This passage presents a real challenge to what I’ve been thinking and saying about blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. Ever since reading Luke 12, I’ve been assuming such blasphemy has something to do with ignoring the intuitive, improvisational urging of the Holy Spirit, and yet here Paul is, twice ignoring very clear indications that the … Continue reading Acts 21: 1-26 Does Paul ignore the Holy Spirit?
This is a very long reading, the longest I think we’ve gotten in Forward Movement’s arrangement of Luke and Acts daily readings. The riot at Ephesus is the center of it, and the story of Eutychus dying from listening to a long sermon seems like a strange little coda. But I think that the two … Continue reading Acts 19 – 20.16 Sleep and Riots
A friend recently asked me whether the Holy Spirit worked through nudges and intuition. I was quick to point out the moments when the Holy Spirit works through miracles, visions, and moments of ecstatic feeling in a group, mostly because I want to preserve the idea that such things are still possible. But my friend … Continue reading Acts 16:1-15 Lydia and the Holy Spirit
Peter has just done a very surprising thing, and Luke is lavishing attention on it, as is Forward Movements calendar of readings and devotions, which we are borrowing for the Diocese of Southern Ohio’s Big Read. Slowing down like this, and spending four days on this single incident, is a way of acknowledging what a … Continue reading Acts 11:1-18 The Baptism of the Holy Spirit
Simon of Samaria, known to the Christian tradition as Simon Magus, is one of those rare characters in scripture who have a particular sin named after them, in this case, the sin of simony. Simony usually means the buying and selling of church offices, but here at the beginning it is nothing more than the … Continue reading Acts 8:9-25 Simon Magus
KPB Stevens 