The Spirit of the Lord fills the whole world! we read in Wisdom 1:7. That spirit comes to fill us, but it takes on different aspects for each one of us. It can come to complete, it can come to make sense, or it can come to give courage so that I can move on. One things is certain, being filled with the spirit means I am not stagnant or static. Being filled with the spirit implies movement.
I think that many of us find movement very hard. Because it is so easy to keep looking back and longing for what once was. It is so easy to see the past that is gone as lost.
I am thinking of my past summer at the monastery, and how so much of what I saw and experienced brought back vivid memories of living there. The nuns were so eclectic! They learned how to do major plumbing jobs, as well as electricity and carpentry. They had to, as they could not get anyone to come and do it for them! But now, gone are the sisters that could wire in a new fuse box or lay a new water line. It isn't that the pioneering spirit has been lost. It is simple a question of membership and time.
Perhaps that is why the past is hard to let go. As I walked around the monastery grounds, I found myself longing for those days when the tool room was full of tools and the gardens were large and flourishing. Now the tool room is full of cobwebs and the gardens are small. Perhaps our greatest challenge in letting go is not looking at the past as loss. The spirit prompts us to consider it movement, going forward, coming into something new.
Perhaps that is the meaning of the verse from Revelations 21:5, Behold, I make all things new.
Perhaps that is why the past is hard to let go. As I walked around the monastery grounds, I found myself longing for those days when the tool room was full of tools and the gardens were large and flourishing. Now the tool room is full of cobwebs and the gardens are small. Perhaps our greatest challenge in letting go is not looking at the past as loss. The spirit prompts us to consider it movement, going forward, coming into something new.
Perhaps that is the meaning of the verse from Revelations 21:5, Behold, I make all things new.
We should not be afraid of new. We should realize that moving forward means letting go, and that past memories of things that used to be do not have to be chalked up to loss. It can be stepping stones into what we are to become.
For what are we as Christians if not seekers of the new? And how can the new be beautiful unless it is filled with transformation, new life, a living creation?
That is how we are filled with the spirit. That is how the spirit makes all things new.
For what are we as Christians if not seekers of the new? And how can the new be beautiful unless it is filled with transformation, new life, a living creation?
That is how we are filled with the spirit. That is how the spirit makes all things new.
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