The Work of the Spirit

"To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit." 1 Cor 12:6

Discerning how the Spirit of God works in our personal and communal lives is an important exercise in the spiritual life. Even more essential is to remember St Paul's caution. While the Spirit often consoles us, the grace is not for our personal benefit but for the church and world, and it is often not for us to say or even know how this happens. Most of us know this experientially.

Someone approaches us after an absence of many years and assures us that something we said or did a decade ago helped them, challenged them or empowered them to know God more deeply and to move ahead on their faith journey. Though we cannot deny their experience, we have no memory of the event, and even when we do our recollection might be very different from theirs. Encounters like this make it very difficult to deny that God's spirit acted through us in ways we never foresaw or imagined.

Events like this are important. They assure us that God is at work in the world all the time even when he seems absent, and faith demands that we trust that God is active within us and among us all the time. Our task is not to know how this is, but that it is, and to allow God the freedom to do God's work for the sake of a greater good than our peace.

Today, give the Spirit permission to use you for good.

How has the Spirit acting through others worked in you?