The Sure and Steady Pilot Light of Pentecost

Happy Pentecost Sunday!
I wonder how we would respond today to a reenactment of the original Acts 2 Pentecost scene, complete with rushing wind, tongues of fire, and unscheduled utterances in various languages.

The Early Church was building the plane as they flew it. There was no “earlier church” to set a precedent for what a “normal” Lord’s Day service should include. However, we know that those who came from a Jewish background would have had at least an oral tradition of the power of God residing in a building. They gathered in anticipation of a holy experience in God’s presence, layered upon their understanding of the Holy of Holies and the Temple veil ripped in two.

Pentecost was a visible and audible reminder of the sort of power believers were dealing with when they chose to follow The Way. I could use a reminder myself.

Pentecost was a visible and audible reminder of the sort of power believers were dealing with when they chose to follow The Way. I could use a reminder myself.

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I love how Annie Dillard portrays us in our tame, present-day worship settings:

“The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.” ¹

Did you lay out your crash helmet with your Bible and your Sunday shoes?

Whatever the nature of those “divided tongues of fire [that] appeared to them and rested on each one of them,” we know that they were evidence of God pouring out his Spirit on all flesh. Over 2,000 years later, he is still at work, empowering Christians to say no to ourselves and yes to God, convicting us of our petty selfishness and small-mindedness, and burning through our doubts by enlightening our minds to the truth of Scripture.

Those Spirit flames still burn today as a slow and steady pilot light, continuously burning, and as dependable as the gas burner under my tea kettle.

When you find it hard to pray, remember the pilot light burns within you:

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:26-27).

When you’re not sure what’s true, and you need a steady guide:

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:13-14).

When you are at a loss for words:

When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Matthew 10:19-20).

When you need to war against sin:

For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Romans 8:13).

When hope has been bleeding out for too long:

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope”
(Romans 15:13).

When you need courage to doubt your doubts:

By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit” (1 John 4:13).

God the Holy Spirit is the gift of Pentecost, the sure and steady pilot light that fuels the flame of our faith.

The Spirit flames of Pentecost still burn today as a slow and steady pilot light, continuously burning, and as dependable as the gas burner under my tea kettle.

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Holding You in the Light,

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1. Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), pp. 40-41. ↩︎

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