Spirit Sightings
By Sharon Terry
Sharon Terry is an elder, youth director, and lay pastor serving the Presbytery of Sheppards and Lapsley and Edgewood Presbyterian Church. She writes and lives in Birmingham, AL with her husband Jeff and children Rebecca, Jessica, Robert, and Joshua.

While other children I know play school or house or office, my children always played church. Once when I was employed by a large downtown congregation, I walked into the pristine gothic sanctuary to find then four-year-old Robert baptizing all of the nursery’s dolls in the marble baptismal font. I still don’t know where he got the water. On another occasion, I quietly watched all three of my children hold a complete worship service in their bedroom, with a chair made into a pulpit and a congregation made up of stuffed animals. Robert was preaching, and his sermon went something like this: share the cookies, be nice to your little brother, Jesus loves us, Amen. One of the girls stood up and announced: “Now we will sing 'Great is Thy Faithfulness.”’ And they did. All of the verses, without hymnals or accompaniment. At the time I smiled fondly, wiped a tear quickly, and slipped away quietly. Looking back, I suspect I should have stuck around long enough to see if their heads burst into flames. Because I realize now that I witnessed a Pentecost moment, a spirit sighting. It’s what happens every time God’s word breaks the bounds of the expected, and is rightly proclaimed in language we understand. It’s what happens every time the Spirit blows among us, catching us on fire for God.

As Jesus reminds us, “The wind blows where it chooses. You hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”(John 3:8) A friend of mine once told me that is the scariest verse in all of scripture, because it means that Christians can be blasted off to heaven knows where by the spirit- literally blown away by God No matter how hard we try, we cannot describe or touch or tame God's Spirit. Despite the best efforts of ancient theologians and contemporary scholars, the Holy Spirit remains unfettered and unrestrained. The best way to sight the Spirit is to look for evidence of its presence in people’s lives.

When my daughter Rebecca was about five years old, she woke up one Saturday morning covered in bruises. She had quarter sized marks on her arms, purple pinpricks on her face, and blood on her gums. After I had read Where the Sidewalk Ends about three times in the waiting room, the doctor finally told me I could take Rebecca home. But I could not let her run, jump, and play or do any normal five year old things, and I had to have her at Children’s Hospital first thing Monday morning. He explained that my daughter either had leukemia or a virus, and that either way the treatment was not easy and the recovery was not immediate. He later confessed that he had never been so frightened for a child in all of his life.

When Monday finally arrived, I took Rebecca to the hospital by myself, as my husband Jeff was away on business. As we walked toward the entrance, I held Rebecca’s hand in one of my own, and I caught myself reaching out with the other. I realized that I was grasping for the hand of God. Even though no one walked into that hospital beside me and Rebecca, I had the distinct feeling that we were no longer alone. That suspicion was confirmed as I searched the unfamiliar hallways and finally located the correct clinic because of the host of church members waiting for me outside the door. One woman took my bag, another handed Rebecca a coloring book and a brand new package of crayons, and my pastor quietly walked beside me to the registration desk.

When the time came for Rebecca and I to go back for her spinal tap, our church family literally encircled us and prayed for God’s presence. Just as the doctor was preparing for the procedure, a nurse came in and whispered in his ear. Rebecca’s blood work had unexpectedly and dramatically improved overnight. They checked it twice more, both times with the same startling results. Finally the doctor looked at me, smiled, shrugged, and said, “This doesn’t happen. I can’t explain it – it must be from God.” The entire room of nurses and patients burst into applause, and Rebecca climbed off the table and into my arms.

For years I thought the doctor meant that the gift of God’s spirit that day was evidenced in Rebecca’s physical healing. Maybe he did, and maybe it was. But the more I have come to see of life and death and sickness, the more I have come to realize that the true gift of the Spirit that day was in the touch of a pastor’s hand, the present of a coloring book, and the sight of a welcoming committee outside the clinic door. In the midst of my despair and loneliness, the Spirit blew through Children’s Hospital and spoke God’s word to us in language that a five year old could understand – a new pack of crayons, a gentle hand, a kind word. And that would have been so even, or especially, if the diagnosis had been different. My child and I did not walk into that place of uncertainty and pain alone, and we did not walk out alone. And that too would have been so regardless of her physical condition.

For that is the true meaning of Pentecost, the real gift of the Spirit. When we are lost and lonely, afraid and abandoned, the Holy Spirit blows into our lives, enabling us to speak and to hear God’s word of abiding love and comfort in whatever language we best understand at the moment – whether it be in words, touch, silence, or a brand new pack of crayons.

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