Without uttering a word

‘The Holy Spirit compelled me,’ is what she is reported to have said. A woman, a stenographer in the United States House of Representatives, grabbed the microphone and began a rant against—I am not quite sure what it was she was against, except perhaps the Masons, a group she mentioned by name, accusing the nation’s founding fathers of belonging to this organization. There are Christians who will see this as an act of bravery and defiance, and others who will regard it with embarrassment and shame.

This is clearly not how Christ and the holy apostles operate. People can study the Bible their entire lives and miss the point of the good news of Jesus Christ completely, and some of them, having swallowed the Holy Ghost feathers and all, lay the blame for their bad behavior at His feet.

Such incidents just remind me of what scripture itself says, that God’s foundation stone is still in place, having been laid by the only One who could ever lay it, and on it have been built, are being built, and shall yet be built as long as the age endures, countless lives of quiet martyrdom.

Martyrdom. This is not what many think, seduced by self, assuming what does not belong to them, making themselves anointed warriors in the cause of God, to lash out blindly and then cringe to receive the blow the world may offer. It usually knows better. The world is not dumb.

To follow the Lord Jesus, to study His every move, every word, as written in the holy and divine scriptures, to join the apostles in imitating Him, to follow His commandments which are better than the laws of Moses, because they conquer the only enemy, that which lives within.

The world is sustained by the invisible Three. The Son does what He sees the Father doing. The siblings of the King of Israel, having been joined to the Father by more than flesh, continue His work, doing even greater works, for their heavenly older Brother has gone on ahead to ready the Place.

Martyrdom is to die daily with Christ, to rise from every fall, to love without limit, to suffer wrongs and not insist on rights, to bring the good news of freedom from bondage, of joy from sorrow, of mercy the spring of justice, of light over darkness. Martyrdom is to live in beauty which is holy.

We cannot know what compels people to act as they do. They may tell us one thing, but it may be another, something even hidden from themselves. One thing, though, is certain. The Holy Spirit is never the cause of confusion. He reunites tongues split by man’s greed at Babel, and offering no resistance to evils, undoes them by His presence without uttering a word.