Jesus appears to the disciples in the upper room after His resurrection. And there
There was one person, in all the world, who already knew what that meant---
the one who was told, some thirty years before,
that the Holy Spirit would come upon her so that the child she conceived would be the Son of God.
I've wondered, all these weeks as I've been studying the events of Holy Week through your eyes, Mary, how you could possibly bear it all.
Now I know that it was because the Holy Spirit was within you, fortifying you, strengthening you, loving through you!
You were able to stand the terrible knowing and give your Son up to His wider family,
to stand by as He prophesied His death,
to hold back your hands that wanted so desperately to comfort Him in Gethsemane,
and to stand at the foot of His cross, silently enduringly.
What you have had all along, Christ now gives to His disciples.
Before He sends them out into the world, He breathes on them, filling them with the Holy Spirit.
I believe that is always the order in which He does things.
If I try to tell His story without first allowing myself to be filled and then led by the Holy Spirit, I fail.
But the wonder is that what Jesus gave to His disciples in that upper room nearly two thousand years ago is still being breathed out into this world today.
Your Son's Spirit is given to all who receive Him.
Jesus my Lord, I receive You. Let Your Spirit be my wings through life.
