...while supplies last

God pours the Holy Spirit on all those who believe,

on women, men, and children who would God’s grace receive.

That Spirit knows no limit, bestowing life and power.

The church, formed and reforming, responds in every hour.

---Jane Parker Huber, 1981

*while supplies last. Surely these words were designed to strike fear in the hearts of every red-blooded human on the face of the earth. If you might run out of something, I need one. Who am I kidding?...I probably need two. And if there is a countdown clock in the corner of the QVC screen or the Instagram ad (check your generation), those beads of sweat, and a sudden desire for previously unknown (but now totally life-giving) goods pop out all over.

Is there a better marketing principle discovered than the principle of scarcity? It stands to reason that if something is in short supply, only the real winners will end up possessing it. The rest of us? The waited-too-late, didn’t-pay-attention, stayed-in-on-Black-Friday, don’t-queue-up-for-Ticketmaster-at-midnight, wasn’t-tuned-in-to-the-faint-ache-of-longing-that-was-emptiness ones? Oh, yeah…the losers? Well, we’re gonna lose. That’s the way of the world, baby. Winners and losers—get used to it.

But on Pentecost, the rules go out the window. It’s not that winners and losers switch places, though Jesus used to talk about that scenario sometimes. No, at Pentecost, the only loser is the principle of scarcity. Here in this gathering of believers, inquisitive onlookers, and straight-up gawkers, the Spirit breathed a new sort of energy on God’s love story. And for once, it seemed, there were no losers, and there was no FOMO (fear of missing out). This Spirit was like the wind, or fire, and didn’t have to be measured or conserved. There was plenty for everyone, and more.

Still is. Still is.