The wind of the Holy Spirit blows with us: In today’s Gospel passage we find Jesus gently preparing his disciples for the coming of the Advocate who will continue the teaching Jesus has begun and remind them of all they had done together. In today’s passage from Acts, the disciples are waiting huddled in the upper room fearing that the authorities would come and get them before the Advocate showed up. What might they have been expecting? Sure enough, God remains true to form: God is a surprise. What they get is a wind that blows into the room, chases away the cobwebs of fuzzy thinking, and fills the disciples with fire. How is that same wind blowing in our lives as we look at the work we have been given to do?

What is the key concept in this passage — a concept Jesus has been teaching over and over and yet they still do not “get?”

John writes using beautiful, but abstractly complex, words. If we were trying to get this concept across to a friend, how would we phrase this concept of God in Jesus and Jesus in God?

Prayer: Almighty God, on this day you opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit: Shed abroad this gift throughout the world by the preaching of the Gospel, that it may reach to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.