A Mighty Wind, sermon fragment by Patrick Welch

Pentecost - Acts 1: 1-21
The gospel of Jesus Christ is the most Potent agent of change on earth. When the church is alive and well, people are continually being changed. In the passage of scripture listed above, God appears in the "sound of a mighty wind," and people experienced huge changes in their lives and abilty to communicate. Therefore, I am always alert for stories of change.

A couple of winters ago, some members of our church gave Gail and I some blueberry plants to plant up at our Mt house. (Where we now live.) One of them was quite large and well established and we were very excited about the huge number of berries it would provide the next year because of its size. AS spring came along most of the bushes began to get leaves and looked great, but not the big one, no leaves and there were some spiders that were building nests in the limbs. I went up and cleaned out the spiders and talked to the plant, I gave it water as I did all of the plants. It did not grow. I checked the limbs by cutting one off to see if there was any green inside the plant, was it sill alive? Yes there was still green there. We also had planted several fruit trees. One of the trees had no leaves, but there was still green inside the limbs. Then , a few weeks ago, we had a heavy rain of more than two inches. Within a couple of days both the blueberry and the apple tree began to show leaves. The fresh rain sent from God had awakened their life. The story for today is like that. The disciples were about to be awakened, to experience a new baptism, a fresh rain from God...it came as a strong wind. It manifested as an ability to speak with and understand others who were from other lands, and to have amazing power from God. I invite you to hold your hands out as if you were trying to catch the rain like the limbs of our blueberry bush. Can you feel the rain?
Some are really feeling the rain on this day, and it isn't gentle. It could , however, be a wake up call for us to expand our priorities, increase our faith and open our hearts. After all we can notice in Genesis that God will use signs in the stars (gigantic sunspot this past week) (solar eclipse) and weather (multiple hurricanes) (multiple earthquakes) to give us signs that would lead us in His direction.
I am including a postscript to this sermon fragment in the form of a song I wrote soon after 9/11, (which anniversary is tomorrow), as a response and puposely played for the congregation. In a way this song was a response to an event that caused many to to re-examine their faith stance. https://www.reverbnation.com/revdocwelch/song/28530388-01-full-of-gods-spirit-kbrd Peace to all who read and or listen to this.