2022-09-21 A Meditation on Spiritual Arrival

“Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways.’ As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest.’ ”” (Heb 3:7–11 ESV)

Spiritual arrival—”Come, holy spirit, come”—is a real zone where trespasses and fears past translate unto heavenly building blocks and thoughts, clarity of mind, magnificent visions of a confident variety, peace and stasis in taking our rest or doing our work.

It cannot be forced or legislated, but we know the Spirit pouring forth from unleashed gates, the newline visions of where a haunting or oppressive spirit dwells, the basic certainty that we are in no sin as we take our rest and eat our meals and go about our business; indeed, we comfort ourselves and reassure our weary bodies and souls, that it is no indulgence thus to be peace and comfort with reclining ease or with awakened vigilance. We are, for once, announcing: absolution, in truth, was heard; redemption, for sooth, was messaged; belonging was, indeed, felt.

It was obtained therefore that the coming Spirit would be our place of employ under good tutelage, good supervision, good and wide latitude for discovering and laboring according to creative juices and ministered to by enveloping, encircling, good spirits of inspiration and of nurture.

We were lost, derelict, delinquent, and then found channel and Cause to focus our efforts. The delinquency made sense in a world with few signposts, with boring delays unto an unsatisfactory adulthood, or here and there urges to experiment and exploit our own bodies and bloodstreams with the ill gotten and the malfeasant. Now, life channels forth in good environs. Now, shell-shocked and astonished at what we once were, we labor and we thrive. We are recipient of a loving Spirit from above, who does nurture and reaffirm us, upbuilding us unto spiritual visions and growth stages. We grow in faith. We have found an absolving gift and an absolving bequest. We are, in summary, thriving.

Thriving, bolting forth, first out of the gates, we are not ashamed to be those upbuilt and made over by this Jesus we’ve come to know. We are confident and servant, because of this being found business: we were found, and it was no cakewalk that life had dealt us, but fighting without and fears within (2 Co 7:5b). Now we are the strong in order the better to serve the world—yes, it is exciting!—to serve those near to us and those at a distance, just perhaps, by the never-taken-for-granted fact of Deliverance out of delinquency, a corner turned, a wise and knowing once-over towards all that media depiction of the still-searching, the twenty-something, the thirty-year-old, the forty and beyond, who has yet to find Christ.

We feel no compunction to hamper ourselves or to hinder, to false modesty, by way of some illusion of a debt or a guilt-trip for thus being the bold and the newly-found. We are joy and peace in believing. We cannot mandate any “spiritual experience”, but we do believe—”Come, holy spirit, come”—that winsome spirits do convict the heart and redeem the soul, bringing it thus to a stage of demonstrative loving care. Yet then the attack; we cherish and put in a bottle those experiences when we stepped forth in the Spirit’s good care; those form a recollection, a distant glimpse, a reminder, that all is coming together for Good Purpose; all is intending good things towards each of us; all is celebratory and invitation to pray, to hand over fears and sins, truly to dwell with this Christ spoken of, who, in true form, is actually known as a solvent for our sins; who actually works on this level, and does so that we might for once, as in a long lost and distant galaxy, be those who Belong and who Believe and who Thrive, cared for and made new in good company and purposeful faith.