We were visiting with my in-laws this evening, talking about all sorts of things. Eventually the conversation turned to our worries about caring for my mom. My mother-in-law had been talking about her experience caring for a relative when, at one point, she launched into the most powerful two-minute sermon about trust in God I’ve ever heard. I had tears in my eyes. If she would have made an altar call, I would have responded. And I’m not sure how much I’m joking when I say that.
There was such power in what she said, built as it was on hard-won, battle-tested experience. I felt myself being lifted up into it. And I believe every word of her testimony, even if I would frame it differently; my theology, such as it is, can accommodate her experience. But in that moment, my theology and theories and ideas were chaff in the wind of the Spirit blowing through that house.
That (I am pointing emphatically) is what matters. That is what passes through the valley of the shadow of death, fearing no evil. Right now I am pushing away my instinct to frame that experience inside an idea. Rather, I am thankful simply to have been there. “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth.”