Sunday, May 6, 2018

Romans 8:14-17

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For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

Glorious contradiction

There is a contradiction in the Christian life between immense joy and unquenchable yearning. It is a glorious contradiction that gives depth and meaning, awakening great love and hope in our hearts.

The Spirit of the Holy One cries out in our spirits at the wonder of life and beauty. We are surrounded by the greening of life as spring raises the dead from winter’s cold. Light and life, color and contour, delight the heart even more than the eye.

Filled with joy our hearts stream out in a cry as wide as the sky, “My Lord and my God, how wondrous you are. Thank you for this earth, for this life, for the wonder that I should be here under the blue expanse to see and feel all that surrounds me. Thank you that I should feel and know that I am your beloved child.”

Without quenching this praise, God’s Spirit within us also aches amid the pain and sorrow that stain every corner of creation. Hatred and hunger, poverty and pain, disease and distress, pollution and degradation mar the goodness of all God has made.

The Spirit groans in pain, but also in hope for the fullness of God’s plan to restore creation so that everything ... everywhere ... and every corner of our being is filled with praise for God’s glory, knowing only beauty and love.

We simultaneously hold both— the joy and the longing, the praise and the pain—living in this glorious contradiction, honored to know the Spirit of the Holy One within our own.

Pr.   David L. Miller