Around the summer of 2006, my uncle and I worked in the church preparing for the evening Soup Kitchen. It was a Monday, and we had a weekly hot meal for fellowship with the community; it was a great time. It was early in the day; we had only been cleaning for a couple of hours- when I say cleaning, it was more like hanging out and talking with rags in our hands. Anyway, we had some worship music playing lightly, and as usual, we discussed spiritual things. Suddenly, loud banging on the front door commenced.
When we investigated, a family was there with their Grandma, who looked in poor health. We answered, thinking they had the supper time wrong, but Grandma said that she needed to be saved and told us that God told her to come here and that he would heal her. They lived in a different town and made the trip due to the Grandmother's persistence. They carried the woman into the church sanctuary, and my uncle talked to her while I prepared the baptism tub. The tub was an old hot tub that we had to fill with buckets and drain the same way; low tech, but it did the job.
In the course of the conversation, the Holy Spirit showed up and started moving upon the family and us. The Grandma, who couldn't stand on her own, started calling out for healing. She took off her long-sleeved shirt and revealed that she was COVERED in boils. I mean, COVERED! This was the cause of her debilitating pain; I cannot recall what she had called it; I was honestly in awe of how it appeared. She prayed a prayer of faith, confessing Jesus as her Savior, and we moved her to the baptism tub in a gown she had put on. My uncle prayed that she would receive the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and be healed as she was baptized in the waters. I watched just a few feet away as my uncle prayed and then helped this older woman, covered in boils, fall back to be fully immersed in the water. No sooner than she went under, she stood straight up as though yanked from the water, shouting that she was healed, and started speaking another language. THERE WAS NOT A BOIL ON HER BODY.
If I had blinked, I would have missed it. We often get carried away in times of stress and frustration and when we're trying to stay busy with work. We miss the subtle things the Spirit says and does in our daily lives. This woman seized the promises of God and refused anything less. Sometimes, we purposely ignore the Spirit's prompting out of rebellion- we'd rather dwell on our musings than confront the problem or sin we're engaged in. We must strive to never grieve or prohibit the work of the Spirit in our lives- we do not want to miss it when he's at work around us.
So, the next time you find yourself alone, perplexed, or in a stressful or problematic situation, take a breath and say "Jesus"; just to let him know you're thinking about him, then don't blink; the Holy Spirit will show up and you'll not only gain comfort or perhaps a new perspective on what you're dealing with but maybe see the miraculous when you least expect it as I did on this special day.
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