If you are a blues aficionado, then you are probably familiar with the legendary blues master Jimmy Reed. However, for those of you who aren’t, Jimmy Reed is widely credited with being among the first to bring the rhythm-and-blues of the Mississippi Delta into the popular rock-and-roll mainstream of the 1950s. His hits included “Big Boss Man,” “Bright Lights, Big City,” and “Baby What You Want Me to Do”—a song that ended up being covered by everyone from Elvis Presley to the Grateful Dead.

I happened to be listening to one of his CDs the other day; and if you listen carefully, you can occasionally hear (ever so faintly in the background), a soft woman’s voice murmuring, in advance, the next verse of the song. The story that grew up around this was that Jimmy Reed would become so absorbed in the bluesy beat and the throbbing guitar riffs of his music that he would sometimes forget the words of his own songs. Thus, the woman’s voice is none other than that of his wife, who would stand next to him during recording sessions, devotedly coaching her husband by whispering the upcoming stanzas into his ear as he sang.

Whether or not this story is accurate, it is nevertheless a wonderful image for the role of the Holy Spirit. In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells the disciples, “I will ask my Father to send you an Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to remind you of all that I have said.” Hence, the main task of the Holy Spirit is to jog our memories, so to speak, by whispering the lyrics of the never-ending hymn of faithful obedience into our ears.

I mention this only because the Spirit is usually described in flashier terms. It is the Spirit, for example, that excites us and moves us out of our lethargy … it is the Spirit that evokes speaking in unknown tongues … it is the Spirit that prompts dramatic acts of passion and ecstasy. All of which is true, of course; but that is not the primary work of the Spirit. According to Jesus, the chief reason that the Spirit is being sent is to help remind us of our Christian calling.

Let’s face it; when it comes to being faithful disciples, we all tend to be notoriously forgetful. Indeed, one of the early Christian definitions for being lost was “to have amnesia.” Like the great Jimmy Reed, we get caught up in the rhythms of life and absorbed in our own little worlds, and we simply forget the lyrics—the story that our lives should be telling. And it is precisely in those times that the Holy Spirit stands beside us, leans in close, and whispers a gentle reminder of who we are and what we should be doing!