The story of Pentecost is a story of a new world, a new way of being, and a victory over death confirmed and sanctified by the gift of the Holy Spirit. This realisation led me to reflect on the importance of resilience. I have read that Pentecost is about the expected and the unexpected, and in many ways, we can reflect on what this means for us. It is easy to read someone else’s story and be encouraged by it – “maybe that will never happen to me, but I felt so good to know that out of their pain, they found victory” – yes it’s nice to hear or read those feel-good stories. Then our turn comes and we are a mess, a bag of nerves surviving on our distress – “Why Lord, why is this happening to me!” Yes, we become a certified mess. We wake and smile with Despair, wave hello through our day and come to him again in a bed of fevered sweat, praying for this nightmare to end.
It is hard to see ourselves in those moments as anything but defeated. However, if we are not to be buried under the strain of our many battles in life, if we are to win the war, we must first see ourselves as unconquerable and unbeatable we have to be unyielding in believing we can do all things through Christ who strengthen us. We may say we are more than conquerors but may not believe that, but we have to think that to survive the storms. We have to know this is our truth. This is our constant hope, our defence when buffeted. This year I am learning about resilience. The word resilient comes from the Latin resilire, which means to jump back or recoil. To be resilient therefore means to be able to cope and bounce back from the adversities we face in life, it means to bend rather than break when every fibre of your being wants to seize up and become dry bones.
Today the sermon was about Ezekiel 37. In this chapter, God, through a vision, takes Ezekiel to the valley with dry bones and instructs him to prophesy that these bones will be resurrected:
Son of man can these bones live? (Ezekiel 37:3a)
That struck me. Can the bones in your life live once more when they are dry and so dusty that they seem on the verge of blowing away in the wind. But Ezekiel trusted and was completely submitted to the will of God and believed that if it were the will of God then these bones could live once more. All God wanted to hear was the manifestation of Ezekiel’s faith through his word and his words, “Oh Lord God, You know (3b)” which led to God partnering with Ezekiel. God told Ezekiel to prophesy and he did exactly as God had told him and those bones became supply flesh once more. But God was not done with him yet, because though the bones now had flesh there was no breath:
Also He said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live. (9)
Again Ezekiel obeyed and those dried bones not only had flesh but they came alive with the breath of life. God can do anything and there is no other who can. So, on the day of Pentecost, tongues of fire rained and violent winds blew. The change had come, maybe not in the way the Believers expected but certainly how God intended. There was an event that witnessed the resurrection of Jesus Christ, one that led to something new for the faithful followers of Christ!
Now, we come back to resilience. Life can be so difficult that it is hard to know how to bounce back and so we stew in indecision and our uncomfortableness, our guilt and self-recriminations. So while we contemplate what it means and how it is to partner with God, I want to leave you with a poem that speaks against our shaking faith and paralysis when we allow fear to become a monster in our lives. we have the inner strength to rise, we have the Spirit of God living, breathing and speaking to and for us to rise.
Invictus
BY WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
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