It has been a busy week....

I have two things on my mind…..

First - On Pentecost in the Epistle to the Romans there is that line about “who hopes for what is seen?”  If I know what the gift I am about to receive is – then I don’t need to hope for it at all.  It is either what I want and need or it is not.  There is no mystery in that at all.  “If we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”  

Now I will readily admit that patience is not one of my strong points.  I am a do it now – get it done sort of gal.  My idea of waiting patiently for something to happen is to play with my smart phone while I pat my foot and become increasingly anxious over the outcome of my plans.  But I think there is a subtle difference here.  I think what Paul is trying to say is that this thing that is not seen is so beyond our wildest imagination – that we don’t even know it is coming.  What God has in mind is not even on my radar screen.  So of course we wait with patience – we do not know it is coming.  And yet in some mysterious way we do.  And that is what the hope is really about – this hope for what is not seen is faith.  And in the end when we have no words to even approach the mystery we do not see, it is God who gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit and it is the Holy Spirit who speaks for us – and you got to love this line.   “With sighs too deep for words”

Second - On Pentecost we hear in this wonderful story of the early church how the Holy Spirit came and lit up the followers of Jesus literally and figuratively.  They went into the streets telling Jesus’ story to anyone who would listen and they were understood in unexpected and miraculous ways.  And so I wonder, when are our voices unintelligible?  What is it that touches our tongues so that others might hear and understand?  What is it that takes the words we speak and transforms them for the hearers into God’s message?  The author of Acts tells us that it is the very Spirit of God that fills us with love, compassion, and a willingness to reach out to our brothers and sisters, to listen intently to the stories of struggle, to speak truthfully and openly in telling our own stories.  When we open our hearts up to God and allow the Spirit to work in and through us then we are speaking the universal language of Love and we are able to be understood and to understand.

God’s Love, God’s Light, God’s Spirit comes to us as a free gift.  It is given to all – each in her own language – so that all might share in the grace of it.  It sets us on fire with energy and excitement.  It burns like a hot coal in our bellies giving us the passion and desire, and energy to climb to the top of the mountain.  It is all we need for the journey.  God’s spirit fills every void and stretches as far as the imagination can carry us.

11^th Century rabbi named Meir ben Issac wrote a poem for that speaks of God’s Love:

"Could we with ink the ocean fill, Were every blade of grass a quill, Were the whole world of parchment made, And every man a scribe by trade, To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry; Nor could the scroll contain the whole, Though stretched from sky to sky."