An Outpouring of the Spirit

This post is a part of June's Synchroblog. Check back Wednesday evening for a list of links to all the other Synchroblog participants.

The topic for this month is

The Jewish festival of Shavuot (Pentecost) celebrates the giving of the Torah at Sinai, and falls 50 days after the second night of Pesach (Passover). This year that'll be June 7-8, depending on where you live and how you celebrate.

The Christian feast of Pentecost celebrates the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles in the book of Acts, ushering in the beginning of the church. Fifty days after Jesus’s resurrection (10 days after His ascension), the apostles were gathered together, and on Pentecost a flame rested upon the shoulders of the apostles and they began to speak in tongues/languages by the power of the Holy Spirit.

For the June synchroblog we invite you to reflect on the foreshadowing that Shavuot brings to the Christian feast of Pentecost. How does the Torah foreshadow the Holy Spirit? What can we learn from our forefathers that will enrich our faith? What are the parallels? What are the differences? These are some (but definitely not all) of the questions that might be explored in this synchroblog.

Honestly, I had to do a little bit of research on Shavuot to figure out how I was going to approach this topic. At the giving of the Torah, there was an outpouring of Spirit as well, but instead of hearing the message of the Apostles in their own tongue, during the receiving of the Law, rabbis tells us that the audience all heard a message as well, but it was communicated by the Spirit, and each person was given a different message.

Even knowing that, I wasn't sure what I was going to say until this morning.

***

He hung back after class. "Sister MyLastName, can I ask you a question?"

Sure.

"How do you balance all this" he waved around the classroom, "with what you know to be true?"

I teach political philosophy at a religious institution. This isn't the first time I've been asked this question, typically of a bright young mind who is sincerely honest both in their belief in God, and in studying in a discipline that doesn't really have a place for God anymore.

"Because, I want to share my testimony, but I'm not sure if I can say 'I know' any more. I believe, but can you really know?"

And I told him. Yes, you know. I know through the Spirit. It's confirmed to me the truthfulness of God being our Father, and Jesus is our Savior, and in Joseph Smith and in the Book of Mormon. I know those things are true. And I leave the rest of it up to God.

I don't really think God cares what you believe about dinosaurs, and geological time tables, and Glenn Beck. He cares whether or not you're keeping the covenants you have made with him. The gospel has existed in a lot of different places and a lot of different times, and sometimes the revelations that were good for other generations don't work today for some reason. I can cut my hair short and eat a cheeseburger and I think that's okay, and I think God's okay with that too. Doctrine doesn't change. Cultural practices of a doctrine does. So, we have to figure out what is doctrine from what is culture.

"Well, how do you do that?"

I said, this is where it gets tricky. You and I both believe in modern day prophets. We sustain them as prophets, seers, and revelators. They receive guidance from the Lord about how to administer his church. Does that mean that every utterance they make is Scripture? No. Sometimes they are just men. And sometimes they get it wrong. And they admit that they got it wrong.

We then talked for a while about how different practices of the church have been disavowed, and where apostles have admitted publicly that they were mistaken about statements they have made.

"So, how do you tell the difference?"

The Spirit will tell you the difference. When someone says something that is incorrect spiritually, the Spirit will let you know that it is incorrect. God trusts you enough to receive confirmation by the Spirit of the truthfulness of any message.

That's not a standard LDS viewpoint. We tend to just accept whatever they say as the truth, but there are times where they are factually inaccurate, or that the message they are giving as a general guiding principle doesn't apply to you, or needs to be practiced in a non-standard way. This is the point to me of the parallels between the giving of the Old Testament Law and the New Testament Law. Both involve God speaking, through the Spirit, to each of His children in an individualized personal manner. Whether it is literally in a different language, or if he is just speaking the language of our heart, we should be prepared for and seek after opportunities to feel the guiding influence of the Spirit in how we live the Gospel.

And I ended with, when in doubt, act out of love, and you'll never be wrong.

I hope it helped.

Kerri at Earth’s Crammed With Heaven… – Transformation
Sarita Brown at Gypsy Queen Journals – Pentecost: A Poem
Jeremy Myers at Till He Comes - The Incarnation of the Temple, Torah, and Land
Tammy Carter at Blessing the Beloved - Random Biblical Calendar Thoughts, Unity & Love
K. W. Leslie at More Christ – Pentecost
Liz Dyer at Grace Rules – We Cannot Capture The Wind 
Emma Nadine at Life by List - An Outpouring of the Spirit
Marta Layton at Marta’s Mathoms - Shadow of Things to Come?
Abbie Waters at No Longer “Not Your Grandfather’s CPA” - Spiritual Gifts
Bill Sahlman at Creative Reflections - A “Wild Goose” Festival at Pentecost
John O’Keefe at john c. o’keefe – What’s With This
Kathy Escobar at kathy escobar – more than the leftovers

Life in the Wilderness

This post is part of a Synchroblog on the season of Lent and experiences in the wilderness. Check at the end of this post for a list of the other blog posts that are part of this synchroblog.
 
