A Concord Pastor Comments: Pause for Prayer: PENTECOST SUNDAY

Image: Gates Dupont

Spend some time with this reflection
in preparation for celebrating Pentecost today...

Lord, I have days when I’m confident your love is pulsing in my heart
and flowing through all my veins.

And other days, I’m a tumbleweed of a soul, a dry tangle of brush,
blown here and there where any stray breeze might take me.

Outside my anxieties,
beyond the throes of romance,
absent the imperatives of danger:
what and who impels me?

Whose wisdom drives my choices and decisions?
Whose strength pushes my will past satisfied contentment?
Whose force empowers me to do what’s right and just?

Who impels my life? my ways? my reason for being?

With you at the wheel, Lord, my course is clearly charted,
my sails billow with your Spirit’s wind
and I cross the roughest seas as a well bred mariner ought to do.

But apart from you to captain my journey
and your Spirit to fill the sheets,
my sails flag and I stall in the doldrums, listless and lost.

My resolve wanes
and my firm “Yes” and my determined “No”
become an ambiguous “maybe,”
a weak “I’m not sure,”
an unpromising, “maybe tomorrow.”

Only your Spirit has power
to fill my sails and bring me back to life.
Only your love will forge my choices in wisdom,
keep me from my selfish ways
and strengthen me to do what’s just.

Only when your love impels me, Lord,
will my old order pass away
and all manner of things be made new in my heart.
Let us pray...
   Come, Holy Spirit:
      be the wind in my sails,
         the light in my mind
            and the strength of my soul...

   Come, Holy Spirit:
      bind me to Christ,
         to his truth, his grace
and his gospel of peace...

   Come, Holy Spirit:
on good days and bad
   bring the gifts that you offer
      and the joy my heart seeks...

Amen.