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The Scottish word 'dreich' is characteristically expressive, and said in a slow Scottish accent conveys quite a lot of its meaning. A 'dreich' day is a day that is grey, damp, lacking in sunlight, cold, and not likely to do much to lift the spirits. It's usually used to describe the weather, but that same word with its cluster of associated downer words, accurately sums up our mood when our inner climate is grey, sunless and lacking life and energy.

The Psalm-poet found his own way of describing the soul exposed to experiences that have the same dampening effects on the spirit. "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?" (Psalm 42.5) The gift that the Psalm poet gives to his readers is permission; yes, he says, it's OK to feel down, let down, overshadowed by anxiety, undermined by sadness. While the usual expectation in prayer is to thank and praise God, we have permission to come before God with our complaints, our burdens, and our emotional life laid low by whatever experiences deflate and deplete us. 

The above photograph was taken on a dreich day in Drum Castle gardens. The climate that day mirrored exactly the semantic range of 'dreich'! The grey filter of drizzle, low visibility and muted sounds, cold and damp, and no chance of any sunlight any time soon. Then the robin began to sing. In the midst of greyness, this red-breasted singer was defying the elements with an elemental song of its own. Sometimes a sacrament just happens. You don't plan it; there is no liturgy; no time to rehearse it, or prepare for its coming. It just happens. It is a gift event, a moment of revelation when colour and sound defy and push back the greyness. 

Like all the rest of us, the Psalm poet had his share of dreich days, enough of them to know that they are not forever, and even when they last, they needn't be the only mood setter in town! He had his own song: "Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him, my Saviour and my God!" On a dreich day, this wee robin sat up there singing into the greyness, a sacrament of song, a parable about the power of praise to push back the dreichness!   

Now and again I have to remind myself that when Paul made a list of the fruits of the Spirit, he wasn't closing the door on other suggestions. It's also true that the nine fruits of the Spirit are not a varied list but a cluster; they are the fruit, singular and collective, of the Spirit's work of transforming and conforming each Christian to the image of Christ. Paul's carefully compiled list is intended as a counter-balance and contrast to the 'works of the flesh' as given in Galatians 5. That long list is one mean catalogue of so much that makes human behaviour evil, wicked, and cruel. In contrast to human nature at its unaided worst, there is the grace-enabled fruit of the Spirit:

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law."

The fruit of the Spirit doesn't grow by gritted teeth, self-denial, and the moral hard work of self-help virtue. Fruit, including spiritual fruit, is the natural outcome of the life of the Spirit expressed in the character and freedom of the children of God. The fruit of the Spirit is evidence of grace, and it grows by the constant work of cultivation, pruning, nourishment and irrigation which are the horticultural equivalents of the Spirit at work in producing the fruit of Christlikeness in our souls.

But still, whether or not Paul was being exhaustive in the list of fruit as evidence, there is a case for at least one other characteristic fruit of the heart and mind touched and transformed by grace, led and nurtured by the Holy Spirit. In Romans 5.1-5 Paul reflects on the genealogy of hope – where it comes from, what it does, what sustains it. It's worth following the whole thought process:

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

If the fruit of the Spirit is evidence of the work of God in our lives by the Spirit, then hope that arises from suffering, perseverance and character formation is likewise transformative. Hope is not unthinking optimism, worked-up positive thinking, or denial on steroids. Hope is a way of looking at the world through redeemed eyes, with a clear sight of the cross and its meaning, the resurrection and its effects, and a steady gaze at the glory of God in Jesus Christ. 

No wonder Paul nearer the end of the letter to those Christians at Rome put all this into a prayer: "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." (Rom. 15.13) Hope is a fundamental shift in our worldview; Christians are called to live out a theology of hope, founded on God's love, and expressed in a faith that looks backward with gratitude and forward and outward at a world where the glory of God has been revealed in Christ, and in which the glory of God will be consummated in the new creation and fullness of redemption in Christ. 

