On the Lookout for the Holy Spirit's Movements

Beloved in Christ, 

Lately, I’ve been drawn again and again to Acts 16:6-15. It’s the start of Paul’s second missionary journey. It’s pretty hard to follow because it does not proceed in a logical or linear fashion. We are told that, to start, “They went through Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia” (16:6). From there, the journey is an improvisational leap from place to place, following the immediate winds and direction of the Holy Spirit, meeting new people in surprising ways, having their plans and expectations thwarted, always to discover what God is really asking of them. 

There is a palpable sense that, for Paul and his companions, God is an immediate, active reality in the details of their daily experience. And, they have learned to make friends with not knowing exactly what comes next.

One of the key questions facing our beloved, old church in this moment is can we re-learn what it’s like to live as if God really is God? Can we re-learn what it feels like to experience God as an active, acting agent in our lives, our communities, and the wider world? And then, can we learn to hold our plans and expectations lightly? Can we become friends with not knowing exactly what comes next? 

If you are like me, you spend most of your energy, most of the time, trying to engineer life to move in a particular direction. You try to force things through your own efforts to move toward a particular outcome. The life of faith, though, calls us to make plans to be sure, but then to look, always and actively, for what God might be doing, how the Spirit might be blowing, what unexpected turn might God move us to take? 

The good news is that God is God, and we are not. The good news is that the world, and the church, are sustained, saved, and renewed by God’s power, not our efforts. Our job is to so steep ourselves in the scriptures and in prayer that we can spot what God is doing, we can hitch out lives to what God is trying to do. Can we learn together, in the midst of a world that is full of suffering and challenge at every turn, to see our lives as a spontaneous, improvisational journey, where we skip from rock to rock as faithfully as we can, sometimes scared, sometimes frustrated, but more often than not, joyfully encountering God’s reckless, uncontainable, world-saving love? 

Grace and Peace, 

The Right Rev. Craig Loya