There’s an exercise I have sometimes done with Discipleship Classes when we talk about the Holy Spirit (weather permitting)!  We head outside to the Old Burying Ground or to the parking lot behind the parsonage and spend a few minutes in silence.  The only instruction I give is to take a few moments to silently observe the wind.  This can, of course, be accomplished in several ways.

We hear the wind.  We feel the wind.  We see how the wind moves objects. 

When we come back inside, we chat about what our youth and class mentors experienced.  What exactly did they observe about the wind?  How did it feel to be outside observing the world in silence?  Then, I do my best to tie in the experience with the Holy Spirit.  Because the Holy Spirit is sometimes compared to wind or breath.  And just like we can’t exactly see the wind, we know it’s there.  Sorta like God, you know?

When writing about the Holy Spirit, Daniel Cooperrider explains in Speak with the Earth and It Will Teach You, “Genesis 1 prefigures that moment when the human spirit was first breathed into being by imagining the ruach of God—the Spirit/Breath/Wind of God—hovering over the primordial waters, signaling that a creative consciousness was beginning to stir.”* 

The Spirit of God, the Breath of God, the Wind of God was there, from the beginning.
So, how do you understand the Holy Spirit? 
Have you ever looked up at a dramatic sky or experienced the wind stirring and thought of God?  Why might that be so?
Just a few thoughts to consider this week.

Love,
Pastor Lauren

*Daniel Cooperrider, Speak with the Earth and It Will Teach You: A Field Guide to the Bible, pg. 139.
Photo by Rev. Lauren Ostrout ~A Lake Erie Sky, Geneva-on-the-Lake, Ohio.

Thursday Thoughts 9/26/24