I knew something was wrong by the look on his face. You don't miscarry two sets of twins and not get good at reading the faces of doctors when they are looking at your ultrasound.

This time was supposed to be different. My husband had given me a blessing when we found out that I was pregnant. In that blessing, he gave me two distinct promises. First, that this child would be born into mortality with everything he needed to accomplish his mission on earth; second, that I would be happy the day he was born.

I had panicked at the first promise. That language means something to a Mormon. It means that something is wrong, that the child will die quickly because all he needs is a body before he returns to his Heavenly Father. But I couldn't reconcile that promise with the second one. How could I be happy if my child died? I decided that I must be overanalyzing the language of the blessing. God promised me happiness. Happiness would be had.

As the doctor started listing off all the problems he was seeing - hydrocephalus, a missing heart chamber, no kidneys, and on and on - I felt as if a fluffy warm down comforter was wrapped around me. I know now that God walked me through the rest of my time with this pregnancy. I was supported by the love of my Father for me through the hardest experience of my life. I was protected as much as I possibly could be and still allow me to learn from this experience all the lessons that I needed to learn.

Even through the grief, I felt at a distance from the pronouncement. I knew I was supposed to be happy when this child was born, and that could not happen with this set of facts. We were sent to a specialist to confirm the diagnosis. They concurred that the fetus probably wouldn't make it to term, and if it did, would only live a few minutes at the most. We were given the opportunity for an abortion. We declined. That was my baby. I was going to treasure each moment I had with him.

And so our time of waiting began. We waited, not knowing how long the pregnancy would last. Every week we went in for a doctor's appointment. Every week his heart was still beating. Week after week I clung to the promise of happiness, expecting a miracle.

Finally, at about 31 weeks, my OB sent me in for another ultrasound. He told me that there was no way I should have made it that far in my pregnancy, and he wanted to see exactly what was going on. The ultrasound showed not my expected miracle, but that the baby's hydrocephalus had progressed to the point where his head was already measuring 41 weeks. The specialists told me there was no sign that the pregnancy was going to end on its own, and if I ever wanted to get pregnant again, they advised me to induce labor as soon as possible to prevent a c-section scar so significant that it would prevent me ever having another pregnancy.

And so we did. The next evening, I went in to the hospital and labor was induced. The next morning, my son was born. His heart had stopped beating at some point during labor, so they handed me his body, wrapped in a blanket. I held him. And I was happy.

Those 11 weeks of waiting, of not knowing, of wondering what was going to happen, of all the science saying one thing and my faith saying something else, led to one of the most marvelous revelations of the love of God in my life. I had a son. And I knew that because of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the sealing ordinances of the temple, that regardless of the amount of time I held him here on earth, that he would be my son for eternity. I held him, and I could feel his spirit in the room. We all held him, my husband, grandparents, uncles and aunts. We told him we loved him. We cherished him. We welcomed him to our family. I can honestly say that the happiness I felt at the birth of my son was no different than what I felt at the birth of our next son, who is currently running around the living room at top speed impersonating an airplane.

I thought that God had to fulfill his promise in a specific way. Like the Jews of the Old Testament, I was not expecting the fulfillment of promise in a radically different manner than my mortal understanding could predict. God showed his power over all things in the fulfillment of promise in his own way. He sent me a son, to remind me of the Son of God, and to await for the promised blessings of the resurrection that His Son made possible.

So now, I wait. This life is a wilderness of preparation to be brought back into the presence of God. My not knowing is subsumed in what I do know.

God fulfills his promises.

Always.

Even, and especially, in the wilderness.

• Patrick Oden (at Dual Ravens) was prolific with a four part series called “Musings” and they can be found here:
  Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four
• Katherine Gunn at A Voice in the Wilderness writes What Is Wilderness?
• Wendy McCaig giving us a View from the Bridge brings A Voice Calling In The Wilderness
• Tammy Carter of Blessing the Beloved is taking a rest as she Put Down the Axe
• Jeremy Myers writing at Til He Comes ponders The Gaping Chasm of Suicide
• kathy escobar shares the carnival in my head and writes about belonging
• Steve Hayes of Methodius describes Anatomy of exile
  
• Marta Layton at Marta’s Mathoms writes On Sabbaths, Mountain-Tops… and Brothers’ Keepers
  
• Liz Dyer at Grace Rules discovers Beauty In The Wilderness
  
• Christen Hansel of Greener Grass offers up Snapshots of the Desert