This kind of thinking is both fruit and gift. Indeed the fruit of the Spirit grows in us because, "God's love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us." So when Paul prays to the God of hope, that those Roman Christians in all the ups and downs of their lives in the imperial city may be filled with joy and peace as they trust in God, and that they may overflow with hope, his prayer falls upon our own times with the same extravagant confidence in God. 

These are not easy times we are living in. Much that seemed secure, dependable and stabilising has been shaken. So have we. How do we stay hopeful and resilient in such fluctuating times? What inner attitudes and responses best equip us to live faithfully at a time when our faith in the status quo is decidedly undermined by events? Perhaps a regular reading and re-appropriation of these two texts will give us our bearings, and remind us whose we are, and the realities which undergird our faith. To overflow with hope, in a culture of denial or despair, is to 'shine like stars in a dark universe', as Paul put it to the Philippian believers.

The fruit of the Spirit is…hope, and hope is the echo in our hearts of the God of hope who has come to us in Jesus Christ, the revelation of the glory of God.

The fruit of the Spirit is hope, and hope does not disappoint because God has poured his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, God's gift to us.  

Monday

Luke 11.1 “One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”

Details matter. Jesus regularly prayed “in a certain place”, and the disciples knew where to find him. Part of the training of the disciples was regular exposure to Jesus’ way of praying. Prayer is a habit of the heart turned towards God. Prayer is also a turning from our immediate concerns towards our heavenly Father, in trust, in praise and in love. “When he finished…” The disciples knew better than to interrupt the communion between Jesus and his Father. They show reverence for the focused intimacy of such prayer, one of the key lessons in learning to pray. God comes first!

Tuesday

Luke 11.1 “Lord teach us to pray.”

Twenty years ago a book was published titled Christian Prayer for Dummies. It was part of a long series of books introducing everything from gardening to neuroscience. Yes prayer can be taught. But leaving aside even the most helpful books on prayer, it remains true that prayer is first and foremost a relationship with God. What the disciples saw and heard when Jesus prayed was the exchange of loving trust and enabling grace between Jesus and the Father, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Yes, there are spiritual disciplines which help. But prayer is first a loving relationship.

Wednesday

Psalm 17.6 “I call on you, O God, for you will answer me; give ear to me, and hear my prayer.”

The Book of Psalms is the prayer book Jesus knew best. There too, prayer takes place as communication within a relationship of love, trust and praise; but because life and our own hearts often go wrong, prayer is also confession, repentance and the cry for forgiveness. In other words, like all our deepest relationships, prayer depends on trust, faithfulness, costly love, and mutual commitment. These make this relationship real, rich and resilient enough to cope with whatever circumstances put a strain on that same relationship. The confidence of the Psalm poet is in God. Prayer isn’t a relationship of equals. God’s hand is stronger than ours, and his patience longer.

Thursday

Psalm 17.7 “Show the wonder of your great love, you who save by your right hand those who take refuge in you from their foes.”

God’s answer is often simply to draw us into a deeper experience of his great love. No refuge is safer. Christian prayer takes place, no matter where we are, in that place made safe by God’s great love revealed on the cross, and declared with power in the resurrection. I told you God’s hand is stronger! Paul’s take on what it means to take refuge from all our foes is that long chain of disclaimers that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Rom 8.38-39 is the eternal guarantee that our prayers are heard, and we are held in God’s great love!

Friday

Psalm 17.8 “Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings.”

When I trained for a while as an engineer one of the first lessons loudly hammered into a teenage brain too dismissive of risk was, “Wear your goggles!” The image of God as eye-protector is unusual and memorable. God protects that which is precious and irreplaceable. God is also likened to a protective mother hen, an image from which a later paraphrase gave us the prayer, “O spread thy covering wings around, till all our wanderings cease.” Prayer presupposes God’s protective presence. 

Saturday

Ephesians 6.18a “Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.”

