Symbols of the Holy Spirit 9: Pledge

Symbols of the Holy Spirit 9:

Pledge, deposit or guarantee

100 percent satisfaction guarentee sign.

I’m always a bit dubious when I see the sort of Christian advertising that guarantees a blessing. I would love to claim a free spiritual blessing if you read my blog but I cannot. Occasionally someone will say that God has blessed them through something I have said or written, but that is very rare indeed, and no one is more surprised than me. The evangelist who promises that all your problems will fade away if you come to Jesus is doing Jesus a great disservice. I sometimes feel like the message should be, ‘Come to Jesus and find out what problems really are.’

Jesus never promised his followers a problem-free life, what he did promise was to be with us forever, even until the end of the age. Jesus is present with us through the Holy Spirit, the Spirit…

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Symbols of the Holy Spirit 7: Wine

Making an ass of myself

Symbols of the Holy Spirit 7:

Wine

Red wine being poured into a glass.

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, Ephesians 5:18–19
And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? … But others mocking said, “They are filled with new wine.” Acts 2:6-8, 13
And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins. Mark 2:22

The Holy…

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Symbols of the Holy Spirit 5: Water

Making an ass of myself

Symbols of the Holy Spirit 5:

Water

River flowing over stones.

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink’, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” John 4:10 ESVUK
On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. – John 7:37–39

Life can sometimes be like a desert, but the Holy Spirit is always like a river. – Anon.

A story.

Living water was a common idea. Everybody…

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Symbols of the Holy Spirit 2: Breath or a gentle breeze

Making an ass of myself

Symbols of the Holy Spirit 2:

Breath or a gentle breeze

Holy Spirit Breeze

There’s a little game I used to play with friends online. Take a song lyric and use Google Translate to translate it through different languages, say from English to French to German to Spanish and back to English. Here’s one I did from English to Greek to Portuguese to Arabic and back to English:

Breathe, breath of God: Fill yourself with life again.

Do you recognise the first line of the hymn, Breathe on me breath of God, Fill me with life anew? It has changed in meaning, hasn’t it. That is because words in one language do not have a direct equivalent in another language.

Now try another, simpler this time. Take the word Spirit, translate into Hebrew and back into English. The word we get at the end is Breath. Hebrew is a concise language…

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John Henry Michael Thompson — The inventor of the Lingo programming language used in Adobe Director

John Henry Michael “JT” Thompson

(b. June 15, 1959)

He is the inventor of the Lingo programming language used in Adobe Director and a former Chief Scientist at Macromedia.

Thompson is a former professor in the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts and instructor at Drexel University.

Thompson is committed to teaching and motivating successive scions of tech developers. He is a graduate of MIT and the Art Student League of New York.