Thinking about Pentecost and my fab dad's birthday

 

Acts 2:1 – 21           

Theme  - “Extraordinary Power”

When I was a little girl, I remember coming to meet my dad off his naval ship which was in dry dock at the Swan Hunter yard on the Tyne. It was eerily quiet waiting at the top of the hill with my sister, when suddenly there was a screeching siren and out of nowhere thousands, literally thousands of men appeared and came up the road out of the gates and onto the streets. The noise was incredible, the language colourful and the energy extraordinary. My dad as usual appeared about 10 minutes after the mob had disappeared with his ear-defence still firmly clamped onto the top of his head. He had missed the siren as he had been in the depths of the ship, he had missed the noise of the crowd of men coming up the hill, all talking in their own accents and dialects but he still had his own energy, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he came up to meet us. My mind often wanders to that scene when I read the story of Pentecost, the wind, the fire, the noise, the energy, the extraordinariness of the whole thing. I guess though the clear difference between the Swan Hunter experience and the  reading  from the book of Acts that we will hear later on, is that only I and a select few have my memory of that day, where as in what happened on that Pentecost day launched not a ship but a Church, and millions of people knew and still know the story of the Holy Spirit’s extraordinary power. Amen.

 

Talking of launching ships and special days - Happy Birthday to my dad, who in a few days celebrates (in a grumpy dad not celebrating kind of way) his birthday. Thank you dad for not only launching the daughter ship, but standing by like a cross between a pilot launch and a tug boat, to guide me through the storms and the deceptive calms of the ocean that is life.