Raise Your Sails

I’m trying to stay focused on the fact that Thanksgiving is just a couple weeks away, and not get drawn into the Christmas frenzy. It seems to get harder and harder each year as we are bombarded with Yuletide reminders before we’ve even had time to eat all the Snickers and Kit Kat bars we’ve stolen from our kids’ or grandkids’ Halloween stash.

I’m particularly tempted to start thinking about all the gifts I need to buy. So, I decided today, that every time I thought about gifts, I would turn my thoughts away from the gifts I need to get and instead ponder the gifts I have been given.

I’m facilitating a group, through Firstfruits, that is focusing on the Holy Spirit – the source of our spiritual gifts. We have been watching a video series with Fr. Dave Pivonka TOR that highlights various aspects of this much misunderstood member of the Trinity. In the video entitled “The Gifts of the Holy Spirit,” Fr. Dave uses the analogy of a sailboat to describe the relationship between our giftedness and the Holy Spirit.

He goes on to say that the Holy Spirit is the wind and our gifts are the sails. The wind blows and catches the sails on the boat. The Holy Spirit wants to fill the sails of the boat so it’s alive and moving, not stagnant. That’s the exciting, exhilarating life in the Spirit. We just need to raise our sails and put them in position for the wind to power them to move. We need to offer our gifts to the power of the Holy Spirit.

We all have these gifts. They are the tools we have been given to carry out our mission to bring goodness and love to the world, to bring Christ to the world. We are born with that mission and with a unique set of gifts to carry out that mission. Not everyone’s mission field is in a foreign land far away. More often, our mission field is across our kitchen table or in our classroom or workplace.

We all have gifts that are meant to be given away. We just need to discover and uncover them. We need to make them available when the people who need our gifts show up.

What are these gifts I’m talking about???  

Tune in next week. In the meantime, just float in your boat and ask the Holy Spirit to show you where your sails are.

Joan

 

An Urgent Request

Every day the need becomes more urgent for local food assistance. In this time of giving, would you please consider sharing what you have been given to help those in need? Firstfruits is setting up an emergency fund to address any requests we receive through our partnership with the MacCanon Brown Homeless Sanctuary, Rooted and Rising and the Madonna House at Trinity Woods on the Mount Mary University campus.

Thank you for your generosity.

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Firstfruits, Village Court
890 Elm Grove Rd.,
Elm Grove, WI 53122