I've always loved to write. I love the joy of putting my thoughts down on a piece of paper, all chicken scratch with doodles and random pictures of flowers to help emphasize my points. In that regard I think I'll always be like I was in third grade, drawing hearts on my notes, although the names are a little more sophisticated than they were in those days. No longer is it just a doodle with Laura and Nathan written everywhere, but it's REVEREND Laura and Mr. Laura's husband, because I like to see myself in such high esteem (totally a joke, of course) Side note: whenever we get mail from Duke Divinity school, they only recognize me as reverend and not Nathan, so our mail says Rev. Laura and Mr. Nathan Wittman. Makes me chuckle every time.
So on we go... dusting off the old blog. We'll see how long I keep this up this time ... wink wink.
I absolutely love the sanctuary at my church, and this picture doesn't even begin to do it justice, just my view from the pew this morning. I love my time alone in here during the week. Sometimes I'll sit and do work in here instead of my office, or I'll pray, or plan worship or play my guitar. It's my special time with God, I suppose.
This morning I had some prayer time while sitting in here, using my typical "Common Prayer" app, and the highlighted scripture for today was from Luke 1:39-49, the encounter between Mary and Elizabeth, when Mary is going to tell her that she is pregnant. When Elizabeth encounters Mary the child in her womb (John the Baptist) leaps for joy and it says "Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit".
As we approach Pentecost I find this to be an interesting choice of scripture. We tend to inappropriately categorize the Holy Spirit as something that showed up after Jesus left, but the Spirit is coeternal with the Father and the Son. It was the very air breathed into our lungs, the wind that hovered over the waters. It has been working since before time even began. And it was at work in Elizabeth that day as she stood in the presence of the Messiah, long before anyone knew what was to happen.
I think being "filled with the Spirit" can mean a lot of things to us. I think it can be that warm feeling we get when we encounter God... when a song speaks to us... when we find hope where hope was lost, the list goes on and on. I think that the Spirit can be seen in different ways, through spiritual gifts, and some of us express our encounter of the Spirit in different ways too.
But I think one thing the Spirit teaches us is that you don't have to see something to know it's there. You don't have to physically lay your eyes on something to know that it's real, to feel it, to experience it. In the time of Mary and Elizabeth there was no ultrasound equipment, no early results pregnancy tests. Elizabeth knew what was happening not because she had any physical evidence, but because she encountered the Holy Spirit.
In our day and age it's hard to be people of faith. I say that not because we face persecution or trial for our faith. We are extremely privileged where we are to have that freedom of worship. But what I mean is that we live in a society where the answers to everything are right at our fingertips. I can explain quantum physics to my five year old with a simple google search. It doesn't mean I understand it, but I can search for it and give him a satisfactory answer when he comes up with questions that are way above my pay grade as a mom. We can have things delivered to our houses, overnighted from the other side of the country. Everything is at our finger tips, we can have whatever we want, the moment we want it. But God... God doesn't work that way.
Being people of faith does not mean having everything we want right when we want it. God is outside of our time and he works in ways we will never understand (I hate when people say that, but it's 100% true). Our faith is not about believing in what we can prove, but it's about believing in what we have experienced, and in the ways we have encountered God on our own. It's about trusting that there is something bigger than us. It's about believing that this man, named Jesus, who loved us enough to give his own life for us was working wonders before he was even born, and he continued to work wonders after his death.
If you think about it, it's amazing that Christianity has lived on as long as it has. It's amazing that they still let us crazy people, who call ourselves preachers, stand up and talk for twenty minutes on Sunday mornings. It's amazing that even though I have read the Bible cover to cover more times than I can count, I still find something new every time I read scripture. God's word is alive and well, and we don't have to be able to make sense of it, but we can see the evidence of the Spirit moving in this world if we just pay attention.
I suppose I should stop here for now, as goodness knows I could go on for days, but I need to save some of this for my sermon on Sunday. If you even made it this far, I appreciate you listening to my ramblings. I'm sure I'll have more to share soon.
Blessings <><
Pastor Laura
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