This coming Sunday is Pentecost when the disciples received the Holy Spirit in public and began to preach the Good News about Jesus Christ to everyone.  The Holy Spirit is the part of God that makes us want to be with Him and Jesus.  It is given to us when we are baptized but for many people it goes dormant or dies as in the parable of the sower. (Matt. 13, Mark 4, Luke 8)  This year I was blessed to see the Holy Spirit come back to a very close friend.

She and I became friends through social activities at the VFW.  Her partner Paul and my husband also got along well.  We took two all-inclusive vacations together and Denny and I visited them in Maine where they snowbirded.  I really have no idea when religion came up but she explained very proudly that she was Jewish, that she had converted.  This intrigued me because even though I am a lifelong Lutheran I have had many Jewish friends but I had never met anyone who had converted.  She told me she had been baptized and confirmed Roman Catholic in her southern Illinois hometown.  After high school she enlisted in the Army for the educational benefits.  She ended up in Washington D.C. with a very good job at the Pentagon where she met her first husband.  He was Jewish and she converted for two main reasons.  Jewish children take the religion of their mother and it is easier for them to be born into the faith.  But she also liked the fact that the Jewish faith seemed less hypocritical than other religions and didn’t try to “put down” other faiths.  She and her husband followed the Reformed branch of Judaism and both of their sons were Bar Mitzvahed.  However she and her husband grew apart and were divorced after twenty some years of marriage.

Fast forward thirty years to Ocala and our friendship.  She was still quite comfortable being Jewish and frequently wore her Star of David necklace, but she was curious to know more about her faith.  After Paul died, she found the time to do this.  Early this year I mentioned a class I was taking at Master the Possibilities in On Top of the World.  We took it together and it was the subject of one of my first blogs, “The Platinum Rule.”  I also mentioned there were some interesting classes on religion, but they were on the same day as my Bible study.  She found a four-part class on Israel and Bible history taught by a local Baptist minister.  Without getting into the theology of the class, by the end of the first class she felt the need for Jesus in her life.  She met with the local Catholic priest and is happily attending church again.  It sounds so simple, but that is how the Holy Spirit works. Yes, there are more parts to this story but right now Jesus is so happy because one of his lost sheep has been found after fifty years.   He never gives up on any of us whether we are lost for a short or long time.  He is always there to wrap his loving arms around us and shower us with his unconditional love.

Nancy