The Bungee Cord  9-29-20

Hello,

 

άγιο πνεύμα.  

 

This is the Greek for “Holy Spirit”.  As you may know, the original text of the New Testament is Greek, because the dominant international language was Greek, established as such by Alexander the Great and the leaders that followed him.  When he conquered a land he brought with him his culture, Hellenic or Greek. The Romans came along afterwards and the international language changed to Latin.

 

Lutheran pastors, part of our seminary training is to be able to handle Greek, because if one can wrestle with the original nuances of the Bible, one will, hopefully, give a better understanding of what the Gospel writers were trying to convey.  Many years ago….in college….I took four semesters of Biblical Greek.  Over the years much of what I learned has slipped through my memory, but the remnants of my learning still provide a microscope to the message of scripture.

 

The reason that I am writing about my Greek studies, and specifically the Greek word for the Holy Spirit (hagio pneuma), is it relates to what transpired at my house this past weekend.  Earlier in the summer I ordered a 12’x18’ shed, that would come as a kit, to house the growing number of equipment that we use to keep our property tame.  The brush-hog.  The rototiller that attaches to our tractor.  The cart we use to tote logs around.  Numerous other things that have been either consuming room in our garage or sitting outside under tarps.

 

The kit arrived a couple of weeks ago, 5000 lbs., and this past weekend two of my sons came to help me and my wife put It together.  None of us had ever attempted such a project,   The company, however, assured me that with all the pieces numbered and cut, we could do it.  So we courageously attacked the project, only to find out that it was to be held together by nails….thousands of them…to be pounded into hard 6”x6”s, and 4”x4”s.  It was only a matter of hammering in the first 20 nails that we realized this was going to be a daunting and exhausting task. Fortunately, one of my sons brought a pneumatic hammer with him.  It is a device that you hold in your palm, with a place to insert the nail head, and with little effort at all, it pneumatically and speedily pounds the nail in. Hosanna!

 

True enough, three brawny (?) guys like me and my sons could have pounded in all of those nails by hand. However, if we had to hammer each of those nails in, I think we would still be nailing, our arms would be burning, our shoulders would be aching, the boards would have been dented with innumerable hammer strikes that missed the nail, and we probably would have found we didn’t get enough nails in the kit for all of our mis-hit, bent over nails. The pneumatic hammer made life a lot easier.

 

It likewise occurs to me that the “hagio pneuma”  (the Holy Spirit) also makes life a lot easier.  It is true that people can hammer their way through life with their own power and strength….although when you come up against a concrete wall, human strength and human hammers don’t provide much help.  But when I consider the task of trying to hammer my way through life, the depth of exhaustion, pain, and frustration is a sure and tormenting reality. But here’s the thing, God has given us….each of us…a pneumatic hammer, a hammer powered by the Holy Spirit.  As we try to assemble our lives….all the thick and heavy boards that we need to nail together, nail into concrete walls, and sometimes even into thick steel girders…God comes to our building site and says, “Here, use this, the “hagio pneuma” (the Holy Spirit).  And when we do, we discover that the task is much easier, even when the building is incredibly hard.

 

Today, as you tackle the building project in front of you, look and see the amazingly powerful pneumatic hammer that God brings with him to your task.  And to those who say that using power equipment is wimpy, I say, from this weekend’s experience, using pneumatic equipment is wise!

 

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger