I have a dream...of the church

In the days after Pentecost what does a church filled with the Spirit look like?

We are told that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control (the letter to the Galatians ch 5)

What would that look like?

I dream of churches full of people who look to care for other people’s needs, a place that welcomes the outcast, the fragile and the hurting. A church that can in tough love support those who need help to avoid temptation, and yet open its arms to the unconventional.

People who sit and listen to that story all over again, because he needs the company, people who weep with those who weep, and sing with those who rejoice. Those who bind wounds, and hold hands in the dark places.

It would be a group ready to take risks, but for a purpose not just because.

They may sing hymns ancient and prehistoric, or songs where the ink has yet to dry. They may find their own words of prayer or harvest the resources of the generations of faith. They may be loud or they may be quiet, large or small.

But their eyes will be on God, their hands reaching out to neighbours (near and far) and they will love and care for themselves as well.

I dream of the church of the Spirit, and I awake to the church of people.

People with fears that fight the faith, with pains that test the patience, journeys that have quenched the joy, politics that steal the peace.  We are flawed and wounded, our fruit may be stunted, lumpy, moth eaten in places – but it is still fruit.

May the Spirit take us in all our chaos and form us into a church – creased and crinkled but the church of Christ who still bore his wounds in resurrection.