{"id":3123,"date":"2023-11-02T07:25:17","date_gmt":"2023-11-02T11:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=3123"},"modified":"2023-11-02T07:26:32","modified_gmt":"2023-11-02T11:26:32","slug":"the-spirit-dances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2023\/11\/02\/the-spirit-dances\/","title":{"rendered":"The Spirit Dances"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here<\/a>

During the month of November we\u2019re taking a look at 21 essential activities of the Holy Spirit, who represents God\u2019s presence in and through every follower of Jesus.<\/em>
 
Kids ask great questions. 
 
A young student named Emma asked her social studies teacher, Mr. Johnson, \u201cHow many lions do you think were in the lions\u2019 den with Daniel?\u201d
 
Mr. Johnson sighed and said, \u201cThis isn\u2019t Sunday School, Emma.  We\u2019re not here to talk about questions like that.  Besides, most people agree that if there ever was somebody like Daniel, he didn\u2019t actually spend a night in a den with hungry lions.\u201d 
 
\u201cWell,\u201d said Emma timidly, \u201cI guess I can ask him myself when I get to heaven.\u201d  \u201cReally?\u201d said Mr. Johnson, rolling his eyes.  \u201cSo what if Daniel ended up in hell?\u201d 

Emma answered, \u201cThen you <\/em>can ask him.\u201d
 
So what\u2019s a question that you always had when you were a kid, but never got around to asking? 
 
How about one of these: 

If God created the universe, what came before God?  And how exactly is it possible that God has always existed?  And what would motivate God to create something in the first place?  Did he feel lonely and unfulfilled and in desperate need of companionship?  Was God so neurotic that he had to create a race of beings who would bow down before him every day just so he could hear somebody tell him he was great?
 
The Bible makes it clear that God didn\u2019t invent human beings because he was lonely or depressed or needed someone to boost his divine self-esteem.   
 
Instead, humans entered the picture so we could be invited into something that has always existed \u2013 the ceaseless reality of love, joy, and communication that is central to God\u2019s own identity. 
 
From before the beginning of time, God has known what can only be described as a never-ending, joy-filled, self-giving experience of love.  What we\u2019re talking about is the Trinity.  God exists as a society \u2013 as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 
 
But isn\u2019t the whole notion of Trinity a blatant contradiction?  How can God be both three and one? 
 
Theologians have been careful to point out that God is singular<\/em> in one category (essence \u2013 there is only one God) but plural<\/em> in another category (personhood \u2013 God is tri-personal by nature).  Such a description is neither a contradiction nor a violation of the principles of logic. 
 
Nevertheless, it is certainly a paradox<\/em> (something that at first glance seems<\/em> to be contradictory) and a mystery<\/em> (a profound truth that we can\u2019t comprehend at present, because we don\u2019t have nearly enough information).
 
Observations like these are crucial if we hope to understand the identity and activity of the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit, according to the biblical reflections of the earliest Christian thinkers, is not an It<\/em>.  The Spirit is personal.  Likewise, God\u2019s Spirit is not a \u201cjunior partner\u201d in heaven, the one who is always mentioned last because of less impressive credentials.  Nor is the Spirit 33% of God\u2019s nature, as if the Trinity is a theological pie chart marking out the formal division of divine labor. 
 
God\u2019s Spirit is, well, God<\/em> \u2013 fully divine in every sense. 
 
What is it like to be amongst the three persons of the Trinity? 

Early in church history, theologians coined the word perichoresis<\/em>.  To modern ears, that might sound a bit like a serious skin disease.  Perichoresis<\/em> turns out to be a mashup of the Greek words peri <\/em>(\u201caround\u201d) and choreo<\/em> (\u201cto come or go\u201d).  It suggests something that is going around and around and around.  The word \u201cchoreography\u201d springs from the same family of words. 
 
That\u2019s why many ancient signs, symbols, and depictions of the Trinity \u2013 like the triskeles<\/em> in the image above, a triple spiral that winds around a common center \u2013 evoke the idea of dance.  When you think of the Trinity, think of an eternal, joyful dance of God, with Father, Son, and Spirit forever taking delight in each other. 

And every one of us has been offered a ticket to the ball.
 
To be clear, there is no Bible verse that says, in so many words, that the Spirit dances.  But perichoresis<\/em> has proven to be a way to help us describe, at least in part, what we know to be indescribable \u2013 the internal dynamic of God\u2019s own self.
 
Once again, let\u2019s hear from the late philosopher Dallas Willard:
 
\u201cGod\u2019s aim in human history is the creation of an inclusive community of loving persons, with himself included as its primary sustainer and most glorious inhabitant.\u201d 

No artist could ever depict such a reality.

But we might settle for the image of an exuberant divine dance as the representation of deep, lasting joy.    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here During the month of November we\u2019re taking a look at 21 essential activities of the Holy Spirit, who represents God\u2019s presence in and through every follower of Jesus. Kids ask great questions.  A young student named Emma asked her social studies teacher, Mr. Johnson, \u201cHow many lions do you think were in the… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3124,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[352,492],"class_list":["post-3123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-holy-spirit","tag-trinity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3123"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3126,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3123\/revisions\/3126"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}