Emphasis Preaching Journal

Beverly knew the word "Pentecost" was derived from the word for "fifty" because it came fifty days after Easter. But when she was little, before she had begun to pay much attention to words, she had only ever really heard the last syllable of "Pentecost," and wondered why the church would celebrate "cost" Sunday. The beginning of summer seemed like a silly time of year to do it, too. She'd been around enough years to know that the big money campaign was in the fall, after school started. If you were going to celebrate something as odd as "cost" Sunday, didn't it make more sense to do so in the midst of the other money madness? (Money pretty much irritated Beverly anyway since she wasn't very good at managing the allowance her parents gave her every week.) However, that was a long time ago. Now that she was older, Beverly could chuckle at her childhood naivete. And yet, maybe it wasn't so naive. Maybe the fifty days leading from Easter to Pentecost had been quite costly: the lives of the apostles were literally transformed -- in ways that would eventually cost some of them their lives. Yet it was a cost they would never count because of the priceless joy that was theirs in the knowledge that their Lord was risen. They would forever be an Easter people. -- Fannin