Week 2 June 2026 – REFLECTION ON HOLY SPIRIT SURPRISES

‘’Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.”  Acts 2:2

I, however, found myself walking in the inner city, also in suburbia, and in the adjoining countryside, yet wherever I looked in amazement, there was water.  No flood had occurred, no people were seen, and no anxiety was triggered.  It was as if pristine, spring fed mountain lakes had merged to create images of sparkling beauty in places far below where the hustle and bustle of human activity is the norm. I had on street clothes, no shoes, but my feet didn’t get sore or wet.  The whole vivid dream was compacted into the 30 minutes between taking my thyroid pill and getting up to go down for breakfast  The moment I stepped on the stairs, I found myself singing a favorite verse from Joseph Hayden’s Austrian Hymn I sing regularly – “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken.”  The former slave-trader John Newton wrote the words, as he did for the more familiar “Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound.”

“See, the streams of living waters, springing from eternal love, well supply thy sons and daughters and all fear of want remove. Who can faint while such a river ever flows their thirst to assuage? Grace, which like the Lord, the Giver, never fails from age to age.”  In those very moments I suddenly knew what kind of fear had gripped me for weeks and I had just been miraculously released from it.  Within hours I was sitting at my computer keyboard proving it.

The wordsmith with a poetic streak toyed briefly with putting “Serendipity” in the title of her second June devotional, but stuck with the more mundane “Surprises.”  Our holy God’s plans and purposes for His beloved children are never happenstance, or subject to the most ideal circumstances.  Was it a happy coincidence that on that very morning I ran into a short Alistair Begg meditation on YouTube that ran parallel to what I had just experienced?  He quoted from a beloved 18^th-century hymn by an English poet that explores the themes of unexpected spiritual joy, comfort in God’s presence, and finding hope amidst despair. “Sometimes a light surprises the Christian while he sings; It is the Lord who rises with healing in His wings.  When comforts are declining, He grants the soul again a season of clear shining, to cheer it after rain.”

After writing my devotionals for Monday publication since September 2022 advancing age, declining health at 91 and side effects from medications had robbed me of the  energy to keep drafting those way ahead of deadlines. Suddenly June was coming and I panicked, having had the audacity to even think of a freshly creative format, presenting a different theme on each single page.  As a result of the dream of plentiful waters flowing from eternal love and quenching my fears, my “Week 1 June 26 – Reflection on Prayer Practices,” wrote itself within a few very satisfying hours. Do try breaking for a snack of Greek yogurt and “Soli Deo Gloria” may roll off your tongue with ease as well.