Have you ever felt like you were being lifted out of a mess by a huge crane? I think of what the construction industry terms "sky cranes" and imagine God being one of those in a spiritual sense. In my previous post, I shared some of my angst lately and I must admit that over the last couple of days God has been sending me helpers, clarifiers, providers of perspective. The funny thing is though I had to be at a place where I would receive those God sent.
Funny that . . . having to be receptive.
What is the key to being receptive? Is being receptive in and of itself a gift from God? I tend to think of the love of God, revealed most fully in Christ, as being the "key." If we choose to take that love into our hearts and souls and minds, does that make us receptive to whatever God wants of us? Isn't taking that love into our hearts a prerequisite for baptism? For when we take that love into our hearts, we submit ourselves to a relationship with Christ. We acknowledge our debt. We make a statement that we are in Christ and Christ is in us.
Baptism has been on my mind a lot lately and the profound nature of its gift. Baptism is an outward sign of an inward receptiveness to God's Love in the World . . . Jesus Christ. We are one with Christ in his death and his resurrection in our baptism. We receive our most intimate visit with the Holy Spirit at our baptism. It is through this visit with the Holy Spirit that we receive our gifts, our call, the purpose of our new life in Christ. We can begin to see the purpose of our lives to this point. We begin to recognize the power and mercy of the Sustainer and Comforter as made known to us. An imprint of that power and mercy is left within our soul. Why? So that when God calls us to be a part of that sky crane, to help pull someone out of a quagmire of doubt and worry and disappointment, we recognize that part of God within that gives us the ability, the words, the arms and shoulders with which to do such compassionate work.
And, it all revolves around being receptive.
2 comments:
Good post. My only thought for what it is worth...I think we come with most of the stuff you were talking about, especially the spiritual gifts and at our baptism they become active in the "Holy Spirit".
If we are not created with these gifts already there then for me it becomes more of the theology that says if you are good little person Santa...oopps sorry meant the Holy Spirit will come give you your reward.
I mean you are born with a legs right but if you decide you want to be in sports your legs develop...I think God wants relationship with us and when we decide on that the Holy Spirit comes at baptism and empowers or enables those gifts inside us...Of course I think I am preaching on this Sunday...hummm
Thanks for this response! I'm still working through my belief about this idea, admittedly now with some confusion. The confusion comes from a perspective of what I experienced and sensed at the time of my baptism. Yet, in actuality, the tendencies toward the ministry I'm doing now, the way in which I am in relationship with the world -- these were already within me. Yet, the spiritual awareness of these gifts was given to me at my baptism.
I don't believe the bestowing of gifts at baptism is a "santa" thing. Especially the "good little person" aspect of that. When we are baptized, we die with Christ and rise again with Christ. In our death, we are scrubbed clean in order to start again in a new life with and through Christ and the Holy Spirit, re-creating us all as "good little people". So why wouldn't the Holy Spirit bestow spiritual gifts upon us then.
Semantics, I guess. Receptivity, radical availability . . . these are aspects of Spirit, of heart, of faith. They are all intertwined with responding to the call from Christ to be one with Christ, proclaimed often through baptism. But I remember stories of God calling folks to things which the person felt very unprepared, having no tendencies toward the particular "ministry" to which God was calling him or her. God doing so to prove, I reckon, that it is God who is in control and acting in the ministry, not the individual.
Obviously, I'm still workin' on this one!
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