Paul loved the word ‘all’! No half measures, “all occasions”, not just when you feel like it. Yes prayer can be taught, and learned; and yes practice makes perfect so long as we realise perfect refers to improvement, growth, maturity, the wisdom of experience. But the energy and vitality of prayer is generated by the Holy Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God. We pray to our heavenly Father, in the name of Jesus, urged and sustained by the communion of the Spirit of God. In that sense we are always being taught how to pray, and our prayers, from the most articulate and satisfying to the most stammering and perplexing, are drawn into the eternal triune love of God where they and our hearts are sifted, and safe.

Sunday

Ephesians 6.18a “Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.”

That word ‘all’ again! Every relationship depends on communication, and our deepest relationships are richly textured by years of conversations. All kinds of conversations – about our hopes and achievements, our blessings and complaints, about other people and ourselves, about the trivial and the life-changing. Paul is urging that our prayers should reflect that same rich texture of a friendship in which we are open, free to speak, confident in being heard, willing to listen, able to laugh or to cry, and without embarrassment. To pray in the Spirit is precisely to speak in the freedom of God’s children, in God’s presence, about anything, and everything.

Two generations ago the name of Elton Trueblood was much better known. A Quaker, a philosopher, a teacher, and a trusted guide on how to live faithfully and generously in a world losing faith in faith itself. I was introduced to the books of Elton Trueblood by my late friend and pastoral mentor, the Rev Jim Taylor, one of the finest Scottish Baptist ministers of his generation and mine. I owe Jim many debts, amongst them the forty years of spiritual and intellectual fellowship nourished by regular phone calls, conversations over coffee, time spent at conferences together, and yes, in the days before email, occasional letters written in his small, neat and perfectly legible script.

Early in my first ministry I was on holiday on a caravan site in Crieff in Scotland, and I had brought with me The Yoke of Christ, the edited volume of Trueblood's sermons. By then I had completed an Arts degree in moral philosophy and comparative religion, and a full course of theological and pastoral education. I knew right away I was reading sermons by someone who fully grasped the meaning of Jesus words, "Take my yoke upon you and learn of me." These sermons were thoughtful, aimed to persuade and convince of their truth, and unadorned by clever illustrations or jokes. Rather, Elton Trueblood broke the bread of the scripture text and shared it, believing that those who were hungry would recognise bread when they saw it, or read it.

So began a long friendship in writing with Trueblood and his books. When ten years later, in 1984, I moved to Aberdeen, I borrowed a couple of Trueblood books from the University Library. Those two books are still there, though now in what is called, unencouragingly, the remote store!  Even the titles are provocative and intended to intrigue; The Incendiary Fellowship, and The New Man for Our Time. There are actually 10 Trueblood titles in the library, all in the remote store, though easily enough recalled. 

The world has changed beyond recognition since Trueblood was writing. Who knows what he would have made of our obsessions with entertainment as distraction, our anxious clinging to all kinds of 'connectivity', the globalised world of trade and commerce, the multi-cultural pluralities that bring their benefits, but with accompanying and at times dangerous tensions and resentments. And he wrote in the style of the cultured, thoughtful, intellectual man he was, his context mid 20th Century, his tone urbane American. But Christians of all people should know that the truth of the Christian tradition remains potent and authentic, even when expressed in the languages and idiom of previous generations. C. S. Lewis took care of what he called 'chronological snobbery' in his essay 'On the Reading of Old Books'. In any case, Trueblood's books are not all that old; and our contemporary habits of writing, reading and information transfer are not so superior as to entitle us to be dismissive of those whose knowledge of God and his ways retains a wisdom we are in danger of losing, and resources we do well to harvest.  

So I'm back to reading Trueblood, starting with his sermons, the first one of his books I ever read. Then I'll trouble the librarians at the remote store to send over some more. That should give me enough over the summer to confirm I am not suffering from an outbreak of nostalgia, but returning to one of the places where good drinking water can be found for the thirsty. 

