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Between Sundays for Week of June 9, 2025

We celebrated Pentecost with our siblings in Christ from St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Pittsford and shared a glorious outdoor worship together. We heard about God’s promise to send the Holy Spirit and we felt that Spirit blow through the trees and through our community.

The Spirit abides with us, Jesus says. “To abide” means more than just to stay with us; the dictionary lists at least five definitions for this word. Based on those definitions, here are more ways of thinking about how the Spirit is with us:

The Spirit bears us patiently – tolerates our fickleness and uncertainty and defenses – and endures without yielding – withstanding the pressures of our efforts to reject and divide ourselves.

The Spirit waits for us.

The Spirit accepts us without objection.

The Spirit remains stable – we don’t form or bend the Spirit to our will.

The Spirit continues in a place – the Spirit sojourns with us.

And by the power of the Spirit, we do the same for each other. The Spirit gives us the power and ability to tolerate and withstand all that threatens our relationship with God and one another in this fragmented world. The Spirit consistently and patiently teaches us how to work together, weaving together our unique reflections of God’s image into a beautiful tapestry that reflects the vastness and mystery of God’s own self. The Spirit reminds us that we are one, just as God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one – even though we live in a world intent on defining us by our differences.

Baptized into you, O Living One,

make us one as you are one.

P.S. Worship on Sunday, June 8, was not livestreamed because we worshipped outdoors.  Links to previous worship videos on Facebook and YouTube are always available on our website.

Faith Connection at Home

When the Spirit of God descended upon the people on the first Pentecost, people from all over could speak in their native language and still understand one another. Being brought into one by the Spirit made it possible for that great diversity of people to connect and communicate.
People of different generations often speak different languages, too (even if it is all English!), and connecting can feel impossible. But the Spirit is powerful! At the end of May, a group of parents gathered in David and Patty Chaffee’s home to strengthen our connections to each other, remember that we are not alone, and share conversation about how to share the faith with the next generation.
The Spirit still blows among us, we pray, helping us to understand one another so we can share God’s love with each other. If you have a teenager in your life, or want to connect more deeply with the teens at BLC, listen in on this conversation between Kate Bowler and Lisa Damour, who provide some tangible suggestions on how to connect with (and love) a teenager in your life. (Check out even more resources on caring for teens here!)
By the power of the Spirit, God still makes us one!

Between Sundays… Stay connected in the middle space of each week on our podcast. Find past episodes on the BLC website or wherever you like to listen to podcasts!
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Ponderings

The Spirit gifts us with many talents and perspectives. This year’s Pentecost Sunday (June 8) was also the birthday of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, born in Richland Center, Wisconsin, in 1867. Wright would tell his students: “Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.” He used natural building materials and finishes like stone and wood, never painting them, and his designs were horizontal, with low rooflines, so that the structures would blend in with the landscape (his famous “Falling Waters” house is pictured above). He designed several sacred spaces over his career, including Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois, built in 1908 and now considered one of the first examples of modern architecture. (From the SALT Project)