Friday Five - the inadequacy edition

Sally is consistently more spiritual than I, so it's no surprise that as Pentecost approaches she has given us a wholly appropriate task to engage with. It's just a slight shame that it brings out the worst of the inadequacies launched originally when I was the only girl in the high school Christian Union not to burst into speech in tongues during the great charismatic revival of 1975. Sally my friend, you weren't to know, and I don't want this to sound carping or defensive...so here are the best answers I can manage to this week's questions

FOR PENTECOST THIS WEEKEND:

FROM ACTS CHAPTER 2: 14 Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: "Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. 15 These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It's only nine in the morning! 16 No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:17 " 'In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. 18 Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. 19 I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. 20 The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. 21 And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.'

Anyway, it's Pentecost and my very first Friday Five! Thinking about all the gifts of the spirit and what Peter said of the "last days"......

Have you or anyone you know

1. ...ever experienced a prophesy (vision or dream) that came true?
The night before my third miscarriage I dreamed about a baby boy whom I knew was called Hugger Steward. In my dream, my daughter (then too young to talk) said to me with complete calm
"It's alright Mummy. Hugger Steward is going away for a while but he will come back to you in time"
When I woke the next morning it was to the early signs of a miscarriage...a year later, I gave birth to the son whom the doctors said I would't carry to term, the son who is my own beloved Hugger Steward.

2. ...dreamed of a stranger, then actually met them later?
If one's own unborn child is a stranger, then yes (see above)...

3. ...seen a wonder in heaven? (including UFO's)
In the early 1990s during Holy Week there was a particularly wonderful comet to be seen, Hale Bopp iirc....I will never forget how, having guessed and pretended that of course I'd seen the comet, I really did see and recognise it for the first time, as I walked back across the fields from Little Rissington Church, after Tenebrae on the Wednesday of Holy Week. Somehow the dramatic beauty of the comet and the cosmic events of the first Holy Week fused together in my mind to make an unforgettable whole.

4. ...seen a "sign" on the earth?
Today I walked on Rodborough Common, where the grass was golden with clumps of cowslips, the hedgerows white with hawthorn, and the air filled with birdsong. Will that count?

5. ...experienced knowledge of another language without ever having studied it?
No. When i was The Only One not experiencing the charismatic revival (see above) I was deeply grateful to both God and my fellow students at High School by the Sea for sparing me the "I can speak in tongues and you can't" routine.At that stage, it might well have killed my Christian faith forever.

Bonus Question: What would a modern day news coverage of the first Pentecost have sounded like?
Sun "Great Balls of Fire"
Grauniad "Ethnic co-operation on language project"
and most stages in between too.