SEASONS

 Pentecost 2020

What is your favourite season of the year? Mine is Spring with its vibrant signs of new life in trees and flowers. My Dad’s was Autumn with the bronzed golden leaves. It is different of course in the equatorial region of the Congo where there are only two seasons – wet and dry (or very humid and mildly humid).

What is your favourite Season of the Christian year? Advent-  preparing the way)? Christmas (birth of Jesus)? Holy Week and Easter Day – (death and resurrection of Jesus)? Ascension? Pentecost? Final Advent (return of Jesus)?

The answers to both these questions are tricky really because you can’t have one without the others. 

We are approaching the festival of Pentecost. We will celebrate the way in which the apostles were changed from being fearful to being courageous, bold and confident. Not that they became perfect but they allowed God to fill them with his love and power and use them mightily.

The good news is that what happened to them can happen to us! And what followed in their lives can follow in ours.

Here are some prayers which may help us, taken from Angela Ashwin’s ‘Book of a Thousand Prayers’:

1. St Augustine of Hippo (354-410 AD)

Breathe in me, Holy Spirit, that I may think what is holy.
Move me, Holy Spirit, that I may do what is holy,
Attract me, Holy Spirit, that I may love what is holy.
Strengthen me, Holy Spirit, that I may guard what is holy.

2. Chandran Devanesan {Madras Christian College)

O Spirit of God, mighty river, flow over me, in me, through me.
O Spirit of God, cleanse me, purify the channels of my life.
O Spirit of God, bear me along with thy flood of life-giving service.
O Spirit of God, mighty river, bear me down to the ocean, the ocean of thy
love.
O Spirit of God, mighty fire, glow in me, burn in me,
Until thy radiance fills my soul.
O Spirit of God, mighty fire, may thy light illumine my mind.
O Spirit of God, mighty fire, may thy heat consume my will
Until I burn for thee alone.
May the flames of thy love ever blaze upon the altar of my heart.

3. Charles Wesley (1707-1788)

O thou who camest from above,
The pure celestial fire to impart,
Kindle a flame of sacred love
On the mean altar of my heart.
There let it for thy glory burn
With inextinguishable blaze,
And trembling to its source return
In humble prayer and fervent praise.