Pentecost is observed fifty days after Easter, this year on June 8. It is sometimes called “the birthday of the church”, celebrating the coming of the Holy Spirit to the apostles and many others gathered in Jerusalem on that day. In Pentecost, we celebrate the Spirit’s indwelling in each and every person. It reminds us that God’s promise is to be alive in each one of us, giving us courage to understand and live out more fully our lives as vehicles for God’s love and truth, grace and hope.
The movement of the Holy Spirit in our lives is often mysterious. Three of the most vibrant images of the Holy Spirit from scripture are breath, wind, and fire. As we ponder the Spirit coming to us as individuals and as a church this Pentecost, here are some questions to reflect upon, pray with, and open ourselves to in this “growing season” of ourselves and of the church.
Where in my life is the breath/wind of God shaping what was formless or a void into something new? The Spirit wants to breathe life into the parts of us that are lifeless. What kind of newness is coming into your days? How might the Spirit be yearning for new life coming from the parts of you that feel like they are no longer vibrant?
If you imagine the Spirit as a mother eagle at this moment, how is the Spirit protecting, prodding, teaching, and/or leading you? Sometimes the Spirit invites us to let go and forgive—both ourselves and others—so that new life and new awareness can come to us. What resentments that you are holding is the Spirit yearning for you to release, and to be released from, at this time in your life?
Sometimes the Spirit comes like a violent wind, upsetting the apple cart of our life as it is, and blowing us out into new and different ways of living. Sometimes the “well-feathered” nest we have spent so much time creating encounters the wind of the Spirit, blowing around, and even out of the window, the feathers we so wanted to keep in place. Where did the Spirit encourage you to worship God instead of worshiping the beautifully and comfortably placed feathers in your personal nest?
Sometimes the Spirit even sets us on fire, so that what was an unlit wick gets “fired up” and we are “en-lightened” for our own sake and to bring light to others. It is as if we are being asked to become a candle, bringing light to a shadowed world. The Spirit can in-spire new dreams in us, even in the parts of us that have seemed too old to dream, or too young to have visions, or too enslaved to have the hope of freedom. How is the Spirit yearning for your own holy fire to be revealed?
The Spirit can brood over and bring to birth freshness in those parts of our lives that have become stale. The Spirit is working to refresh us, calling us to the new life of God’s possibility, the new love of God’s grace, the new hope of God’s eternal spring? Where can you attest to this movement of new energy in your spiritual life? May we have the courage to step forward into the new world the Spirit is offering us?