Breathe.

I’m imagining what it was like for them to “be together in one place.” They are gathered in a house (whose house, I wonder?). The house is close enough to other houses that a crowd gathers when they hear the noise. There was a sound like a rush of violent wind. Languages broke apart. Colors seemed brighter in the light of whatever was like a tongue of fire that sat upon each of them. The sound grew and wonder seeped in through everyone witnessing this event. Everyone started talking at once and the sound got louder and louder.

Breathe.

All of them, Acts 2 says, were filled with the Holy Spirit and they spoke in different languages, with different inflections, with different words, with different passions as the Spirit gave them ability.

On Pentecost, we picture a house full of God’s breath, moving over the restless heads of the disciples and others gathered. We picture tongues of fire and we wonder. The Spirit gives them abilities. What do they do next?

On Pentecost, we may also feel God’s breath in the spaces where we worship. Our heads (and the rest of our bodies for that matter) are restless. We wonder what comes next for our houses of faith. For our families. For our world. We wonder at Time, at the moments when Time feels like a thief in the night and at the moments when Time feels like a gift-giver. We are restless, thinking about what it might possibly look like for us to live in a post-Easter, post-resurrection, post-ascension world.

Breathe.

Maybe it looks like this: like people gathered together. Like God’s Spirit breathing in ways we can feel. It looks like God’s Spirit giving us abilities to do the next right thing, and the next right thing after that. It looks like us wondering together, doing what writer Sarah Arthur calls “holy dreaming” so we can do what others have called “holy experimenting.”

It looks like breathing – breathe in the Spirit and breathe out the Spirit. Breathe in. Breathe out. May the Spirit move in and through you and keep you curious enough to wonder what God is up to next and bold enough to join the dance of what Christ is doing next. Breathe.