physical and things spiritual. I even think that in many cases we have subconsciously adopted the idea that physical things tend to be a necessary evil, and necessarily second tier to things spiritual. But this idea is not affirmed in Scripture. Our bodies are affirmed, our work is affirmed, food and drink are affirmed, and the created world as a whole is certainly affirmed. When we behold the faces of our children, when we speak a sharp word to a colleague or spouse, when we eat and drink, especially at the Lord’s Table; we encounter the overlay of things spiritual and things mortal or material. When we consider the
, they sound intangible (love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, gentleness, self-control), but their bearing out in our day-to-day lives is almost always displayed in tangible and observable ways. It affects the lives of those around us, but yet is accompanied by an internal, intangible testimony from the Spirit of God.
 
This week as we consider the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, remember that God has truly put His Spirit in you, once and for all. Pray that God would stir Him up, secretly and deeply affirming His love for you, that you might move through your day with the heart of flesh He has given you. Ask Him to show you the tangible results of His Spirit in you.
 
The Spirit that is in you hovered over the deep darkness and inspired the creation of a very good, created world. On a good day, when we behold the faces of those around us, we do so with the eyes and heart of God’s Spirit. It is no small thing that we walk among our co-workers, families, and neighbors with the Spirit of God dwelling within us.
 
 
 
 
About our guest blogger: Ethan Stonerook is husband to Valerie and father to their 4 children, Carver, Roan, Haddie, and Nora. He works as a physician assistant in Bone Marrow Transplant at UF and is a member of our vestry and our current senior warden. His favorite things to do include being with people, eating and drinking good food and drink, running, and starting multiple projects at the same time and never fully completing them.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.