Thoughts, Prayers & Art

Originally Published: June 8, 2025

The wind has come.
And it’s not asking for permission.

This isn’t a gentle breeze meant to cool your skin.
This is a rushing violent wind, the kind that rips open locked doors, blows off the dust of despair, and sets fire to hearts that have forgotten how to burn.
The kind of wind that dares you to believe again.
To speak again.

To stand up again.

This is Pentecost.

And the Spirit has come uninvited and unstoppable.

I don’t know about you, but I need Pentecost this year.
I need it in my bones.
Because the world around us is cold with cruelty and heavy with fear.
ICE raids are sweeping through communities like storms.
Queer bodies are being targeted and erased.
Our children serve this country with honor while wondering if their country will honor their humanity.

We live in a time where truth is under siege, where the Empire has a microphone and compassion is labeled as weakness.
Where parents kiss their children goodbye through tears, not because they doubt their child, but because they don’t trust the world they are sent into.

Lord, send your Spirit.
Not someday.
Now.

In Acts 2, the disciples are hiding behind fear, behind walls, behind uncertainty.
And then the Holy Spirit crashes in.

Not with a gentle word.
But with fire. With language. With disruption.

And suddenly, every voice mattered.
Every dialect was holy.
No one was left out of the message.

Let’s be honest, Pentecost is not safe. It is not tame.
It’s a holy riot of grace and speech and courage.
It’s the Spirit grabbing us by the soul and shouting:
“Go. Speak. Love. Resist. I am with you!”

And it’s not just them.
We are part of this story.

Romans 8 tells us that we are heirs with Christ, not slaves to fear.
Not spectators of injustice.
Not silent saints.
But children of God, infused with the Spirit of adoption.
With a Spirit that groans with us when words fail.
With a Spirit that cries out Abba!
And sometimes, we cry too.

Let me tell you something church:
You are not meant to walk through this world afraid of your own shadow or ashamed of your fire.
You were not baptized into silence or baptized into apathy.
You were baptized into flame and wind and water and Word.
You were baptized into the Gospel.
Into the Jesus who broke every rule that needed breaking and loved every person the Empire said was unworthy.

In John’s Gospel today, Jesus promises us an Advocate.
Not a polite counselor.
Not a quiet ghost.
But the Advocate. The Holy Disruptor.
The Spirit of Truth.

And let’s be real, Truth is a threat to power.
So if you’re living in the Spirit, don’t expect comfort from the world.
Expect conflict. Expect fire. Expect peace, but not as the world gives.

Christ’s peace isn’t the absence of trouble.
It’s the presence of power in the midst of it.

So, church, what do we do now?
We stop waiting for Pentecost to be easy.
We stop worshiping in whispers.
We stop letting the Empire shape our Gospel.
We speak.
We move.
We BECOME Pentecost.

We rise up with holy wind in our lungs and fire in our prayers.
We remember the names of the lost.
We hold our children close and refuse to be silent about the kind of world they are inheriting.
We pray with our feet, our mouths, our ballots, and our bodies.

Today is not a commemoration, it’s a commissioning.
The Spirit has come.
And She is not done yet.

So let us speak truth in every tongue.
Let us love in every language.
Let us resist every system that silences the voice of God in others.

Let us carry the wind.
Let us kindle the fire.
Let us be the Church the world so desperately needs.

Come, Holy Spirit.
Not just to comfort
But to compel.

Not just to bless, 
But to break us open.

Because when the wind of God blows,
You can’t sit still.