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presence

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God of the small things

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The story is famous: when Elijah went looking for God, he searched for him in the grandiose, in the mighty, in the massive. But he didn’t find him there – instead, he found it in the still small voice. One way to read this is to realise that, for instance, our busyness or our worries stops us from hearing God. Yet there is a lot more to the “still, small voice” than this.

smallthings

Photo: adapted from Joe Lencioni, under CC License

The story also depicts us and our own expectations: it describes how we think God will show up in great and marvellous ways; and forget that he also shows up in the mundane. Ignoring God’s presence and action in the everyday life, may be just down to our desire to retain control over the mundane:

  • in remembering the miraculous (that Jesus fed the multitude with barely anything), we find an excuse to forget the example that is set (for instance, that people were fed and welcomed. Or that the start of it was food belonging to the disciples, not conjured up out of thin air.
  • in looking at the big miracles first – and yes, that includes the resurrection – we allow ourselves to box Jesus into someone who concerns himself only with the big issues. Jesus performed miracles, yes. But that is far from being his predominant activity over his three-and-a-bit-year ministry.
  • in thinking in terms of salvation first – whether it be issues of soteriology, eschatology or predestination – we shockingly allow ourselves to make Jesus irrelevant to our day-to-day lives.

The truth is far more beautiful: God is relevant to our lives: as a model to follow, someone to imitate, yes. But also, and just as importantly, God is a constant presence in our lives: someone who cares about the mundane and acts in the little things as well as the big.

I think it’s important to remind ourselves that our prayers should not be limited to the supernatural, the unexpected. I myself have a tendency to push prayer to the extreme:  to ask beyond my expectations of what might actually happen. And there is a place for such bold prayers. But not all prayers should be reaching for what we couldn’t do ourselves.

Because I’m afraid that if we do limit our prayers to what we couldn’t do ourselves, we quickly reach a stage where we feel we have to sort ourselves out before we can come before God. And then, those areas of our lives that most need healing, we cut off from the one person who can heal them.

When’s the last time you prayed for the natural rather than the supernatural?

Have you ever felt your situation did not merit God’s attention?

Frost and the Holy Spirit

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Today, there was frost everywhere for the second time this year. Frost is beautiful, even if the temperature is not necessarily that pleasant. But it got me thinking about the way we receive the Holy Spirit in our lives.

1. Frosted things are still the same things. The frosted leaf keeps its shape. Below the layer of frost, it remains the same leaf. When we are called to something, when we receive gifts, or inspiration, from the Holy Spirit, it does not make us completely different people. Rather, it is using our situation and our strengths and weaknesses. To find where your calling lies, identify your strengths and passions in your secular, everyday life.

2. The edges of frosted objects become more visible. In the same way, the Spirit highlights our uniqueness by pointing our out own gifts, our own specialness to others. Without the Spirit, we are indistinguishable  a mass of brown leaves where no one really knows where one ends and where the other starts. But that highlighting is the same for everyone: it is the same, one Spirit – and just the one Fruit of the Spirit that takes on many shapes: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

3. Smooth surfaces don’t tend to get frosted quite as much. If we were perfect, we wouldn’t need the Holy Spirit in our lives as a comforter, nor as a guide. If we were saints, there would be no conviction of our sins. Not that we should sin to receive more of the Holy Spirit. But we should recognise that God can use our impurities, our imperfections, our own roughness; and that the same goes for our neighbour. Rather than pretending we are perfect, we are led to look at those areas in our lives which fall short, which are turned into something beautiful by the Spirit.

4. All are subjected to the frost. There is no way for things which are outside in damp weather and in sub-zero temperatures to avoid the thin layer of frozen water depositing on them. There is no way to reject the gifts of the Spirit, or its convictions. But there is a way to avoid them: stay inside, do not expose yourself to the world, to pain or to joy, do not interact with anyone. We can close our hearts to the Spirit, but then we close ourselves to a whole range of stuff too.

5. Frost is a response: snow can fall anywhere, because it is formed around dust motes. But frost is made up of ice crystals which are formed on the frosted surface. When we receive the Holy Spirit, we respond to it – and it is that response that we feel. The presence of God is everywhere, it is only our response that we feel in those special times when we talk about the presence of God.

6. Frost makes things shine when it thaws. The Spirit of God is good, and beautiful; but it is also meant to be released, not just taken in. To put it differently, if we were just receiving the Spirit, breathing it in, as it were, without breathing out, we’d become puffed up and, quite frankly, detestable to others. The fruit of the Spirit is something that is shared, and it is in sharing it that we become shining lights and bless others.