In today’s first reading from the book of Numbers, the Spirit came to rest on the seventy elders that had been outside the camp with Moses. 

As I was sitting in mass listening to this, the next line of the reading really struck me. “Now two men, one named Eldad and the other Medad, were not in the gathering but had been left in the camp. They too had been on the list, but had not gone out to the tent; yet the Spirit came to rest on them also, and they prophesied in the camp.” 

But had not gone out to the tent. And yet.

And yet, the Spirit came to them, and moved them, and let Power speak through them, despite them staying behind. Even though they hadn’t joined everyone outside the camp.

I was imagining them then, if it had been our current world. Maybe they overslept. Maybe they didn’t feel like getting up and moving and joining Moses where he was. Maybe they were experiencing doubt, or fatigue, or injury. So many reasons that could have made them stay behind, but they did.

And the Spirit found them. And blessed them. And used them.

God comes after us. He goes where we go. He is with us, even when we go off the path, or lose track of His presence the way he has bestowed it on us. It can be really easy to think if we aren’t perfect, if we don’t do every single thing right, that we’ve failed, or that we are incapable of having the grace necessary for the Spirit to come to us, but it’s just not the truth. God wants our hearts. He wants our honesty and vulnerability. He wants us to give Him the parts of us that are heavily burdened, the parts that maybe don’t want to go where He desires us to go.

And when we give those parts to Him, we change.

We change because He shows up. 

I found a lot of hope in this reading, in the way the Holy Spirit is present. 

Open our hearts, and He comes to us.