Tuesday, August 30, 2022
           (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Swim with Jasper and the Holy Spirit
I know who you are, the Holy One of God!
Who said that? Maybe one of our church friends, from the Empty Nesters, or from Houseboat, or from our spiritual directors’ support group?
Let’s pray.
The Spirit scrutinizes everything, even the depths of God. And among men, who knows what pertains to the man except his spirit, which is within?
No, it wasn’t my Christian buddy – it was the demon confronted by Jesus. “I know who you are, the Holy One of God! Help me, help me, I’m in over my head! Jesus, please don’t.”
The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness. The Lord is good to all and compassionate toward all his works.
But this creature was not a work of God, it was a withered anxious work of Satan. And Satan was nowhere to be found right now, either. This bad guy was on his own.
Jesus rebuked him and said, “Be quiet! Come out of him!” The demon threw the man he was inhabiting down on the ground in front of them. But then he came out of the man and did no one any harm. The people were all amazed.
The man walked free, looking more like himself than he had for years. Jesus was introducing the people to his Father, the maker of all good things. Jesus walked among the people of Israel, making them (if they said YES) the people of God. They had never been people of God like this, children of the Heavenly Father, walking in the spirit, living the Kairos life with every breath on earth.
Similarly, no one knows what pertains to God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand the things freely given us by God.
Jasper took us swimming yesterday at 8 am. Or did we take him? We took each other, I guess you’d say, and all three of us played like seals in the water. Jasper in his green and yellow floatie swam back and forth all the way across the pool.
We played and played, and then we got in the warmer whirlpool and played and played some more. The water jets tickled and tortured our backs. Dragonflies buzzed (10 of them or more) all around us. The grackles stood up on the fence, silhouetted black, ominous. The sun stayed behind the clouds for an hour or so. And when it burned through at last, we came home for strawberry pancakes, blueberries, fried eggs and coffee. Jasper had fruit punch, which he prefers.
We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand the things freely given us by God. And we speak about them not with words taught by human wisdom, but with words taught by the Spirit.
That is to say, in the pool and in the whirlpool, playing at home with Tinkertoys and making waffles, pouring syrup and spilling some of it, we were being led by and taught by the Spirit. When are we not? Certainly not when we are full of the life of Jesus, catching the little children vibe and settling into it.
“I love you,” Jasper whispered to us. He has a wonderful way of making that sound so very very true, getting right up in our faces and saying, “I love you.” He does that just as if Jesus taught him how.
For who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to counsel him? But we have the mind of Christ.
(1 Corinthians 2, Psalm 145, Luke 7, Luke 4)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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