The Phil Files

Every once in awhile, I actually write something that makes me think. No, I don’t think it’s profound, but it does capture something I’ve wrestled with in my thoughts and emotions and finally get a handle to put those into words. As I email visited with someone about our struggle to leave behind past hurts and the brokenness that most of us carry, she used the act of breathing deeply as a metaphor for receiving grace and how it sometimes hurts to finally breathe good air. Somewhere in the give an take, the following thought came to me in words as I thought about the Holy Spirit as God’s Good Air:

We’re all just trying to learn to breathe good air, and when we do, we have to cough the crud we’ve been breathing for so long out of our lungs. Such is life in a fallen world when we get to breathe in the Wind of heaven. Here’s to The Good Air!

Like I said, it sure isn’t profound, but it was what was hung between emotions and thoughts that couldn’t be stated. Life filled by the Holy Spirit is at times both gloriously wonderful and also agonizingly painful. But the metamorphasis that takes place in us as we are on our way to become more like Jesus requires both — at least it does in me.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate [and reflect] the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever–increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:17-18)

So here’s to God’s gift of The Good Air!