Pentecost
John 14:23-31
Jesus replied, “Whoever truly loves me reveals my Spirit, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and prepare with them a dwelling in the everlasting [an eternal dwelling]. Whoever does not love me cannot reveal my Spirit. And the spirit power of the word that you hear is not from me; it is the speaking of the Father who sent me.
I have said this to you while I am still with you. But he who is called down, the health-bringing Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you everything and will awaken within you all that I have said to you.
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
You have heard how I said to you, ‘I am going away, and yet I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice because I am going to the Father[ly Ground of the World], for the Father is mightier than I am.
I have told you now
before it happens, so that when it happens, you may find trust. I no longer
have much to say to you, for soon, the prince of this world is coming. Yet over
me, he has no power.
But the world shall see in this how I love the Father [Ground of the World] and how I act according to the Father’s purpose, as it was entrusted to me. Arise, let us go on from here. [let us be on our way.]
Whitsun II
John 14:23-31
June 2020
We human spirits are enclosed
in earthly bodies, enclosed in our own skin. This is what helps give us a sense
of selfhood on earth – that we and no other can occupy the space we take up. It
leads us to a sense of independence and gives us a taste of freedom. Yet that
same sense of self is an illusion. For we are fully dependent upon the work of
others for the maintenance of our earthly existence. Their work feeds and clothes us. We all
breathe the same air. And we are dependent upon the Divine for every breath we
take, for the very fact that we exist, alive, at all.
The commands of Christ are
simple, yet infinitely difficult for us. Christ asks us to remember the Father
of Life and to send him our gratitude. And Christ asks us to acknowledge with
humble gratitude the importance of others in our lives. Our heartfelt thoughts
of gratitude, our awareness that we are all woven together in a great tapestry
of destiny, that the other is striving and evolving, just as we are, all these become
in us the basis for an objective spiritual love. It creates the potential for a
living circulation of mutual support between us and the beings of the spiritual
world; support between us and all others; and between us and the beings of the
natural world.
Out of this gratitude and love,
which we strive to engender within ourselves, Christ can appear. Within our
striving, the Father’s Healing Spirit works. He stands by us in every moment.
Our gratitude creates a portal for the Spirit of higher Truth to enter our
understanding.
