Spirit

“But when the Counsellor comes, whom I shall send to you...” (John 15:26).

Trinity (Icon)

The Holy Spirit is very precious to me.

All my life I thought of the Holy Spirit as the MOST distant of the Three Persons of God.  And then – upon closer inspection – I have come to realise that the Holy Spirit is in fact so Beloved of me.

When I was younger, I could quite easily visualise God the father – (I have a father after all).  I could easily visualise God the Son – (I am a child after all).  But the Holy Spirit – who is Perfect Love and who is so often depicted as a dove or a bit of fire or some smoke in artwork just seemed very distant to me.  After all, have I ever really truly loved?  I mean loved in the way that God calls us to love – completely and without any selfishness and with perfect understanding and forgiveness and a complete lack of judgement.

And the Holy Spirit is all of those things.  The Holy Spirit is LOVE that is so pure and perfect that to understand such a love as that I do not think I would be able to continue to exist on this earth.

And after my little baby died before he was even born, I was overcome with grief.  I cried an ocean of tears mourning that beloved child.  And then one day – in the midst of a grief so terrible that it has transformed me utterly – I was praying for my little niece who was very sick and close to death, and OUT OF NOWHERE the Holy Spirit came to me.  And suddenly I knew that my little boy for who I so grieved is in Heaven.  And I knew that I had nothing to be sad about because through the Mercy of God I will be in Heaven one day too.  And I knew that God had taken that little boy to Himself so that I and my children and husband and dear ones – and perhaps you too – would be able to get to Heaven.  For my little boy sits at the Holy Feet of God and prays for us all…

And Christ sent the Holy Spirit to us so that this could happen to me.  Twenty centuries ago when He spoke to gently to His disciples about what was going to happen, He was thinking about me and the Holy Spirit inspiring me – despite all my sin…

“But when the Counsellor comes, whom I shall send to you...  He will bear witness to me; and you also are witnesses, because you have been with me from the beginning. I have said all this to you to keep you from falling away... the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do this because they have not known the Father, nor me. But I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you of them.” (John 15:26-16:4a).

And I have been thinking about that today.  For I am the daughter of a God who loves me enough to plan to stay with me – even from the beginning of time…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.