Space within

My friend Darlene has been on a journey of grief after the death, at 98, of her mother. A teacher and farmer’s wife, her mother was a remarkable faith-filled woman. Darlene has taken the time to grieve her mother’s absence and to treasure the ways her mother was a blessing.

Lately Darlene has begun to experience “a space within her” where her mother was. “It’s not an empty hole,” she says, “but a space.” It has provided room inside her to care about others.

I think it is the Holy Spirit who creates spaces like that within us when we take time to treasure the gifts we have been given in life and to grieve our losses.

For whom has the Holy Spirit created spaces in your heart? To whom might the Holy Spirit need you to bear Christ?

Today we observe the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost and remember Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, pastor in North America (1787). This message was adapted from “The Wisdom of the Spirit” written by Phyllis Kersten that first appeared in the May 2010 issue of Lutheran Woman Today (now Gather) magazine.

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