The Spirit of God like a fire is burning!
The latter-day glory begins to come forth;
The visions and blessings of old are returning,
And angels are coming to visit the earth.
We'll sing and we'll shout with the armies of heaven,
Hosanna, hosanna to God and the Lamb!
Let glory to them in the highest be given,
Henceforth and forever, Amen and amen!
I love the mind of Richard Cracroft, English Professor at Brigham Young University from 1963-2001. In one of his discourses he celebrated the reality of the often ignored and too little heralded but very real outpouring of the Spirit of God upon the believing inhabitants of earth. He spoke of ‘hosanna moments,’ those transcendent moments in our lives when, without warning, we are overwhelmed by a close encounter with eternity, a surprise of the spirit—those moments when, while engaged in the temporal rhythms of our daily and earth-encrusted lives, comfortably duped by familiar routines, we are suddenly brought face-to-face with the holy, swept by the Spirit of God into a transcendent reality, overwhelmed by undeniable evidence of a literal Father in Heaven who knows you and knows me and is somehow interested and involved in our lives.
He continues, . . . “The ‘We’ll-Sing-and-We’ll-Shout’ moment is that moment when our God reaches his hand through the veil to startle our sensibilities, to reassure, to comfort, to guide, to prod, to change our course. Then our spirits soar, our souls are renewed, and we can never really be the same again. Those spiritual recognitions come as the shiver through the body, the cold chill across the back, the flash across the spirit, and yes, the burning in the bosom. These glimpses of eternity come to most of us. Nudging us toward our destiny, his welcome and too-infrequent interventions shout to our souls that our Heavenly Father lives!”
Richard Cracroft
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