I worked twelve and a half hours today, or rather yesterday since it is already tomorrow!

Now, at 4:30 AM, I just finished walking Kashi about the neighborhood, having not been able to do so since Thursday.  Really, he walked me.  Despite my stumbling along the way, he was so very happy to be out and about once more.

I was hoping the walk would help me sleep, but I only spent more time thinking about that which bothers me.  While I am not completely sure, I am fairly certain I lied to someone on Saturday.  Even if merely by omission, lies are wrong and only bring hurt.  But what do you do if telling the truth would most likely hurt the person worse than the omission?

I did try to sing all the verses, old and new, to Jesus Came, the Heavens Adoring, but I still cannot get the notes of third and fourth lines...at least the majority of them.  Perhaps if I got more verses, I would have a greater opportunity of mastering this hymn (hint, hint)!  I am, however, also looking forward to the next batch of hymns from Pastor.

So, I thought I would spend some more time with Kleinig.  I am only fifty or so pages away from the section on prayer.  And, boy, do I want to leap ahead and start reading there.  The first section on the mystery of Christ was quite interesting, so each time I tried to leap ahead, I was pulled back to study, to savor, and, yes, to meditate on what he is presenting.

This next section is actually on meditation, and, frankly, I could skip it and not feel bad at all about doing so.  But each time I start flipping the pages, I find myself wondering if I might be missing something important because of my preconceived notions and conditioned responses to the small bit I have read thus far.

In fact, I just started flipping when I spotted the following.  I spotted the following and backed up to the beginning to read what was there again.  He started with some pretty standard stuff about abiding in Christ, but tied it to mediation on His Word.  Standard stuff, yet completely different.  Then:

In our homes, we have many different electrical appliances, from lights to a vacuum cleaner.  Each of these appliances is designed to perform a different task fro us.  yet, despite their different functions, they all have one thing in common:  they operate by the power of an electric current.  They do not produce or possess electricity; they receive it from another source and are empowered by it.

As Christians, we live and work by the power of God's Holy Spirit, a power that we never possess but always receive.  We can achieve nothing spiritually by ourselves.  Only as long as we are attached to Christ and receive the Spirit from Him can we live the life of Christ and do the work of God the Father.  Our spiritual life depends entirely on our ongoing reception of the Holy Spirit.  The practice of meditation is included in this.  Meditation depends on our ongoing reception of the Holy Spirit and the continual operation of the Holy Spirit in us. (107-108)

Hmmm...Christianity being a spirituality of reception.  Again and again and again I think I have grasped this notion and then find myself discovering that I have only scratched the surface, I have not yet tasted the riches of possessing nothing and yet receiving everything.

But...what also troubles my waters is how very different the Holy Spirit is in the doctrine which I am studying with that which has been presented in all those years of church going.  This is near impossible for me to describe other than to say cheaply that the Holy Spirit has been taught mostly as either an afterthought, part of the Trinity yes, but not really much else to delve into there...or as something to be avoided...you know...speaking in tongues and such...holy roller folk.

Oh, how I am learning something so very different...

Jesus teaches us about the role of the Holy Spirit in meditation in John 16:12-15.  This is the last part of His teaching about the Spirit in His farewell speech to His disciples on the night before His crucifixion:

I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.  When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.  He will glorify Me, for He will take what is Mine and declare it to you.  All that the father has is mind; therefore I said that He will take what is mine and declare it to you.

Here Jesus is not just speaking to His apostles but to all His disciples, including us, about the role of the Holy Spirit in the Church.  The risen Lord Jesus gives us His Holy Spirit as our spiritual director and guide in our journey with Him.  He leads us quite practically into the truth of Jesus and our association with Him.  His purpose with us is to advocate Jesus by bearing witness to Him and disclosing His glory as God's Son.

The Holy Spirit does not, as some teach, merely take us back to what Christ said and did long ago.  he does much more than that.  He declares what the risen Lord Jesus is saying and doing now; He proclaims the things that have come to be after His death and resurrection.  He initiates us into the present mystery of Christ.  After all, we do not hear what Jesus is saying now, nor can we see what He is doing now.  But the Spirit does.  So He declares to us what He hears from Christ.  The Holy Spirit takes the words of Jesus, the words that He spoke long ago, and applies them to us, each in our won situation.  He tells us what Jesus now brings to each of us from His heavenly Father.  The Spirit takes what belongs to Jesus and offers it to us, telling us that it is ours.  Through the Spirit's preaching, the word of Jesus is enacted in us, just as Jesus enacted the word of His heavenly Father fro us in His earthly ministry.

The Holy Spirit plays an important role in our meditation on God' Word.  We meditate on God's Word in order to receive the Holy Spirit and all the gifts that the Spirit brings to us as a foretaste and pledge of our heavenly  inheritance.  As we meditate on God's Word and put our trust in it, the Holy Spirit takes over from us in our thinking and preaches it to us.  The Holy Spirit turns what we do into something that is done to us, something that happens to us; the Spirit turns our meditation into and exercise of reception.

Yet it is not just the Holy Spirit who helps us to meditate and inspires us as we meditate.  As Christ shows us in John 16:12-15, all three persons of the Trinity are involved in the operation of Christian meditation.  As we meditate, the Spirit leads us to Christ and through Christ to God the Father.  But He also takes what the Father gives to His Son and offers it to us for our use and enjoyment.  By meditating on the words and deeds of Jesus, we receive the Father's gift of His Spirit and all His other heavenly gifts. (108-110)

Does that not change how you look at reading the bible?  Does it not shift, radically, the here and now of our faith, a living, active Word for a living, active God in a living, active faith that is not merely situated in the past, not tied to a single, albeit magnificent, act on the Calvary's hill?

I have so much to learn, too much to un-learn.  It seems, each day, I discover more of exactly what I do not know.  I wonder, at times, if I know anything at all....