A Concord Pastor Comments: Pause for Prayer: PENTECOST SUNDAY

Image: Gates Dupont

Lord, there are days when I’m confident,
sure beyond a doubt,
that your love is pulsing in my heart
and flowing through my veins...

And on 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...

In my anxieties,
in the throes of romance,
when I'm totally confused,
when danger threatens,
when I don't know where to turn:
what and who impels me?

Whose wisdom drives my choices and decisions?
Whose strength pushes my will past self-satisfaction?
Whose force empowers me to do what’s right and just?
Who shapes my life? my ways? my thoughts?

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 without you to captain my journey
and your Spirit to fill the sheets,
my sails flag and I stall in the doldrums,
listless and lost...

Apart from your Spirit's power
my resolve wanes,
my firm “Yes” and my determined “No”
become an ambiguous “maybe,”
a weak “I’m not sure,”
a tentative, unpromising, “maybe tomorrow.”

Only your Spirit, Lord,
has breath and power to fill my sails
and bring me back to life...

Only your love, Lord,
forges my choices in wisdom,
keeps me from selfish ways
and strengthens me to do what’s just,
what's fair, what's honest, what's true,
what's good and pure...

Only with your love, with your Spirit to guide me,
will my old ways pass away
and all things be made well
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,
            the strength of my soul...

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

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

Amen.