Monday

Titus 3.4-5a “But when the kindness and love of God our Saviour appeared, he saved us…”

That word ‘saved’ is too easily overlooked, or understated, or dulled by overuse. This is a miracle word and it means when everything was at stake, when we were lost beyond our own help, God intervened. The kindness and love of God appeared in the gift and revelation of God’s Son, Jesus. This old apostle is in the process of establishing his legacy in the form of a faith community in which the risen Son of God, Jesus Christ, is present by his Spirit – to save, and keep, and guide. Grateful worship has always been the living evidence that we are saved, and we know it.

Tuesday

Titus 3.5 “He saved us not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy…”

We are saved not by our best efforts, but by the kindness, love, and mercy of God. These three keywords of Christian vocabulary are required to express something of the sheer gift and undeserved grace, of what God has done for sinners through the work of Christ. Once saved, of course, God requires us to live by that same grace into holiness and righteousness. Being saved by God’s mercy and justified by grace, is “a status which must then be demonstrated in practice in righteous living.”

Wednesday

Titus 3.5 “He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” 

Deep echoes here of that late night conversation with Nicodemus about being born again by the Holy Spirit. There can be no more radical new beginning than being born again. Our moral life, our inner drives of love and desire and hope, so often distorted by sin into possessiveness, greed and self-serving, are all of them reset in a renewal only possible by the cleansing and enabling power of the Holy Spirit. No wonder Paul said, “If anyone is in Christ – new creation!” And all by the kindness, love and mercy of God. We really should take more time to sit down and wonder at all of that!

Thursday

Titus 3.6 “The Holy Spirit whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Saviour.”

The language is still about the extravagant grace and generosity of God. The Holy Spirit is given without measure, a reminder of John’s vivid memory: “From the fullness of his grace we have all received, one blessing after another.” (John 1.16) God gives of himself in his fullness in Christ and by the Holy Spirit. Not only so, it is all mediated through Jesus Christ our Saviour. There is no more convincing sign of the saved soul than grateful love, lived out in faithful service to church and world, and continually celebrated in lifelong praise to the Saviour.  

Friday

Titus 3.7 “So that having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.”

Being justified by grace means we are not heirs by right, but by gift. In Romans Paul spells this out much more fully: “The Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ…” The hope of eternal life is not set round with conditions, or ‘ifs and buts’. This hope is secured in our relationship to God, through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. That’s what being saved means, to live faithfully and hopefully towards our future in eternal fellowship with God.

Saturday

Titus 3.8 “This is a trustworthy saying.”

In the Letters to Timothy and Titus, Paul repeatedly tells those who will hear his letters read, “This is a trustworthy saying.” Believe it; stake your life on it; act on the truth of it; accept it into your heart and mind and let its truth and trustworthiness be fuel for your faith, day in and day out. Read Titus 3.1-7 again, because the truth Paul is telling is well worthy of your deepest trust and strongest confidence in God. For your interest here are the other ‘faithful sayings’: (1 Timothy 1.15; 3.1; 4.8; 2 Timothy 2.11-12; Titus 3.8). Find time to ponder these trustworthy sayings too.

Sunday

Titus 3.8-9 “This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things, so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good. These things are excellent and profitable for everyone.”

It’s not a bad motto: “Be careful to devote yourselves to doing what is good.” Careful means not being careless about those opportunities that always come our way to make someone else’s life better. Being devoted and loving God, makes us morally predictable about our choices of behaviour, about the words we speak, and how we think. Because God in his kindness, love and mercy has saved us through Jesus Christ, and cleansed and renewed us by the Holy Spirit poured out all over our lives in blessing and enabling grace – because of all that, we take great care to live gratefully, generously, and hopefully, as befits those who are saved and belong to the Saviour. Quite a thing to live a life profitable to everyone! Good deeds change the world!

Monday

Our blest Redeemer, ere he breathed his tender, last farewell,
a guide, a Comforter, bequeathed with us to dwell.

