Spirit of Adoption

Notice how you come to God after a bad week. Shoulders up, apology first, bracing for the assessment, the way a person walks into a supervisor's office when the numbers are down.

Paul says that posture has a name, and the name is the wrong one. Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear. Again is the word that stings, because it means they had lived that way once and it was a going back rather than a falling short. Fear is a workable engine for religion; it gets people to services and keeps them tidy. It has never once made anybody at home.

Then he puts a word in your mouth, and he leaves it untranslated, which is worth noticing. Abba is Aramaic. It was the ordinary household word for a father, the one used in a kitchen rather than in a court, and Greek-speaking churches who did not know Aramaic were saying it anyway because it had come to them attached to something. The one other place in the New Testament where a person says it is Jesus, face down in Gethsemane, in the worst hour of his life: Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee.

Which tells you what the word is for. It is not the vocabulary of good days. It is what he used when he was frightened, and it is the same word the Spirit put in you.

So pray without the throat-clearing today. No summary of your performance, no negotiating position. Open with the one word and then say the true thing directly underneath it. Father, I am frightened. Father, I am ashamed. That is not disrespect, and it is not a lowering of the tone. It is the sound you were given.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 361 is Aaron and Hur (Exodus 17:12).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna