Sorry for the delay in getting this out. We are meeting and we will be at the Tavern and Galley at 7:30pm tonight.
Somewhere between the first rush of wind over water in Genesis and a locked room full of terrified disciples, God keeps doing the same trick: breathing life into things that look finished. Genesis 1 opens with the Spirit hovering over the deep like a bird that hasn’t decided where to land yet.
Fast forward to John’s gospel the disciples hiding, doors bolted and Jesus turns up and does something almost comically intimate, he breathes on them. Not a speech. Not a five-point strategy for church growth. He breathes on them. It’s the same move as Genesis: breath before mission.
Then Pentecost turns the volume up. Wind fills the house, fire lands on heads, and suddenly a huddle of Galileans are talking in languages they never learned. It’s chaotic, a bit undignified, and utterly communal, nobody gets the Spirit alone in a prayer closet. It arrives in a crowd.
And Psalm 104 reminds us this was never just about humans anyway. Send forth your Spirit, the psalmist says, and the earth is renewed badgers, sea creatures, wine that brings joy, all of it caught up in the same breath. Mission, it turns out, was ecological before it was evangelistic.
Maybe that’s the joke and the depth of it together: God’s favourite tool is breath, cheap, ordinary, endlessly renewable, given to fishermen, deserts, and terrified friends alike, trusting them to make something creative and restorative out of it.
Questions
1. Have you got a funny story about wind! (đź‘€) Have you ever been blown over by a huge gust, lost your hat or just flown a kite?
2. Where have you seen mission be more like “breath” than “strategy”?
3. Psalm 104 ties Spirit to the whole earth, not just people, does that change how you think about “mission”?
4. What would it look like for your community to receive mission as gift rather than task?
Photo by Freek Wolsink: https://www.pexels.com/photo/view-of-a-person-land-sailing-23032857/
Has been a part of BeachcomberFX since his arrival in the North East in 2014. Â He is well travelled (at least in the UK) having lived in Manchester, Nottingham, Derbyshire, Southport, Doncaster, Berwick and Edinburgh. Â Supporter of Newcastle United, will watch any sport.