Day of Pentecost (Year 1, NL)

And what would happen if we didn't?

Learning a language requires us to focus our attention on something outside ourselves. It's a lot like learning to pray.

People do not float through life in the bubble that is their skin. We are grounded, dependent beings that live through the lives and deaths of others.

California is in a severe drought. Normally it rains in the time from mid-October to March, but for the past few years it has been bone dry. Some say we may only have a year of water left. We are thirsty.

It is clear in Acts 2 that a party is taking place—that dreams and visions are not meant to be dreamt alone.

I’ve been thinking often over the last few days and weeks about the last three verses of the magnificent eighth chapter of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome.

Growing in prayer is not simply acquiring a set of special spiritual skills. It is growing into Christian humanity.

Preaching on biblical passages about labor and childbirth is important, but it's also dangerous.

It seems a little backward on the Sunday after Pentecost to receive instructions that have already been successfully carried out. Peter and the disciples blew them away last week, preaching up a storm of fire and spirit like a host of Rosetta Stone experts. But today we go back to the place where Jesus told them what to do: Go and make disciples.

Go and make disciples? More like wait and welcome converts.

I learned many Bible stories by watching movies in Sunday school. They were those old-fashioned movies, shown on a reel-to-reel projector, that tried to portray the stories as some Cecil B. DeMille wannabe imagined they took place. They were seldom more than a few steps grander than the local Christmas pageant; most of the disciples basically wore fancy bathrobes.

The Pentecost movie was dramatic.

We may experience division in our cries to God, hearing only what’s loud right next to us. But God hears us as one human family, crying out for blessing.

Painter Sawai Chinnawong saturates the outpouring of the Spirit with the colors Thai art traditionally associates with the holy.

It’s been seven years, and I cannot access Jesus' word of peace. The tears still sting and slosh over my pail of remorse.

The answer that comes out of a tornado is not the kind of answer we want.