The Holy Spirit can’t be contained. The Wind of the Spirit blows where it will. It cannot be ordered or put in a box. It is unpredictable. What looks like disorder (chaos) on the surface may be order beyond our comprehension. When we least expect it, the Holy Spirit may solve a problem in ways we’d never have thought about or meet a need in more abundance than we would have ever thought possible.

Expect the unexpected. Sometimes it is a meal from one of the best restaurants in the city that has offered out of a generous heart to come, bring food, and cook for our Welcome Table. Sometimes it is two small goats being blessed in worship as they join the barnyard menagerie behind the church.

Expect roles to be reversed. If you are coming to give, you might be asked to receive, to simply sit and have lunch with a group of strangers and share the food and the fellowship. If you are coming to receive, you might be called upon to serve.

Check your labels at the door. When we enter the Haywood St. campus, we don’t look at the outside of our fellow Companions or those attending worship. Instead we learn to look into one another’s faces and see that we are all Children of God, and know that God dwells within each one of us.

Uncomfortable in a good way. The fear you feel, that gnawing acknowledgement that you are out of your comfort zone, causes you to move through the space with your eyes wide open instead of just going through the motions. That invites the Holy. 

The Chaos here is reminiscent of a huge family reunion with the attendant meal where joy is abundant, voices are loud, and there is a lot of laughter. Amen.