Alex Swain

Blessed in Christ,

In today’s reading in Acts, we hear tell of all the signs and wonders that God was doing through St. Barnabas and St. Paul.

The power of the Almighty One was flowing! radiating! shaking! the cities around the Mediterranean via the wholehearted and complete self-offering of St. Barnabas and St. Paul. The Holy Spirit poured forth from their open hearts and filled the souls of the peoples around them. God is seen at work in, through, and by community reshaping the hearts and minds of the newfound followers of our Lord Jesus Christ with divine love.

As I sit and steep in the first verse of the Epistle reading for the day, my mind snags on the past-tense conjugation of God’s activity through St. Barnabas and St. Paul. “The whole assembly kept silence and listened to Barnabas and Paul as they told of all the signs and wonders that God had done through them among the Gentiles” (Acts 15:12). The past perfect tense is used to indicate an action that was completed at some point in the past. So, I say to myself, surely God has done great deeds before, in the long-long ago, establishing the heavens and the earth and the like.

But now? Where is God? Where is God’s work being done today, in the here-and-now?

Lifted in contemplation, I think about the past day – reflecting on the various graces and gifts of the mundane and the holy that interweave together. I think about the gift of shared joy that each one of us may emanate into the world. I consider the greenery around us as the plants exult in these monsoon rains, swingingly lustfully in the winds shouting, “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come!” I rudimentarily process how strange it is to even exist, that anything should be anything at all; whereby the mere act of anything existing at all is a simple, fundamental gift of the grace of our loving God.

And then I am plunged from the existential back into the mundane!

I give thanks for the four new Beloved in the Desert Episcopal Service Corps members who arrived on July 22. They venture forth from across our country to serve selflessly, offering themselves for a year of service, prayer, and community. This. This is the activity of God that works through open hearts and loving hands for the good of the community and the self. This is where God moves in the world.

So, in answer to my question, I am smote with realization! God is moving – moving rapidly, beautifully, and preciously through each and every one of us, in every moment of givingness that we offer, in every gesture of peace and smile of kindness and support of one another. Let us, therefore, as the Saints before and as Service Corps members now do, step forward and recognize the great motion of God at work around us.

With thanksgiving to Jesus our God,
Alex Swain