Glimpses?

What would you do if something totally unbelievable happened to you?  Would you tell anyone?  Or would you keep it to yourself?

Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. - Luke 3:21-22

Luke's description of the aftermath of the Baptism of Jesus gives us the image of a dove as representative of the Holy Spirit, but he says its bodily form was like a dove, not that it was a dove, so I wonder what they really saw.

If it was an actual dove, who would have believed it was anything else, right?

After all, this is not the kind of thing one rushes out to tell people without making sure he gets it right.  Hey, a dove landed on Jesus' head!  Isn't that amazing?

No.  Not really.  But something happened that was amazing.

What I find fascinating is that the Spirit took bodily form.

Whatever that body was, it was real.  It was not an apparition or a ghost, as we would expect of a spirit.  It was a physical presence, and maybe this is the only time we encounter the Spirit that way.

Or is it?

Perhaps the Spirit can take any physical form and make itself known and seen in our world at any time.  If so, then there must be something we experience, something we feel when that happens to tell us this is something more than what it seems to be.

So, whether it be the wind, or a bird, or a butterfly or a stranger who appears to us when we are needing to feel God's presence, we might just be surprised to feel something unusual and believe that God is truly there in our midst.

That, I think, is what they felt when they saw what looked like a normal dove falling gently to earth to be with Jesus.

Where have you encountered God?  And what was that like?

Is it something you'd be willing to share, or was it so moving, so unexpected and surprising that you prefer to keep it to yourself?

I imagine we all have a moment or two in our lives when the Spirit was closest.  As Jesus told us, he is with us always.  And sometimes, we may even get a glimpse of Him.

More to come...