Come Holy Spirit, Come, on this Feast of Pentecost

 

Come Holy Spirit, Come...

As  I thought about this Pentecost Sunday the doors of St. Andrew's United Church in Sudbury came to mind. I served this congregation for eleven years and loved the contemporary sanctuary, including the sand-cast doors created by Jordi Bonet specifically for this space. 

In these days of shrinking congregations and divestment of church facilities I have to wonder whether such an ambitious creative project will ever occur again in a United Church. We've always been ambivalent about the "extravagence" of beauty in our places of worship even though art and architecture can open in our spirits a sense of God's Holy Spirit at work. 

I incorporated the words from the door in liturgy on many occasions during my years at St. Andrew's and in congregations I served afterward. 

A variation of this prayer of invocation is in Voices United, our worship resource.

God, Holy Spirit, come to us, come among us;

come as the wind, and cleanse;

come as the fire, and burn;

come as the dew, and refresh:

convict, convert, and consecrate

many hearts and lives

to our great good and your greater glory. Amen.

Voices United 197