Together

 

‘Got it!’ he voiced triumphantly. He reached down onto the tarmac drive and picked up a tiny spring.

Don was trying to put air in a car’s tire, but the great inflater he has had lost a tiny but crucial bit and it wouldn’t work. It needed that spring. Our Ukrainian friend with great eyesight found what we would never have seen. The tire was refreshed with the right amount of air.

Life is full of decisions and complications. If this, then that; if not this, then what? We can go round and round, increasingly agitated and less able to spot the tiny ‘spring’ that will make it all work.

We need each other. I love the way our minister Tony introduces the Lord’s Prayer, pointing out the number of times ‘we’ and ‘us’ are said. Jesus intends us to live corporately, as family, sharing the highs and the lows and offering perspectives.

Seeing the spring that someone else can’t see.

In church in Glasgow last Sunday, I heard a great sermon on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. How they are meant to be used together by the body of Christ in order to build up the church (the Jesus-followers). One has the gift of wisdom; one has the gift of knowledge or discernment or prophecy and so on, all for the purpose of building up church.

Someone close to me is facing a lot of decisions. I have one or two as well. We just came off the phone with each other, having heard that sermon together on Sunday, so we encouraged one another to ask for wisdom and move forward in faith and confidence that, as James says, God will give wisdom to those who ask for it.

We don’t need a tire inflater, but we do need the breath of the Holy Spirit to inflate and enable us to move in the power of God, think with the mind of Christ, and rest in the peace and comfort that come from the Holy Spirit.

Have a great day, looking out for the others in your life.