We tend to see the Pentecost story from the perspective of the disciples waiting in that room, receiving the gift, and being empowered to go out and be the witnesses to it all. The ones who were communicating the story to the Other. But we are simultaneously the ones on the outside, the ones being invited into the conversation they didn’t even know was happening. The ones who can suddenly be called to—and heard—in their own soul’s language. Do you ever feel like you need to speak some certain kind of language to be heard (by others, by God)? So many of us learned what language was appropriate for prayer (and what wasn’t) in our early years of faith. We’ve probably all been there when someone was having a “normal” conversation with a friend, and then transitioned into a time of prayer, and heard the voice shift, the tone change—a formality, almost a foreignness, as if we were speaking the common language that God understands. But in Pentecost, we see the Spirit speaking the language of every single heart. What is yours? What would it be to talk to God as if God was listening to every nuance underneath every syllable and silence? To not speak as if we’re writing a formal letter to someone who must be addressed properly, but with the everyday language we use with family and friends? (We know this, and yet…) To trust that even when the only thing we can say is “I can’t” or “It hurts!”—or perhaps even more colorful language!—there is deep understanding of exactly what that means? If you could trust that you are being listened to, in the midst of your real experience, what would you say? Or, perhaps more accurately, what IS your soul already saying, that is even now being heard by the Spirit listening in? How is God speaking your language right back to you? Listen in on the conversation that you may not have even been consciously aware was happening. What is your soul saying? How does God respond? Without you ever having to translate your words into “proper” prayer?

Posted by Jamie Bonilla at 2023-06-01 14:11:53 UTC