Creative Spirit

This was taken at the beginning of this week.
Now the bulb is past the height of the leaves. 

Every year for the past few years, a friend of mine has given me an amaryllis bulb for my birthday.  This year she visited me in the second half of January and brought the bulb with her.  A couple of days later I planted the bulb and within the short space of a month it has grown immensely and now has a bud just waiting to open.  Such elegance and beauty from something that looks quite dirty and not at all pretty.  It cheers the heart to see signs of spring all around us now.  Snowdrops have been and gone, crocuses are blossoming and the daffodils are growing stronger every day - that is the bulbs in my garden.  Early daffodils have been flowering in other parts of the town since around Christmas time.  It is encouraging to see new life, whenever and wherever it occurs.  It brings a sense of hope for the future after dark and dreary days. 

Not the owl from Simon King's website but
another Barn Owl brooding over her eggs.

There was great delight this week on the website of Simon King the naturalist, when the camera that he has in the owl nest box showed that when the female owl moved an egg could de seen.  Another form of new life bringing hope for the future of the owl population in that area of Somerset.  It reminded me of the dawn of creation when the Spirit of God hovered over the waters or as the Message Bible refers to it, 'God's spirit brooded like a bird ...'   A great error of the church generally is that we tend to think of the Holy Spirit and her work in terms of Pentecost, charismatic expressions of religion and big gatherings when we are 'in the right spirit' and utter the right words in prayer, then the Holy Spirit is manifest sometimes in strange and unusual ways like speaking in strange tongues, falling over, shaking or fits of laughter.  It's as though we need to follow a set formula if we want to see God's Spirit at work.  Yet at the very beginning of creation we see that God's Spirit was working, brooding over things.  The female bird broods over her eggs in order to give them warmth, protection, love and produce life.  She then continues to support and provide for her young.  With this picture in mind I can't help thinking of the Holy Spirit as the brooding, female expression of God.  So if I want to see the work of the Holy Spirit, I need go no further than my garden or look at my house plants.  Evidence of Her is all around.  They say that where's there's life there's hope.  Well I like to think of it as where there's life there's the Holy Spirit at work.  She breathes life wherever She goes.

My 'Christmas' cactus in February.

I also have another plant, a Christmas cactus.  It flowers every December.  The other day I noticed that there are a couple of buds on it ready to open.  It had already given an abundance of flowers in December so for this particular plant, this is out of season.  Another lesson - the Holy Spirit is at work in season and out of season.  She manifests herself and shows up when we least expect it.  When I was sorting out the house plants and ready to discard and throw away what I thought had died over the winter, I discovered that when I cleared away all the dead parts of a fuchsia plant, there were a few small new leaves just appearing - another lesson in how the Spirit of God renews and revives.




We miss so much when we limit God to certain gatherings and dates on the calendar.  He really is everywhere and the Spirit is continuously at work, not just at a time that the church considers there is some sort of 'outpouring' or revival.  God spoke and the Spirit brooded and creation came into being.  By observing creation, we see the Holy Spirit at work.  She continues to create life whether we notice or not but it's a shame if our preconceived, limiting ideas of Her blind us so we miss seeing the wonder of Her work all around us all the time.