The power of thin air.

I love aircraft and flying – I even tried to join the RAF as a pilot. From being an Air Cadet as a young man, crashing hang-gliders as a student, to going on holiday by air – I love it. I remember going on a huge Boeing 747 some years ago – and gently hopping up and down in the aisle – just amazed that it was so solid and stable.
What is it that can keep hundreds of tons of metal up in the air? The answer is thin air, the wind.

When I wake up in the morning, I sometimes turn on the TV to see what the weather is doing. There are some mornings that I don't even have to look at the TV to know that the wind is blowing because I can hear it! I can hear it whistling through the trees, down the chimney, and around the windows and doors. We can't see the wind, but we can see it blowing trees and fences, and feel it against our faces.

On 31st May our church celebrates Pentecost Sunday. It was on the day of Pentecost that God sent his Holy Spirit to the church. The Bible tells us that the apostles were all gathered together when suddenly there was a sound like a mighty, rushing wind. Then, it says, they were filled with the Holy Spirit. God's Holy Spirit is like the wind, we can't see him, but we can know that he is there, just like we can know that the wind is there.

We can know that the Holy Spirit is there because we can hear him speaking into our hearts and making us alive to God. We can see him moving people to do God's will -- we can't see God, but we can see people doing things that God's Holy Spirit has moved them to do.

We know that without fresh air everything becomes flat, stale and lifeless – and the same applies to human beings and the church without God’s Holy Spirit. May God throw open the windows of our hearts and our church and blow in some of his freshness, power and life at Pentecost.