Kelly - Acts 2

"And I will pour out my spirit....and they will prophesy."

Finding prophets in these days is different than it seems to have been in Jesus' time. Although we still have people who stand on street corners, or on late-night TV, and proclaim...these are not the prophets I usually see. In the church Marcus and I attended in Somerville when we were first married, the prophet was Cathy, in Boston it was Gary, and in Weymouth it was Becky. There were others, but these 3 will forever stand out in my mind as having the "gift" of prophesy - or of willingly taking on that role within that community of faith.

Each of them spoke their mind, and was always "a little off" of the mainstream. They all made me feel uncomfortable - but always because I knew they were challenging me to something new. Cathy began by pushing for political action to demand living wages for all workers in the state of Massachusetts. Certainly this was something that was godly, but pushing my faith from the realm of the comfortable pew into social and political action was difficult for me to say the least. Gary kept pushing the congregation on race relations, and Becky was a constant whirlwind of political causes - all Godly and inspired by her faith, and never-ending.

And there are quieter prophets among us, but hearing the word of God come to me through them takes more focus and attention. There are those who make a prophetic statement by the type of car they drive, or by refusing to buy goods made at the expense of child labor. There are people like Anneli who have worked to bring the farmer's market in as a prophetic statement about our food and our economy. I am learning that we are a congregation with many quiet prophets. And the better I get at listening to these voices the more blessed I feel to be learning to live out my faith among them.