Many Tongues

It's a bit late in the day on Pentecost for this post, but I had to think about it awhile.

Father Wagner has a knack for pointing out details or parallels I've never spotted before. He has a strong Polish accent and his homilies can be a little hard to follow, but these little lights just blow me away at times.

Today, he very briefly compared the Tower of Babel with what happened at Pentecost. How have I never seen that? I've spent much of the rest of the day pondering that one little paragraph from his homily, those two events churning around in my head.

At the Tower of Babel, men acted out of pride and outside of God's will, reaching for heaven without His assistance, and the result was chaos, confusion, and division.

At Pentecost, the disciples were gathered in fear and humility, open to God, though struggling. Likely some doubted. Likely some wanted to run away. And God reached down to them. The Holy Spirit, God's love sent down, brought about peace, order, and unity.

It's a message I really needed today. There are so many choices opening up in my life right now, and sometimes I want to--figuratively speaking--pin God down: take Him by the shoulders and shake Him, force him to tell me exactly what to do and when to do it. But it doesn't work that way. Sometimes, you just have to wait--maybe in a little fear, maybe struggling with doubts. Take each moment as it comes, without worrying too much about the step after that. But know that we are not abandoned, and He will speak to us when the moment is right. We will find our strength when we need it.

Because the Holy Spirit is powerful.