Acts 2:1-11
1 Cor 12:3b-7, 12-13 or Rom 8:8-17
Jn 20:19-23

WOW!
It seems not so long ago that I was sitting at the bedside of my mother as she was dying. It was just me, as my six siblings had been told she was okay, no big changes. A few days before she had opened her closed eyes and with brilliance I will not forget said, “It is beautiful, it is the best in the world.”

I was certain that God was giving Mom a sneak preview of what the coming attraction was.

Anyway just two days later, it was Mom and me in ordinary time. I was reading the psalms to her and just before she returned full time to the sneak preview, Phyllis came in. I read the 23rd psalm and then the 27th. Mom opened her tired eyes and exhaled into “it is beautiful, it is the best of the ‘next world.’

I watched with my own eyes, one breath made the difference between living the ordinary and living the best! In the readings from Pentecost Sunday, it is clear that Jesus does not want us to have to wait to enter and share in the kingdom of God. My Mom did not wait to live the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

She had years of practicing the Divine in the here and now! The Divine was not always easy to access with her human senses. There may have been some times in Mom’s life when she questioned the actual longitude and latitude of God’s proximity…timeliness…idea of a good time, BUT I am quite certain that her faith kept her looking and trusting that God was there somewhere.

The celebration of Pentecost gives you and me a chance to be “Wowed” by the bigness of God, by the strength and creativity of the Spirit to fill and move us. In the case of my Mom’s dying…birthing process I was so intent on looking for the time and place of her transition. During these days let’s be awake; as we breathe in this Spirit and are being made new. May we be as attentive to the “WOW” being made new in the Spirit.

“I have told you this while I am with you. The Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.”