Grace-Spotting: Looking for Signs of the Holy Spirit

Beloved in Christ,

After many months and multiple stages of transition, the Loya family is now fully moved into our home in the west metro suburbs. That is to say, all of our belongings are in the same house where we are sleeping, but there will doubtless be many more months of unpacking and rearranging.

Our lives these days involve a lot of frantic scrambling to find the keys we just set down a few minutes before, or searching for the one item we urgently need in a sea of boxes and wrapping paper. Still, everyone has a bed, we have a kitchen that is mostly functional, and we’ve set up a home office space, which is so critical in these days. 

This weekend, I was working from the office - an oasis of relative order in a sea of chaos - when two bluejays flittered around the large cedar tree outside my window. I sat and watched them for a long time, and as I did, all of the demands of unpacking, all of the uncertainty and disruption of these past many months melted away.

It seemed to me a good way to think about what we are called to in these days. We are all feeling the weight of the darkness and uncertainty that surrounds us. And yet, the Holy Spirit continues to inspire and sustain new life everywhere, if we only have eyes to see it. Local faith communities are learning new ways to connect and bear witness to the good news of Jesus. There is reason to hope that the yoke of racial injustice might be fully and finally broken in our time. 

Just as those two bluejays came without my calling and left without my consent, the Holy Spirit continues to pop up all around us, in and outside of the church, bringing moments of forgiveness and grace, healing small divisions, inspiring large movements that cry out for justice, reminding and grounding us in the endless love of God even as the world sways and shakes around us. 

So much of the way of Jesus is about remembering that God is God and we are not. It is not our job to save the world or solve the pandemic. That’s the work of God’s Spirit. Our job is to be grace spotters, pointing to where the Spirit is flittering with love and justice in the world around us, cooperating with what God is up to, and helping to create the conditions for that Spirit’s loving power to be fully unleashed in the world. 

I’m more grateful than I can say to be engaged in grace-spotting with all of you in every grace-soaked corner of Minnesota. ‌

The Right Reverend Craig Loya
X Bishop
Episcopal Church in Minnesota