It was just a hooooooovvvverrring

"After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: 'Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and belive. God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us."

Let's go back a bit, well, go back a lot. It was early. I imagine the humidity was high, but the sun wasn't. It was, for lack of a better term, the "beginning." Scripture tells us that God was busy, busy, busy, creating and all.

In Genesis I, the second verse, we get an idea of the agenda. "Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters." For lack of a better idea, the notion of a more superb action plan, God's Spirit was HOVERING.

Years ago during the midst of a particularly action-filled spat of UFO sightings, a craft allegedly was sighted near Pascagoula, Miss. I remember little of the details, except a TV reporter interviewed one lucky (or unlucky) soul who supposedly had seen the craft. "It was just a hooooooovvvverrring over the trees," the eye witness said.

I have to tell you, that seems to me to be the best way to describe what is life. We're born. We live. We work. We fail. We succeed. We die. And all the while, God's Spirit is hooooooovvvverrring about us, watching, admiring our moments of gratitude, shaking His head at our messes we create with relish and with sorrow.

In John's Gospel, Jesus comes and stands before the disciples after having jumped out of the tomb. He shows them hands and feet that have holes or at the least have scars forming. He says to them, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." And with that he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. ..."

With that he breathed on them ... and the Spirit of God, the very breath of God the Father, which had been hoooooovvvvvverrrring around the lungs of the Son, blew forth into a peaceful easy evening of discipleship. The rules, the regulations, the roaring Lion and mewing Lamb have never changed that breath, that wind.

We're born. We live. We work. We fail. We succeed. We die. And God's Spirit rests easy or hard on everything we do, we think, we ponder and plan, Gentiles and Jews, Muslims and Mormons, red and blue, white and black, saints and sinners all.

"It was just a hoooooovvvvvvvveerrrrring."

From beginning to the very end.