Monday, June 09, 2014

The Holy Ghost Is Not Confetti

... but nevertheless the analogy keeps resurfacing in my mind.

It's that time of year when the maple trees are dropping their helicopter seeds.  It's that time of year when little children gather up handfuls of helicopters and thrrrrrow them up into the air, to spin and spread and float everywhere.

Or imagine the kind of confetti that flies everywhere during a ticker-tape parade.

Remember the story of the sower and the seed (Mark 4)?  The guy sowing the seed was reckless.  He took handfuls of seed and threw it everywhere.  He spread it and spread it and spread it.  Even where it would never grow.

The Holy Spirit can never be separated from the Word.
The Word can never be separated from the Holy Spirit.

Pentecost is that word --that Spirit-- blowing where the Lord wills.  Everywhere.

Sunday, June 08, 2014

"I Just Want You To Be Happy"

Pastor keeps saying it over and over:  Our society believes, "All that matters is that they're happy."  Okay, I figure he's right, but I didn't know where he kept bumping into this credo. 

I've been watching more than my normal share of movies recently.  One after another after another: "I just want you to be happy" and "whatever it takes for them to be happy."  If it's not a theme, it is at least accepted-as-universal-truth in most of the movies made in the last ten years.

Weaselly little thing to sneak into our brains under the guise of niceness.  After all, who would care about what was good for a person if it might make them uncomfortable?