From whence the impetus for good?

No one can say, 'Jesus is Lord!', except in the Holy Spirit." I Cor. 1:3

Each and every impetus for good in the world, in your and my life proceeds from the impetus of the  

Holy Spirit.

This week was the anniversayr of D Day, the invasion of Normandy. I remember on a June Day back in Omaha Nebraska that the radio told us of the landings and that one of the most fierce battles was on a beach named for my hometown: Omaha.

These landings spelled the beginning of the end for the Nazi Empire. To commemorate the anniversary this week I read The Last Battle by Cornelius Ryan and The Young Lions by Irving Shaw.

From that war three huge egos emerged in the midst of others: Adolph Hitler, Joseph Gobbels, and Herman Goering.

The scriptures for Pentecost tell us that the impetus for good comes from the Holy Sprit, but in an inflated ego, there is no room for the Holy Spirit, only room for hot air and bombast. Imagine Hitler and Goering at the great Nuernburg rallies where thousands of goose stepping Storm Troopers marched by, giving the Heil Hitler salute. In Nazi Germay that Sieg Heil replaced the genuflection offered to God.

These were the new Gods. When Hitler learned that one of his generals, an old vet from World War, and not a Nazi, I went to church on Sunday, he went into a rage.

So at the rally, drums beat, trumphets blared, and torchligts lit the sky.The English ambassador who attended, reported after that despite his disdain for Hitler, he found himself caught up in the "spirit of the rally," and raised his arm in the Nazi salute!

The Spirit of that rally was not the Holy Spirit.

And on Easter when we renounced the "glamour of evil" we might have remembered those rallies because they were both evil and glamorous!

Later all of that collapsed around them, Hitler, Gobbels, and Goering, their egos deflated, had nothing left. They all committed suicide.

Today on Pentecost, we acknowledge that the Holy Spirit is alive and active in our lives. Our ego is neither the beginning or completeness of our being. The Spirit would deflate our egos but enlarge our hearts for love. For the Holy Spirit is the

SPIRIT OF LOVE.

And so we pray:

Come Holy Spirit come!

And from your celestial home

shed a ray of light divine.

Come Father of the poor!

Come source of all our store!

Come within our bosoms shine.

You of Comforters the best;

You the soul's most welcome guest

Sweet refreshment here below.

In our labor, rest most sweet;

Grateful coolness in the heat;

Solace in the midst of woe.

O most blessed light divine,

Shine within these hearts of yours,

and our inmost being fill!