Minister's Monthly Musing - May
This month Christians on Sunday May 11th celebrate the festival of Pentecost! Now, this might well pass many people by – I mean it hasn’t got the attraction of Christmas or Easter, there’s no tinsel decorating the shops and there is no special type or shape of chocolate to present to each other! So, many will probably go about in their normal way, doing the normal things we do on a normal Sunday.
For the first Christians, the period after they celebrated the resurrection of Jesus, right through until he left them to go back to heaven was a heady time – full of joy and happiness. But then they hit a bit of a low! The one they had expected to defeat the Romans, establish a mighty new kingdom, make everything better …. had left them. Typical! Isn’t that so often our experience? Someone appears to promise so much and then suddenly it doesn’t all quite work out like we expected!
But this was different! Jesus had said some important things to his followers before he left them. He told them to ‘wait’ for the gift His Father would send to them – not a chocolate egg or a cracker – but the actual presence of God himself in their lives. This they would experience and understand and then be able to continue God’s work on earth in His strength rather than their own.
And this is what happened. The feast of Pentecost – a Jewish festival – was transformed for them when they experienced the presence of God among them (describing it like a mighty rushing wind and flames of fire). Each of Jesus’ followers received the indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages and to declare boldly that people needed to turn to Jesus Christ to get their lives sorted out.
The story – told in full in the Bible in the New Testament book called the Acts of the Apostles chapter 2 – is strange yet exciting. The church was born that day – more than 3,000 people became Christians and millions more over the succeeding years.
At Christmas we remember “God with Us”. At Easter we recall “God for us”. At Pentecost we celebrate “God in us”. Why not spend a few minutes today just waiting for God? If God is here, if He truly is who Christians claim He is then maybe you will sense His presence, the breath of His Spirit, the warmth of His love. May God bless you during this Pentecost time.