Daily Thought for Sunday, 10th May 2026
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you for ever.”
John 14:15-16
Another
Anikó Schuetz Bradwell
We’re often not terribly good, as sober Presbyterians, at thinking about the Holy Spirit, don’t you think? The Creator of the world, Jesus who lived among us – that’s solid, that’s something tangible. But the Spirit? That’s a bit of an abstract, more to do with feeling rather than thinking, with being rather than defining.
Jesus is trying to offer some consolation, some comfort, after telling his disciples at the Last Supper that he is about to die, that he will no longer walk and eat with them, no longer teach them, no longer lead them. All apart from the horror of the death that awaits him, I wonder if his promise of an “advocate” would have been much of a consolation to them.
Perhaps that’s because they weren’t quite sure what he was talking about, what he meant. Even at Pentecost, would they have known how to describe what was happening to them? Would they have known how to name it? Peter, of course, remembers, and states that this will be the Spirit that Jesus had promised them.
What about us? We invoke the Holy Spirit when we celebrate baptisms and Holy Communion, perhaps at other times, too; we name the Spirit as part of the Trinity. But how confident, how comfortable are we describing it, putting into words what’s hardly definable? How do we describe what we feel in holy moments, in prayer, in community?
Last summer, at the Communion service at Greenbelt (a festival for all generations that celebrates faith and art) sharing the sacrament with 10,000 people in a field, singing together and praying together: that was a Pentecost moment for me, feeling the Spirit among us and around us and within us, God right in our midst, here and today.
Shall we pray?
Holy God, open us up to your presence; help us not to be afraid to listen to your guidance and to trust in your counselling. Amen.
Anikó Schütz Bradwell is minister of Lammermuir.