How can the Holy Spirit be Divine and yet be content to work in obscurity? From hovering over the waters at creation to filling Bezalel with creative skill, He seems leery of the spotlight and instead, content to turn it on Jesus and the Father. It is because He spurns the fanfare and accolades associated with kingly power that we doubt His Divinity. How could we not doubt when the Bible is filled with odes to the Father and Jesus but only punctuated with terse references where the Holy Spirit is concerned?
Perhaps it is time we realised that our stampeding for the spotlight has less to do with effectiveness than it has to do with pride. Pride is always befuddled by humility and can only either belittle it or reject it as false. Yet the Holy Spirit challenges our belief that the essence of life lies in the spotlight. The Holy Spirit sends a portfolio and testimonials instead of a curriculum vitae because He seeks to attract by inspiring awe and not bedazzle us.
His apparent shyness is shared by the Father and Jesus too. Have you read the rousing hymns of praise sung about Jesus by the Father in Hebrews 1? Do you remember the glorious parables of the Father’s love breathed by Jesus in the gospels? They never tire of heaping praise on each other because of the love that swirls through the very core of their essence. God truly is love, not so much in an overbearing sentimental sense but in a commitment to serve others. True humility can never flourish in bashfulness because it can only thrive in a heart so confident that it sees no need to bask in the limelight.
Satan approached Jesus in the wilderness to tempt Him to prove His Divinity by grasping the limelight (turn stones into bread and jump from the temple) but Jesus chose to prove it by holding to a loving trust in the Father. Jesus came to reveal the Father (He spoke of Him incessantly) and refused to steal the limelight from Him. It is this stubborn confidence in His relationship with the Father and the resultant contentment that gave strong evidence of Jesus’ identity.
The Father too, couldn’t restrain Himself from heaping praise on Jesus at His baptism but could restrain Himself from intervening on Calvary. As sinners jeered at Jesus on the cross, challenging Him to prove Himself by saving Himself, the Father didn’t distract them by attacking them. All eyes were to be on Jesus. Is it any wonder that the Holy Spirit doesn’t spend time attracting attention to Himself?
How different would our lives be if we proved ourselves not by claims or fanfare but by positive results? What strife we would avoid and how sweet our relationships would be, if we were so confident in our identities that we would be content to point attention to others.
photo credit: mrhayata Limelight Rose via photopin (license)
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