Full of It | Acts 9:36-43

Kids on the playground know how to land an insult: "You're full of it!" It's funny because it's true — of all of us. The question is what the "it" is. The Book of Acts keeps using one peculiar word to describe people: full. Some are filled with jealousy, deceit, or even the schemes of Satan. Others are filled with the Spirit, with faith, with grace and power. Luke wants us to see that we are not neutral containers. Whatever fills the heart eventually shapes the life. This Sunday — Mother's Day — we'll meet a remarkable woman named Tabitha. Luke calls her something he calls no other woman in the New Testament: a disciple. And he tells us she was "full of good works and acts of charity." Her sewing needle, of all things, became evidence of Pentecost. When she dies, the widows of her town gather around the apostle Peter, weeping and holding up the tunics and garments she made for them. Her spirituality had taken material form — in cloth and thread and quiet, daily mercy. What happens next is one of the most astonishing scenes in Acts. Peter kneels, prays, and speaks two words that echo Jesus' own voice raising a little girl in Galilee: "Tabitha, arise." The risen Christ is still at work — through dependent prayer, through ordinary disciples, through resurrection power already breaking into the present age. Tabitha's story is not just a miracle account. It is a portrait of what the Spirit-filled life actually looks like when it takes root in a real human being. This is a fitting passage for Mother's Day, because Tabitha represents the kind of holiness our culture rarely celebrates: unnoticed, embodied, hidden, faithful. The kind that shows up in meals made, clothes mended, prayers prayed, children nurtured, and saints quietly sustained. The kind that looks like Jesus — because it has been filled with Him.