...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.

,,,the wind changes everything

Wind who makes all winds that blow ---gusts that bend the saplings low,

gales that heave the sea in waves, stirrings in the mind’s deep caves ---

aim your breath with steady power on your church, this day, this hour.

Raise, renew the life we’ve lost, Spirit God of Pentecost.

---Thomas Troeger, 1983

It was one of those days. The kind when you slap bugs crawling up and down your back, and find it’s sweat pouring down your spine. When your gaze across the blacktop of the supermart parking lot is crazed and zagged by waves of rising heat. When the silence is so thick your ears ring with it. When you walk bowlegged, just to keep your thighs from rubbing together where they are chafed, from rubbing together on days just like this. Five days, ten. All of them. It has been this hot, this humid, this still, for. ev. er.

You have work to do. The heat, the stillness won’t stop you, won’t keep you from working with skill, with dedication, with honor. Won’t cause you to throw up your hands, throw in the towel, throw up the white flag of surrender. You believe in the work you do, feel called to it, even. Leaving it undone, or half-done, feels as wrong as planting without mulch to protect from the harsh sun. Beside all that, you are no quitter, are you?

So you keep on.

But, playing with your sweaty curls, ruffling the hem of your red-dusted work shirt, sending pecan leaves trembling is a freshening, a breeze. You raise your eyes to the horizon, edge of disbelieving…but there it is, again. You are still, almost afraid to move for fear the wind will disappear. But you do. And it doesn’t.

And that wind. It renews. It envigorates. It restores the joy to the work you were doing. It colors your shades of grey world, reminds you how good, how life-giving, your labor was. Is.

The wind? It changes everything.

...the moon is there

Heavy clouds that block the moonlight now begin to drift away.
Diamond brilliance through the darkness shines the hope of coming day.
Christ, the morning star of splendor, gleams within a world grown dim.
Heaven's ember fans to fullness; hearts grow warm to welcome him.
--- Mary Louise Bringle, 2005

It's been cloudy here. The kind of cloudy that brings the ceiling of the sky low, makes it brooding. I knew there was a moon out there somewhere, knew it was well nigh on full, from second-hand reports of overflowing labor-and-delivery departments. But look up? No moon, no stars, nothing but grimy-looking, worn-out clouds, pressing down the sky. It's the kind of weather that always drives me deep into my chair, under my prayer shawl. Nothing good about days like this.

Then, tonight, I went out. The wind captured my attention first. After I caught my breath from the immediacy of it, from the biting chill, I noticed the quality of light on the oak leaves covering my walkway. Each smooth brown leaf reflected a silvery glint from...what? And then I looked up. The leaves were reflecting the crystal glow of a moon now revealed in a pure blue-black sky. The wind had blown away the clouds, and the sky ceiling now seemed limitless. In that moment everything, it seemed, from the damp ground supporting the fallen leaves to the space beyond the moon and stars, thrummed with "Yes."

That moment reminded me, in my soul, that clouds can cover the moon and stars, even completely enough that I forget what the clear sky looks like. But the moon? the stars? Oh, they're still there. And sometime soon, the clouds will be blown away, and the light will shine. The light that was there all along.

Light is there. We will see.