What’s in your bucket list? A bucket list is a certain number of achievements or experiences that a person wants to accomplish during his or her lifetime. This idea was further popularized in American culture with the release of the movie, “The Bucket List (2007),” starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. Do you have a bucket list? Most of us do, even though it is unintentional.  In other words, we all have a few things that we want to do before we leave this world. And in most cases that deals with us going to a certain part of the world that is unique and exotic. Or maybe we want to reach a certain position in our career or have a certain level of accomplishment in our workplace. Whatever the case might be our “bucket list” usually is numbered with “going somewhere” or “doing something.”

All throughout the Bible God represents himself through his creation. We see this in the Book of Exodus, where God speaks to Moses through a “burning bush.” In the Gospels (Matthew 3: 16, Luke 3:22) we see that the Holy Spirit is represented by the dove, which appears above Christ. In the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 2) we see that the Holy Spirit comes as fire and wind. I want to focus on the “wind” as God’s way of representing himself to us, the reasons why he does so, and what it means to us as people of God.

Trees! They are a big part of the imagery and experience of reading the Bible. In Genesis 2-3, Adam and Eve are given the opportunity to eat from the Tree of Life, but of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, (Genesis 2:9) they were strictly prohibited from eating its fruit. Nevertheless, they eat from it, and at that very moment, they felt ashamed and hid. (Genesis 3: 6-7) It is interesting to point out that in verse 7 it says that they sewed fig leaves to cover themselves like aprons. Some biblical scholars say that since they used fig leaves, and considering this occurs immediately after they eat of the forbidden tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was indeed a fig tree.

In the Gospel reading today we hear that a “great light” has shone in the darkness in the land of Nebulun and Naphtali. Nebulun and Naphtali were two of the twelve sons of Jacob (Jacob is also known as Israel). It was out of the twelve sons that the history of the Jewish people begins to unfold. The twelve sons are also known as the twelve tribes of Israel.shin

The Acts of the Apostles, Ch. 7, verse. 51-60, records the martyrdom of St. Stephen. Here, St. Stephen rebukes the Jews of their persecution of the prophets whom God sent to them in times past, including Jesus (who of course was God.) In vehement anger the Jews that were gathered there stoned St. Stephen to death. St. Stephen called out to God to “receive his spirit.” He also asked God to forgive his killers.