What is the Hardest Thing You’ve Ever Done?

The hardest thing I have ever done was get my aging mother to accept that she needed to make a change in her living situation.  I had been trying unsuccessfully for months, and the day came when I was meeting a BC Health social worker at my mother’s apartment.  I was anxious and afraid.

I can still remember sitting at the eastbound traffic light at Grandview Highway and Boundary Road and praying, “Lord, I do not know how you are going to do this, but please help!”  Never, in my wildest dreams, could I have imagined the solution that God devised.

This Sunday we will celebrate Pentecost and Rev. Donna has chosen two scripture readings for us that speak of the Holy Spirit -  the friend, advocate, helper, that Jesus promised he would send to us.  

The first reading, from Acts 2 (MSG translation) is full of the confusion that we can feel when something unusual happens “without warning”:

When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force—no one could tell where it came from.  It filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them.

Their heads were spinning; they couldn’t make head or tail of any of it. They talked back and forth, confused: “What’s going on here?”

The second reading, selections from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians 3 (MSG translation) is full of hope, joy, strength, and the “extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love”.

I ask God to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you'll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ's love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.

God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.

Susan