“And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” Acts 2:2-4
Whether it is a North Dakota tornado or a Gulf Coast hurricane, I can’t hear the little phrase “rush of a violent wind” without at least a little bit of an internal cringe. The wind, the movement of air, driven by changes in temperature, is like so much of life. Unless it gets in our way, we take it for granted.
From the air we breathe to the air which cools our skin on a hot summer day, only when we “run out” do we even notice. And then we realize how fragile life really is and how powerless we are beneath the weight of the natural forces of our lives.
The Spirit comes in a rush of violent wind. They were waiting but they weren’t waiting for THAT. They were waiting because Jesus told them something would happen. How could they have known that the Spirit would blow in on them, the wind blowing into them and then exhaling with the sounds of languages that were at once familiar and strange.
People today can make fun of a word like “multicultural.” They can put it down like every other expression of political correctness and modernity. Yet do we realize that the violent appearance of the Spirit was a multicultural event? A gathering of people from various places, speaking various mother tongues, and yet the coming of the Spirit became an explosion of diversity into a new kind of unity. People understood one another!
The first new congregation to be born in Houston on my watch is First Taiwanese Lutheran Church. God worshipped every weekend in Taiwanese. I joined in the first year celebration of the Oromo Christian Fellowship and sat in a worship service listening to the Word coming to me in Oromo, one of the two chief languages of Ethiopia. I’ll be joining with the Latino pastors in our synod on Saturday, hoping for someone to graciously translate to help me with my fledgling Spanish. So it is that the Spirit continues to fill her multi-cultural, multi-linguistic Church with life through the power of the Word being spoken in the languages understood by various listeners.
A violent wind comes and we wonder, “Does this bring threat or promise? Is it a good thing or a bad thing?” And the Spirit assures us, from the inside out, it is good. It is very good.
Let us pray: Holy Spirit, as you move among us, blow your grace into our midst that we can see past the sinful dividing walls to embrace the vastness of your mercy. Continue to speak Words that we can hear and understand, that we might be that reconciling Word in the life of the world. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Daily Devotions 
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