Evidence

Oddly, when the guy who wrote Galatians was listing the fruits of the spirit, he left out wine.  Or more accurately, empty bottles of wine.  Weird.

Weird because tonight after everyone had gone home, all that remained of my bible study was an empty bottle of wine and a picked-at crust of bread.  A few lip-marked glasses and some unused tea cups. And yet, surely the spirit was here.  That was the Spirit, wasn't it?

I won't lie - I am not altogether clear on the answer. I would like it to have been the Spirit.  Jesus even. Hell, I'd even take the Father, up close and personal if that's on offer. But for sure, at least one tine of the Trinity would be nice.  The promise is that when a few of us get together - us being Jesus-inviters - Jesus shows up too.  Except that he's awfully quiet and sounds a lot like my own preferences and loud thinking most times.

I think I said somewhere before that my surest knowing that what I'm hearing is God's whisper is when what I'm hearing is New and Good News.  New Good News.  New Good News that leaves me wanting to love people.  I don't think I said that part before but since we're here, let's add that part too. 

And tonight, there was not a lot new.  No GOOD NEWS!  Just the familiar... oh yeah, that is good news. Could be the Spirit, could be last night's talk radio.  Whatever it was, I remained unmoved in my unlove of a few, and my piss-poor love of the many.

Regardless though, we sat together and broke bread and poured wine and confessed sin and received forgiveness and read the Word and remembered together that there is Light in all this Darkness and maybe even remembered that the Darkness does not overcome the Light.  Or at least were willing to hope so. At the end of it all, all that remained was the bottle poured out.

And that will have to be my evidence for now.