The gift of the Spirit
One Sunday morning, a young girl had seen a baby baptised at her church. Later the same day, her father saw her re-enacting the baptism with one of her dolls – water and all. He heard his daughter solemnly intone, “In the name of the Father, the Son and into the hole ‘e goes.” [If you missed the pun, try saying those words aloud and quickly!] It is not difficult to get confused about the Holy Spirit – the Holy Ghost as he used to be called. Some respond by avoiding the topic, and therefore Him, altogether.
That would be a grave mistake, not least because the Spirit is the gift of the Son and the Father to all of God’s people. Jesus told his disciples, “It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counsellor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7, NIV). When Jesus ‘goes away’, it is to pay fully for our sins, to rise triumphant from the grave, and to ascend gloriously back to his Father in heaven, from where he pours out the Spirit.
Quite simply, we cannot be God’s people without God’s Spirit. And how we need Him! In today’s Collect we ask that, “by the same Spirit we may judge everything rightly and always rejoice in his holy protection.” The Spirit enables us to know, choose and do what is right; and the Spirit protects us, guarding our standing and our relationship with God as our Father, and keeping us from sin.