Today’s Pentecost hymn from Sing Praise is “May we, O Holy Spirit” by Paul Wigmore. Whereas some of the hymns this week have been about the Spirit’s power, or the way s/he communicates God’s peace and presence to us, this one is very much about the way that the Spirit builds our character. For personal reasons that I can’t go into here, this is particularly relevant to me at present.
In the first verse we ask that we may bear the Spirit’s fruit. In fact the three verses list all the “fruits of the Spirit” from the book of Galatians: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-restraint” (or similar words, depending on which translation of the Bible you use). The words of the hymn expand on what these fruits are meant to achieve: joy and peace to accompany our words, love becoming deeper and stronger, patience to prevent us saying or doing harm, kindness to look for the good in other people, goodness to be seen in action, faithfulness as a quality of endurance, gentleness to “lend courage to the weak” (an interesting phrase) and finally self-restraint to “help us know the grace that made the King of Heaven meek”.
That memorable phrase about making the King of Heaven meek comes in the last line of the hymn, but to me it says a lot not only about Jesus but about how He wants us to live by the Spirit. The Christian life is not only about what we achieve but about the quality of our character (and as I hinted at the start, I write from a position of knowing that I very much need that character-building work of the Spirit). The character God looks for is not that of the high-flyer but of those who, in the words of Romans 12:16, “are not haughty but give themselves to humble tasks” (NRSV footnote).
John chose to sing this hymn to the tune “Ellers” rather than the one provided in Sing Praise. That tune is also used for a setting of the Methodist Covenant prayer, the final verse of which is “Go with us, Lord, from hence; we only ask that thou be sharer in our daily task; So, side by side with thee, shall each one know the blessedness of heaven begun below”. That is the true work of the Spirit, as much as signs and wonders.