Be careful what you pray for.  My pre-Pentecost post (“Church on Fire”) asked you to think about what you are on fire about.  For so many of us in the ministry, we try to ask the important questions of other people, but we can too often ignore those very same questions for ourselves.  But not so this year.  As I sit here in a church parking lot after a festival of Pentecost worship, I feel a fire, a warmth, a hope, a passion being renewed in me for this work I am blessed to do, for this life, for God’s people.  It is a culmination, really, of a few things.  I felt a rush of fiery energy when I was driving the highway this morning with the radio cranked and REO Speedwagon blasting “Keep on rollin’! Keep on rollin’!  Rollin’ with the changes” and felt like this is a message I needed to hear–not to mention the church.  I felt a sense of utter gratitude as I watched 10 confirmands surrounded by peers, sponsors, parents and pastors laying hands on them and praying for them.  I listened with tears as I heard the affirmation of the preacher proclaiming that Pentecost happens whenever the church is willing to cross boundaries that seem to divide us.

Earlier this week I spent time talking to an old friend from high school.  Thirty years of experience – mostly quite different it seemed – spanned the time since I last saw him.  We talked about life and we talked about God.  His was a pentecostal church upbringing and it is his current practice after having spent some time away from it.  We found that whenever we started to talk religious doctrine, we would move into what felt like vastly different worlds.  But whenever we were sharing stories of life, we kept finding surprisingly similar hopes, dreams and pain woven through our histories.   The common thread was reliance on God and a firm belief in what the Spirit was doing in our lives now, no matter how much we diverge on our spiritual paths.

Indeed, Pentecost truly happens whenever we are willing to cross what feels like divides.  When we share from the heart, we speak each other’s languages, just as those early Christians felt a common fire, a common bond, a common language.  When we share stories from the deep core of our humanity, we find that this amazing Spirit of God is working in all things – wherever we are in our spiritual journeys.  This is cause for hope and it is confirmation that together we can turn a world of despair into the possibility of joy.  “Keep on rollin’… rollin’ with the changes!”