The Spirit's Strategy

This is Pentecost Sunday and we are reading the account of the Holy Spirit coming in dramatic fashion to inhabit the disciples after the ascension of Jesus. The account is demonstrative of the power and work of the Holy Spirit as it acts in dramatic fashion, but not in random fashion. The participants are around 120 people, and there were surely differences among them. Although we might guess that some were people Jesus had healed or perhaps, like Zaccheus, some who encountered him along the way and were changed. Peter, for example, had denied knowing Jesus, but here he is, filled with the Holy Spirit, and taking on a large role in the crowd. All of these different people were united by the act of the Holy Spirit, and we, too, as different individuals (even we are in the same West End UMC congregation) can be inspired by the strategy of the Spirit to do things to further the mission of Jesus among our people. We can all tell the same story, even if we tell it in different ways. The church was born on Pentecost.