Behind this verse is the promise of Jesus, “”I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counsellor to be with you forever – the Spirit of Truth.” Pentecost is the fulfilling of that promise. The Holy Spirit is the generous bequest of Jesus, the gift that can’t be bought, the risen Christ made present by his Spirit. This whole hymn is a quiet thanksgiving for the One who comes to believing hearts as wisdom, counsel, strength and the deep assurance that we are indeed, children of God  

Tuesday

He came in semblance of a dove, with sheltering wings outspread,

The holy balm of peace and love on earth to shed.

The descent of the Spirit on Jesus at his baptism combines with the image of sheltering wings. Another hymn tells this well: “O spread thy covering wings around, till all our wanderings cease.” Amongst the great blessings of the Holy Spirit’s coming to dwell in the community of Christ, and in each trusting heart, are the peace and the love of God shed abroad in the heart, in the Christian community, and out the doors into the world where Christ died and rose again, a God-loved world.

Wednesday

He came in tongues of living flame, to teach, convince, subdue;

As peaceful as the wind he came, as viewless too. 

Sometimes the poetry isn’t as good as the words! But this verse interprets Pentecost as the gift of the Holy Spirit to all Jesus’ followers, then and now. The flame of God’s love, burning the truth into the heart, convincing of both sin and its remedy in Christ, subduing our pride and bringing us to the place of prayer, gratitude and obedience. The wind at Pentecost wasn’t peaceful, it was disruptive – but perhaps the hymn writer was thinking about Jesus words to Nicodemus, the movement of the Spirit made visible by the effects on the leaves, and that same Spirit’s effects made visible in lives born again into the Kingdom of God.

Thursday

He came sweet influence to impart, a gracious, willing guest,
while he can find one humble heart wherein to rest.

The hymn writer’s devotional instincts are finely tuned. The Holy Spirit does not gate-crash, though there is potency and persistence in the grace of God working away to open doors locked from the inside by guilt, fear, shame, pride and much else that keeps us at a distance from God. The heart that is humbled by the patient love of God revealed in Christ, the heart convicted of sin and turned towards God in repentance and prayer for forgiveness – that heart is exactly the place where the Holy Spirit comes, and dwells, and becomes the primary influencer of the heart, emotions, will, and mind.  

Friday

And his that gentle voice we hear, soft as the breath of even,
that checks each fault, that calms each fear, and speaks of heaven.

The great Reformers often spoke of “the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit.” By this they meant when we read our Bibles prayerfully, we are asking the Spirit to “teach, convince, subdue.” The Spirit is continually at work towards our sanctification, in maintaining the sensitivity of the conscience when faced with temptation, by the training of the mind in our thinking with the mind of Christ, in the control of our emotions and affections as we respond to life’s routines and surprises. The work of the Holy Spirit is “God at work in us both to do and to will his good pleasure.”  

Saturday

And every virtue we possess, and every victory won,
and every thought of holiness, are his alone.

This is the most famous and most often quoted verse of this hymn – at least in the circles I moved in for much of my earlier Christian life and ministry. The author, Henriette Auber, was well aware we are saved by grace – it’s never our own doing. Likewise whatever is good in us is good enabled by the inner working of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness with our spirits that we are assuredly children of God. We are what we are, we are who we are, by the grace of God. Far from being a devaluation of our best efforts, our dependence on God’s grace as we are being conformed to the image of Christ, is what enables and empowers us to “work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, because it is God who is at work in us”!

Sunday

Spirit of purity and grace, our weakness pitying, see:
O make our hearts thy dwelling-place, and worthier thee.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” The hymn writer used early Victorian language – the word pity refers to the compassion and affectionate sympathy of God who knows and sees and understands our struggles. The Holy Spirit is the Counsellor and Comforter who indwells the mind and knows our motives and intentions, our mistakes and failures, and whose work is to conform us to the image of Christ – to make us more like Jesus. That’s the prayer of this entire hymn! 

