To many of us "Spirit" is a colourless and vague word. The Holy Spirit is a faceless enigma beyond the grasp of our understanding. Yet, He - not "it" - is the One responsible for applying salvation to believers.

In the last two days I have heard of an engagement and an imminent adoption. It struck me as I have been studying for an exam on the Holy Spirit and salvation that in spite of the fact that often doctrine courses can leave students in the clouds (or on occassion, at sea), marriage and adoption are exquisite shadows of a reality that the Spirit actualises.

I am talking about Union with Christ. Merely typing it, I feel like Alladin's genie dreaming of freedom, "Union with Christ, such a thing would be greater than all the magic and all the treasures of all the world" and it is ours. Marriage involves the most intimate relationship we can know this side of eternity and it merely depicts the relationship we have with Father in Christ through the Spirit. Adoption implies orphans without home or hope graciously lifted from despair. So it is with us who are adopted, who find belonging in the arms of a loving Father, heirs with Christ through the Spirit.

I had to pause and contemplate the beauty of marriage and adoption. They are two realities that will become infinitely resplendent to us when we realise that the Holy Spirit - who we have relegated to the crazy outskirts of evangelicalism where tongues and healings occur - has made them real in our lives with reference to the Triune God.

Here is my heart Lord, come Lord Jesus!