Showing posts with label Spirit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spirit. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 19, 2022

A One-Sentence Prayer

“The Lord be with your spirit.”

“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.”

This first quote is the last line of 2 Timothy. The second is the last line of both Galatians and Philemon. Paul liked to close with it when writing people he cared about passionately, meaning that it wasn’t a throwaway sentiment or a meaningless spiritual cliché. It’s more than a fond wish; it’s a one-sentence prayer, or a blessing.

So what is he saying exactly?

Sunday, December 22, 2019

The Trinity (and Other Committees)

Last week I spent a torturous hour and a half completing an online job safety training module. Since the company I work for has more than 15 employees, provincial law requires that we have a safety committee. So every time a new government rolls out a new initiative or an old one decides to ‘refresh’ their documentation (code for ‘same thing, new wrapper’), the byproducts of their boardroom discussions eventually filter down to me.

I suppose if you have to be on a committee, the Job Safety Committee is the one to volunteer for. Coffee and donuts monthly for doing … not much. Finding a spot to hang the first aid kit, I suspect. In case a paper cut really, really bleeds.

Monday, June 24, 2019

Anonymous Asks (46)

“Spiritual worship: like ghosts and stuff? I don’t understand it.”

No ghosts, but if you’re not familiar with the concept of worshiping God in spirit, maybe it can be a bit confusing.

Jesus said God the Father is looking for people who will worship him “in spirit and in truth”. That became possible when the Father sent the Son into the world to reveal God to mankind.

To understand the meaning of worshiping in spirit, we need to understand a little bit about the alternative.

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Spirits and Spirits

The original Greek New Testament consists entirely of capital letters. It has no spaces, no punctuation, no accents or diacritical marks.

Before this morning I knew most of that, though not the bit about the capitals. There was, apparently, no functional equivalent in ancient Greek to our lower case letters, which leaves us at the mercy of translators when we try to make distinctions between concepts like “Spirit” (as in “Holy Spirit” on the many occasions when the word “Holy” is not supplied) and “spirit” (the human spirit, or possibly a spirit of another sort entirely).

I’m indebted to Tertius for many of the following thoughts …

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

The Trinity (and other Committees)

The most recent version of this post is available here.