The Church celebrated Pentecost today. This was the day that Jerusalem was filled to the brim with people celebrating the Feast of Weeks, which remembered Moses' receiving the Ten Commandments seven weeks after Passover. Fifteen centuries later, Luke was recording how the disciples were powerless and waiting, but obedient! in an upper room in the city that day. They could do nothing without the Holy Spirit, and so they waited.
While they waited, they prayed constantly. And when the Spirit came in His glory and power, they were quickened, sharpened, and strengthened. The knowledge in their heads was now augmented by the experience of their hearts.
One of our prayers was a contemporary hymn:
"Come, Holy Spirit, come; I have need of Your healing grace.
Come, make me pure within; all my sins erase.
Let them, like bonds set free, nevermore my captors be.
Humbly to You I bow; Come, Holy Spirit, now."
(Marian Wood Chaplin; hymntune: CHAPLIN)
