The Universal Bridge Of Pentecost

So many different people in Jerusalem from so many different places, speaking so many different languages. Nobody understanding any of them but their own. Human static filling my ears, filling all of our ears.
It’s all dissonance. And then, just like that, the dissonant voices are gone.
And a deeply Holy Spirit is all around us, instead.
I feel strangely deaf at first. I was so accustomed to the dissonant voices that utter clarity is, at first, hard to comprehend.
It’s as if the sky is talking and my ears are momentarily filled with clouds.
Everyone seems to be speaking the same language.
A language that feels like the outskirts of a heavenly love, and this Holy Spirit is around and within us all.
A Holy Spirit that makes us feel like we are one people, one family.
The walls inside us are gone. Now, there are only bridges. From us to each other. For this moment, I feel all of us crossing them. To the other side of something so deeply holy.
How can that be?
The dissonant voices of human division and all of wounding that comes with them had declared that they were here forever and then, just like that, they are gone.
The world is no longer shouting at me with words I never understood but felt like the tips of razor sharp swords.
And now, instead, God seems to be with me. Beside me. Next to me. Next to all of us.
God seems to kneel and touch my face. Touch every face.

As if heaven is brushing my face with its lips.
Redeeming me, healing—not betraying me—with a kiss.
Why would heaven ever want to kiss me, of all people?

The dissonant voices always declared that heaven never would because I was from the wrong tribe, I was different, and the face of my people was not displayed on the coin of the realm.

Why would God ever care this much for me. The dissonant voices swore that God never would.

And what did this Holy Spirit do with all of the dissonant voices that had filled our ears with their chaos?
The dissonant voices swore that they spoke the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

But, clearly, the dissonant voices weren’t telling any of the truth.
Because there it is.
Again and again and again.
A sudden harmony.
A harmony that wraps me up so entirely and so wonderfully.
A harmony that sings for me—that sings for all of us—with such wondrous melodies that ours ears must surely be forever opened to this truth.
A truth the dissonance sought to cover up with its noise.
All of our senses listen as if the fate of the whole wide world depends upon it.
And now a voice speaks in every language at once. A voice that speaks echoes that are forever and speaks from echoes that have always been.
“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me,” the voice tells us. “And let the one who believes in me drink.”
Tears wash down my cheeks like rain. The Holy Spirit has brought the voice and the presence of Jesus, who was crucified last month on that hill over there but who rose three days later, according to his disciples.
Now, I believe them.
Even though Jesus is no longer alive on earth, he feels more alive on earth than ever. He seems to keep rising around us and within us somehow.
My deep thirst is quenched.

And I hear everything that I see within the light inside his eyes.
I hear everything that I feel in his healing touch upon my skin.
Speaking words that none of us thought we’d ever hear.
Speaking words we never ever thought we would understand.
But now the words can have only mean one meaning, and I we all drink them in more deeply than water in the widest desert.
We are all loved by God, and led by the flame of that love through any darkness. Our deep thirst is quenched and quenched and quenched again.
Quenched forever. One glance, one touch, one hand in another hand, one step at a time. The only path there is to forever.
Led by the heart of Christ, who speaks with perfect understanding to every heart and soul through the Holy Spirit that came to us this morning.
Now, and even two millennia from now. Even on May 24, 2026. The day before Memorial Day.
Bridges in every heart.
Instead of walls that lead to wars.