Monday

Acts 2.1-2 “When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.”

C. S. Lewis once longed for the gales of God to blow again through the dusty cobwebs of a passive church. He wasn’t wrong in his longing. These two verses are more than a weather report, they are the Church’s first weather forecast about the power of the Holy Spirit to be seen and heard where the followers of Jesus are gathered together. And so we pray, “O Breath of Life, come sweeping through us / revive your church with life and power.”

Tuesday

Acts 2.2 “Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.”

Pentecost was a dramatic interruption that woke the disciples from resignation, uncertainty, timidity about the future, and that lethargy we all recognise when something seems too big to tackle. The sudden noise, the forceful energy, the disruptive effect of power pervading ‘the whole house’ – what to do in face of so much evidence of church decline, fading faith, loss of direction and a world less and less hospitable to Christian life and witness? Perhaps pray for a personal Pentecost, and a local community Pentecost, another blessed interruption to routine faith!

Wednesday

Acts 2.3 “They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.”

Wind and fire are not the elements of tameness or sameness. The wind is a force that overturns, whips up, impels forward if the wind is at our back. Fire consumes, illumines, warms, purifies and extracts pure metal in furnace heat. The separation of the flames into a gift of flame to each one present, is a remarkable picture of the Holy Spirit falling on the community and hovering over each person. The coming of the Holy Spirit is the realisation in our experience of Jesus’ promise of the Spirit as the Father’s gift. “Kindle a flame of sacred love, on the mean altar of my heart.”

Thursday

Acts 2. 4 “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.”

While the gift of tongues came later in Christian worship, in Acts the Spirit becomes both the speaker and the interpreter. The Jesus’ followers spoke in a language they had not learned, to people able to understand them. The Gospel can’t be constrained by any one language – the good news is to all people. That long list of peoples, tribes and nations in Jerusalem represented many languages – and the Spirit ensured that they heard of “the wonders of God.” (v11) It may be that the Church today is being called to discover and grow new ways of telling, showing and enacting the good news of Jesus crucified and risen. And not by might, nor by power, but by the Spirit of God.

Friday

O Thou who camest from above, the pure celestial fire to impart,
kindle a flame of sacred love on the mean altar of my heart.

Jesus said he would not leave them orphaned, abandoned or left to their own devices. The coming of the Spirit, the gift of the Father, is the fulfilment of Jesus’ promise. Wesley recognised both the glory of the fire and the ordinariness of the altar. Even a love worthy of Jesus would have to come as gift, a flame from heaven sent to ignite everything in us that will burn. And so Wesley’s prayer, becomes our prayer, “Kindle a flame of sacred love on the mean altar of my heart.”

Saturday

“There let it for Thy glory burn with inextinguishable blaze,
and trembling to its source return, in humble prayer and fervent praise.”

“The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go out.” (Lev. 6.13) Wesley describes the Christian heart as an ordinary altar, nothing special. But when sacred love is kindled by the inner working of the Spirit, the heart burns with devotion and creates communion between the glory of heaven and the trusting heart. The result is a life of humble prayer and fervent praise, a life ignited and kept  constantly ablaze by the renewing and refuelling power of the Holy Spirit.

Sunday

Jesus, confirm my heart's desire to work and speak and think for Thee,
still let me guard the holy fire, and still stir up Thy gift in me.

Ready for all Thy perfect will, my acts of faith and love repeat,
till death Thy endless mercies seal, and make my sacrifice complete.

On this Pentecost Sunday, let Wesley’s hymn become your prayer. Against the backdrop of the upper room, invaded by the gales of God, sanctified by the flames of divine love, we ask for a fresh kindling in our own hearts and heads, of love for God, love for Christ’s church, and love for this God-loved world. May our whole lives be an incendiary witness to the fierce and holy love of God. By the power of the Spirit, may God’s holy fire burn with inextinguishable blaze, His love audible and visible in us.