The gift of God's presence

This week in Waiting for Water we are exploring Acts 1 and 2, where God gives his presence to the disciples through the Holy Spirit. For those of us living in Westernized countries inculcated with scientific materialism, the Holy Spirit is a difficult aspect of God to embrace, even if we are believers.

As we go about our daily lives, it is easy to forget that we are not just a particular cluster of blood, brain, and bone called "human." What is a spirit, anyway? It cannot be detected by scientific instruments or medicated by the pharmaceutical industry, yet most of us feel nonetheless that we are more than just bodies. We are, as C.S. Lewis put it, immortal beings. And if we forget that, much of the Bible won't make any sense, and much of the world won't either.

I have been places, especially outside the Western world, where the presence of something beyond myself was palpable. I have danced with Ugandan women and felt a dam break inside, followed by torrents of joy. I have watched white and black pastors kneeling together, asking for and receiving forgiveness, on a coliseum floor and felt as if heaven was intersecting earth. My guess is you have experienced these things too, or something quite like them. But did you recognize them for what they were--gifts of God's presence, his Spirit reaching out to touch our own?

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Humans have spirits; we are spiritual beings. And if we pay attention, we can catch glimpses of the world that exists outside what we can see, taste, touch, hear, and smell. Like the disciples, we may find ourselves experiencing what we never before imagined: the rush and fire of God's presence.