God’s Ways

Through Happiness and Unhappiness

The great Spanish artist El Greco painted his majestic work entitled “The Pouring of the Holy Spirit” which I reproduce below for our reflection on the season of Pentecost.

Tongues of fire coming down from heaven represent the work of the Holy Spirit in the apostles’ lives. Each apostle receives a personal empowering touch from the Spirit of God. Similarly, the Spirit of God fills up our lives as we open our hearts in faith to the enlivening presence of Jesus.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer reflects upon the Spirit’s fiery Pentecostal descent and its transformative work in our lives in a piece entitled “God’s Ways”:

To heal, to guide, to console—that is God’s doing on Pentecost. God looks at our ways. It is grace when he does that. He could also let us walk our ways, without looking at them. But he has looked—and he saw us wounded, lost, fearful.

God’s ways lead us to God. God leads us through happiness and unhappiness—always and only towards God. In this we recognize God’s ways.

I healed, I guided, I consoled, ‘as I looked onto their ways.’ Has God not done that uncounted times in our life? Has he not guided his own, often through great need and change?

How does God heal, how does he guide, how does he console? Only in that there is a voice within us that says, prays, calls, screams: ‘Beloved Father!’ That is the Holy Spirit. That is Pentecost. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God’s Ways)

Whether we are passing through “happiness or unhappiness” in these June days of Pentecost may we hear Bonhoeffer’s word of encouragement that we are upheld by a God of grace—who “heals, guides, and consoles”—and always brings us home via God’s Ways.