We're glad you're a part of the Power in the Spirit online community this week. Here's what you can expect each day:

Each day, we consider the Holy Spirit from a different angle. We will look at how the Spirit is depicted in scripture. We will examine the different ways the Spirit works in our world. We will look for ways the Spirit meets us in daily life. Through poetry, readings, visual arts, and crafts, we will spend time with these images and themes as we prepare for each evening's gathering on Zoom.

Today, we're considering how the Holy Spirit arrives as the breath of God, calling us to life.

Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak. Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says ‘Let Jesus be cursed!’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit. Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

Breath

© Edith Blake

 

B elieve in yourself

R obust in serving God

E nergy to move in deep waters

A ctions to be taken

T ime for reflection

H ope for the future

[ After having been a slave in Ireland, Patrick recounts :] At last I reached my home, and spent the next few years with my family. They begged that now, after suffering so many hardships, I should never leave them again.

 

But one night in a dream I saw a man coming from Ireland … [and] I heard a voice coming from the Forest of Forclut in the far west of Ireland, calling me: “We implore you, young man, to return and walk among us.” My heart seemed to be breaking, and I could read no more.

 

During another night I heard a voice – I do not know whether it was within me or beside me, only God knows – whose words I could not understand, except for the final sentence: “He who lay down his life for you, it is he that speaks within you.” And I awoke full of joy. And sometime later I saw him praying within me: I was, as it were, within my own body and I could hear his voice. He was praying most powerfully. I was dumbfounded, wondering who it could be praying within me; but at the end of the prayer he said that he was the Spirit. And then I awoke, remembering the apostle’s words: “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.”

 

Finally, I knew I must go to Ireland.

-Patrick, from J. Thornton and K., Washburn, eds., Tongues of Men and Tongues of Angels: A Book of Sermons .