Tiny Little Things

Dear tiny little friends, we commemorated Pentecost two weeks ago. What comes after Pentecost? The daily normal. Yep, because do you know that in the church liturgical calendar, the season has now come to the Ordinary Time? It is the “back to normal” season after Pentecost ends and waits for Advent. Not coincidentally, we are now living in this “Ordinary Season,” because the lives of the believers after receiving the Holy Spirit are to get ready for Advent, the arrival of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Not their usual Sunday

It was not a random Sunday¹ for God to pour His Holy Spirit on His disciples. They had been staying in Jerusalem, as the Lord told them, prayed and reflected on the teachings of their Master as they waited for the coming of God’s promise. None of the disciples and followers of Jesus knew when the time of the Holy Spirit would come, but they all knew that the Feast of Harvest was coming near. All Jewish people count a 7-week period after Pentecost to the Feast of Harvest to offer their grain offering to God, also to commemorate the giving of Torah on Mount Sinai. That is why the Bible says that Jews from every nation were gathering in Jerusalem (Act 2:5).

The city exploded with people from all over the world who had heard about the LORD of Israel. There were praises and offerings in the Temple, a joyous celebration of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people in Jerusalem during the Feast of Harvest. At this exact moment, to these people who come to celebrate the divine grace God had given, again, He gave them another divine favor to hear and see the work of the Holy Spirit.

The God Who Exposes

The disciples were gathering in one place, could it be in the house of John Mark or the Temple? We don’t know, but we know that they had grown so much in the fellowship with Jesus and with each other. The disciples had spent their 49 days in prayer, meditation on Jesus’ teachings, and study of the Torah and Books of the Prophets. They started in the Upper Room with the doors locked for their fear of the Jews (Jn 20:19), but now what they did behind those closed doors was about to be exposed.

That early morning, there were hundreds of thousands of people ready to celebrate Shavuot. The journey of the crowd from the southeast side of the Temple² was interrupted by the mighty sound of wind that came on the roof where the disciples were gathered. In a short time, all disciples and followers of Jesus came out and spoke their testimonies to them in the foreign languages where all the guests of Jerusalem came from. All answered prayers, testimonies of faith, the works of God, and all fulfillment of the promise they had heard and seen were delivered without borders. Things the disciples had inside the closed room were exposed by the work of the Holy Spirit, and on that day 3,000 people came to believe in Jesus.

From Pentecost to Advent

Many lives were changed that day, but does yours change? The power of the Holy Spirit was given to everyone who believes and He guides them in truth, not only for one fine Sunday, but until Advent, the arrival of Christ. Isn’t that how our lives shall be? That in this Ordinary season, we follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit until the perfection of all the promises?

Liturgical calendar now seems to make some sense, doesn’t it? This Ordinary Season should no longer be ordinary if we live it in the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It surely won’t be easy, because even the disciples and those who received salvation on that day would later experience persecution, forced displacement, and even some internal issues within the church body. But they thrived, the Gospel was spread, and souls restored. They moved forward in the hope of, again, the coming of the Messiah. Shouldn’t we, who believe in Jesus and have received His Holy Spirit, live in the same hope?

1. Because Jesus rose on the first day of the week, or right after Sabbath (Matt 28:1; Mark 16:2; Luk 24:1; Jn 20:1). So, the end of 7-week after this Sabbath would fall on Sunday. ↩︎
2. If the disciples were in the Upper Room of John Mark’s family house, which is located in Mount Zion, less than 1km to the Temple Mount. Or, if the disciples were in the Royal Stoa (southern edge of the Temple), then there are probably more crowd. ↩︎