Come, Holy spirit!
Come to church this Sunday for a festive Pentecost! We'll have one worship service at 9:30am throughout the summer, ending September 13th.
On Pentecost Day, you're invited to wear RED in honor of the Holy Spirit coming on us and the disciples as fire and wind. I'll have on my red Converse sneakers (I love when I have liturgically matching footwear!).
For forty days after his resurrection, Jesus interacted with his disciples in ways that showed God had conquered death and brought the new, abundant life that following Jesus offers. Our Bible readings during this Easter season highlight this new life and the community founded by his first disciples. Ten days after his Ascension, the focus shifts - from resurrection to God's continued dwelling among us when followers of the Way of Jesus received the Holy Spirit on this fiftieth day after Easter.
Pentecost marks this shift - and through the long season of "ordinary time" from now until December, we learn how to live as the Church, God's people building God's Kingdom in this world.
A friend recently shared a prayer from the book Eleanor Roosevelt’s Nightly Prayer, which centers on the prayer and religious life of Eleanor Roosevelt, a faithful Episcopalian. Roosevelt prayed every night a prayer written by Oliver J. Hart, rector of St. John’s Church, Lafayette Square, close by the White House. He later became Bishop of Pennsylvania (1942-1963). It's a beautiful and perfect prayer for us to pray as well:
Our Father,
who has set a restlessness in our hearts and
made us all seekers after that which we can never fully find,
forbid us to be satisfied with what we make of life.
Draw us from base content and set our eyes on far off goals.
Keep us at tasks too hard for us that we may be driven to Thee for strength.
Deliver us from fretfulness and self-pitying;
make us sure of the good we cannot see and of the hidden good in the world.
Open our eyes to simple beauty all around us
and our hearts to the loveliness [people] hide from us
because we do not try to understand them.
Save us from ourselves and show us a vision of the world made new.
May the Spirit of peace and illumination so enlighten our minds
that all life shall glow with new meaning and new purpose;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
In this fraught time, we need the Spirit's help to see the goodness hidden in this world and in others we've set ourselves against. We need a vision of a world made new, a vision that the Spirit of peace will illuminate for us. And then, we need to take the Spirit's fire and light to illuminate the good in the world.
We pray, Come, Holy Spirit.
Blessings,
Rev Jill
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