Pentecost weekend

Our prayer group, which we started (well, God started) in the on-base Catholic community in 1987, is sponsoring a video Life in the Spirit Seminar for Pentecost weekend. We started last night. I'm excited for what the Holy Spirit is doing in people's lives. I'm mainly leading music for it. This can be a little tricky, because many wonderful songs invoking the Holy Spirit are not typically in the Catholic liturgical repertoire, and you can never tell whether a given parish is going to have many that are. So we're using our organization's license to use songs that are in use by the charismatic community throughout the world, but need to select things that are simple enough for people to learn quickly. So far I think we've found a pretty good balance between music they know and music they can learn quickly.

For our closing song last night, I felt led to use this simple, repetitive, meditative invitation to God, Come Into My Heart. But as we were finishing, I pointed out that God always first issues the invitation to us. We had just heard David Mangan share (on video) of God's great love for us. [He has written a book on the topic: God Loves You, {and there's nothing you can do about it}] He spoke of God's unconditional love for us, and how He doesn't wait for us to get ourselves squared away - as if we ever could - before working in our lives. He meets us right where we are, in whatever messed-up state we may be, and begins to heal and transform us. And I pointed out as we were finishing the song inviting Him into our hearts that this is always a response to an invitation He always first issues to us: Come into My Heart, He says. Enter my loving heart. Another verse says, "I give my life to you," and this is another one that He sings to us before we ever sing it to Him. So finished by repeating those two verses from that perspective.

It was after this that one of the attendees paid me the wonderful compliment I wrote about last night. So apparently this is going pretty well. But I know that at least one attendee expressed reservations about the whole thing. We can be so resistant to allowing God to work in our lives. We can be so maddeningly rational and skeptical, so certain that our lives are okay the way they are, thank you very much. Or we can believe the lie that we are too flawed, or we can be afraid that nothing will happen, or in that fear worry that that would just confirm our low opinion of ourselves.

God's love, and His great dreams for us, are so far beyond our understanding, but our understanding isn't required. Our willingness to trust Him, to yield to the infinitely greater things that He wants for us, is so much more important. But it is hard for us to set aside our 'need' to understand. But somewhere within us, the message that God takes great delight in us and desires only the best for us resonates with truth. We can trust Him. And when we finally do, He fulfills in us the Gospel reading that we will hear proclaimed at the Pentecost vigil this evening: "Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink. As Scripture says: Rivers of living water will flow from within him who believes in me."

I have been blessed to see this fulfilled. I know this is not of me. I have no living water of myself to offer anyone, I am a flawed, sinful man. But as we thirst, and we come to Jesus to drink, God shares His Holy Spirit freely with, and through, anyone who is willing to be His vessel. It is a great gift of His love for us.

I can't wait to see what He does today!