Tag: Acts

Picture looking up at the wooden ceiling of a church, with the image of a dove in the middle of a quadrangle. Text over the top: Air, fire, water, clay (a poem celebrating the Holy Spirit) Faith in Grey Places

Air, fire, water, clay (a poem celebrating the Holy Spirit)

by Christine

Pentecost is often celebrated as the birthday of the church. We remember how the Holy Spirit came in power upon the apostles, how they preached in Jerusalem and how everyone heard them praising God in their mother-tongue. The story is recorded in Acts 2.

Pentecost, if you didn’t know, is so named because it’s the fiftieth day after Passover; it marks the festival of first fruits in the Jewish calendar (Deuteronomy 16:9-12), which is why there were so many Jews in Jerusalem. 

For myself, I think one of the most important things about the Holy Spirit that I’ve come to reckon with, is that the Holy Spirit is a person. 

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Picture looking up at the statue Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, against an azure sky with a single white puffy cloud in the sky. Words: Divine comedy (a poem reflecting on Jesus's ascension) Faith in Grey Places

Divine comedy (a poem reflecting on Jesus’s ascension)

by Christine

Bible references for this poem: Matthew 28:16–20, Acts 1:1–11.

When I was still at school, perhaps still at primary school, a friend asked me why Jesus couldn’t have stuck around. Immediately, I piped up about the Holy Spirit and Jesus’s Spirit can be with everyone, everywhere, simultaneously in a way that an embodied, physical Jesus couldn’t. 

As I look back at my younger self, I’m a little surprised at how bold I was – but in a good way. The Holy Spirit is just as much a person of the Trinity as Jesus is. 

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